13 Time Management Techniques of Insanely Productive People
Adopting good time management techniques in your life isn’t about squeezing as many tasks as you can into your day. It’s about simplifying how you work, getting things done faster, and doing things better. By doing so, you’ll have more time to play, rest, and do the things you love.
Work Around Your Energy Levels
Schedule critical work for peak productivity times
- Find your most productive hours and schedule Deep Work for those periods
- When your energy is low, work on low-value and low-energy tasks
- Energy levels also vary by day of the week. Find your patterns
Time Blocking
Create ‘blocks’ of time in your days and assign tasks to focus on.
- Determine when a task will get done and how long it is going to take by associating tasks with time blocks to determine when to expect the task to be done and by how much time
On Time Management Techniques
The ultimate goal of work is enjoyment
- Work can and should be fun
- Some of the best time management techniques are simple and straightforward
- Others are a little bit more complex
- Adopt the ones that work for you and keep trying to improve your own practices
Remove Distractions
It takes around 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption (study).
- Half an hour full-on focus is more productive than 2 hours switching between tasks.
- To remove distractions: turn off all notifications on your phone and computer, leave your phone away from your workspace, use noise-canceling headphones, turn off Wi-Fi if it’s not needed for a task, and schedule distraction time throughout the day.
Batching
Group specific tasks that are similar and do them together
- Forces your brain to focus on one type of task at a time
- Reduces start-up and slow-down time, daily clutter, and improves focus
- To discover which tasks you should stack, start by writing all your activities for the day and week. You can batch together the ones that call for similar mindsets.
Track Your Time
Time tracking is a time management technique used to keep records of work hours
- It helps measure working time and gives information about how much time we spend on each specific task
- To do it manually, use a spreadsheet
- Or use a time tracking app
- RescueTime is a free app that tracks how you spend time on the computer
Eat That Frog
Each day, identify your most important task and begin your day by tackling it
- This builds momentum and a sense of accomplishment
- Resist the temptation of tackling the easiest tasks first
- Eat your frog first thing in the morning
- When you have more than one frog, eat the biggest first
The Eisenhower Matrix
Helps you discover your most important tasks
- Urgent and Important
- Not-Urgent and Not-Important
- Insert each task into a quadrant and do the corresponding action
- Work on urgent tasks right away; schedule Q2 tasks; for Q3, delegate; delete Q4 to-dos
- Use the Eisenhower Matrix every morning
Automate Tasks
Put some of your daily tasks on autopilot to work smarter
- Create canned responses in Gmail for emails you keep writing
- Set reminders on Google Calendar so you never forget anything
- Proofread your writing using Grammarly
- Use Buffer to schedule and automate your social media posts in advance
- LastPass to fill online forms and save all your passwords in one place
Plan Your Day
One of the best ways to improve your time management is to plan how you’re going to use it
- When should you plan your day?
- Spend a few minutes writing down everything you need to do
- What should go into your to-do list?
Follow the 80/20 Rule
It’s the little things that account for the majority of the results. Focus on the 20% of your tasks that bring 80% of the result.
- Ask yourself: What makes your emails important, your distractions, your problems, and your tasks give you pleasure or pleasure?
The To-Don’t List
Write down all the habits you want to quit and the activities you wish to remove from your life.
- Use this as a guideline of what you don’t allow in your life
- Example: Don’t email first thing in the morning or last thing at night
- No morning meetings
- Do not say yes unless you’re 100% certain you can deliver
- Avoid coffee in the afternoon
Set Time Constraints
Set deadlines even when you don’t need to
- Use deadlines and time limits to your advantage
- Scheduling less time to complete tasks will give you more focus and focus your brain
- For example, if you have 20 minutes to respond to an email, set a 10-minute timer and work as hard as you can to beat it
- The timer creates urgency and pushes you to focus
The Pomodoro Technique
Forces you to single-task
- Turn off all the distractions and set a timer for 25 minutes. During that time, you can only work on a single task.
- The idea behind it is to create a sense of urgency
- Force you to take breaks to keep you fresh throughout the workday