Develop self-awareness

Self-awareness is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express your emotions. 

It lays the foundation for our behavior and skills including goal setting, communication, motivation, stress and time management. As long as we understand our inclinations and limitations, we can choose appropriate time management strategies that will serve us best.

Master goal setting and reflection

• Get some perspective. Develop a vision of what and where you want to be in a few years.
• Develop an action plan. Break down your vision into manageable steps that meet SMART criteria.
• Take action. Use time management software to upload your plan and record your time.
• Reflect on your progress. Review your performance and progress on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly basis. 
• Ask for feedback. Be ready to take criticism.

Leave out low-output activities and use your energy wisely

• Identify unproductive activities. Use your time tracking data to identify tasks that don’t contribute to the project’s success and eliminate them.
• Evaluate task importance. Even when you are in the middle of the task and you notice that it takes too much time already, step back and evaluate its importance and outcome.
• Focus on the end result. Think of how your tasks at hand contribute to your personal or corporate goals and adjust your vision.
• Use peak performance time. Break your day into three to eight time slots to assess your energy level. Rank-order them to find your peak performance time. Use this time of the day for the most demanding tasks.
• Get comfortable with imperfection. Diligence and attention to detail are good traits, but they often take more time to produce better quality work when common-quality work is enough.
• Practice self-care. Exercise regularly, develop a healthy diet, take breaks, meditate.

Improve your time assessment skills

• Estimate your activities. When planning your next task, project or Sprint, estimate these items for future productivity analysis.
• Allow for some buffer time. Buffer time takes into account unexpected circumstances that should be included in your estimations.
• Use time tracking software. Upload your tasks and time estimates into your time tracker and record time against them.

• See how your estimated and actual time stack up. After you finish a task, run a report in your time tracking software where you can see your estimated and actual time.
• Calculate the total fudge ratio. Build a list of tasks, make your time estimates for each item and track time against them. Add up your total time spent, divide it by the total estimated time and multiply the result by 100%.
• Ask for feedback. To reduce estimation errors, ask a neutral party for feedback about your task estimates.

Improve organizational skills

Organizational skills refer to establishing order and structure in your goals, plans, schedules, and tasks.  

Upgrade project management

• Integrate and automate. Use online calendars, scheduling apps, time trackers, and tech tools to automate routine tasks.
• Delegate. Delegation frees up your time for more important tasks, teaches your team communication skills and builds trust. 
• Outsource. Your attention is crucial for your business success while professionals take care of things that take you too effort and don’t contribute to your business growth.

Master prioritization

• Set deadlines. Use a project management tool to define deadlines for items in your task lists and prioritize tasks with upcoming deadlines.
• Focus on 20% of the tasks. If 20% of tasks bring 80% of results, you need to identify this 20% in your task list. 
• Separate urgent from important. Urgent tasks require immediate action, whereas important tasks have more significant and long-term consequences. 
• Learn to say “no”. People who struggle to say “no” have higher chances of experiencing stress and burnout.

Improve scheduling

• Create a routine. Use calendar apps to block time for planned activities and add new items immediately as soon as they are planned or requested. 
• Schedule protected time. Identify your peak performance time and ensure that you dedicate this time to the most demanding and important projects.
• Schedule me time. Include fixed commitments (meals, commute, sleep), self-care activities (exercise, meditation), guilt-free time (socializing, hobbies) in your calendar.

Save your brain power

• Create to-do lists. Try compiling daily task lists and cross off items as you complete them.
• Take notes. Document key points of meetings and conversations with colleagues to unload your mind and consult them at any time.
• Create running lists that you add to constantly. Create a list with ideas to explore or discuss with your manager, skills to improve, books and courses, you name it. 

Arrange your tools

• Know your tools. Many softwares offer keyboard shortcuts, labeling systems and other tiny features that can save hours of work time monthly.
• Document important guidelines, meetings, procedures to unload your mind, refer to and share them with others in a few clicks.
• Save passwords. Use password managers (like Clipperz) to store and access logins, passwords, usernames and other credentials.
• Backup important data. Have a copy of important docs on your cloud or external storage.

Eliminate distractions

• Manage your attention. Recognize when your mind starts wandering and you give in to social media or other distractions.
• Block time for emails. Turn off email notifications and schedule two or three time blocks daily for checking emails.
• Declutter. Messy desks make us feel anxious, stressed and overwhelmed. Spend a few minutes daily to declutter space around you.

Grow adaptability skills

Adaptability skills refer to a person’s ability to adjust to changing environments and circumstances such as changing responsibilities, expectations and strategies. 

Cultivate Collaboration

• Communicate the company’s mission, team and individual goals. Bring your people together under one common goal.
• Encourage openness and transparency. Share issues and challenges of your business with your team.
• Promote problem solving and idea-sharing. Establish a creative and judgment-free workplace culture.

Master stress management

• Monitor changes in your environment. Take interest in changes in policies, procedures, finances, and other processes around you to be ready to adjust to changing circumstances.
• Create contingency plans. When planning your next task or project, consider best-case and worst-case scenarios.
• Identify your stressors. Practice journaling to identify sources of stress and look into ways to manage them effectively.
• Pursue hobbies. People who regularly engage in hobbies perform 15% to 30% better than people without hobbies. So schedule at least one block of time every week to do a hobby.

Improve focus and concentration

• Use productivity apps. Experiment with time trackers to measure and keep track of your progress.
• Work in focused time intervals. When you feel overwhelmed, use short bursts of effort to avoid procrastination.
• Reduce time wasters. Use do-not-disturb time blocks and block distractions during peak performance and critical work time.
• Establish boundaries. Turn off work-related notifications, mute team chats and use your non-working hours, weekends and vacations to recharge your batteries.