Master These Three Skills to Improve Time Management 🚀

There’s no way to manage time but we can manage our attitude, activities and environment to get the most of the time we have. This is what time management is all about. As entrepreneurs, managers and professionals, we are hungry for growth, want to reap results and progress in leaps and bounds.

Master Prioritization

Set deadlines

• Focus on 20% of the tasks
• Separate urgent from important: Urgent tasks require immediate action, whereas important tasks have more significant and long-term consequences
• Learn to say “no”: Refuse tasks and activities that are irrelevant to your goals

Improve Organizational Skills

Organizational skills = establishing order and structure in your goals, plans, schedules, and tasks

Upgrade Project Management

Integrate and automate: use online calendars, scheduling apps, time trackers, project management systems and other tech tools to automate routine tasks

• Delegate: use app integrations and connect your apps so that they could exchange your data
• Outsource: consider outsourcing HR and accounting tasks

Master Stress Management

Monitor changes in your environment: take interest in policies, procedures, finances, and other processes around you to be ready to adjust to changing circumstances

Cultivate Collaboration

Communicate the company’s mission, team and individual goals

Improve Scheduling

Create a routine

Start With Time Tracking

You can’t improve your time management tactics and approaches if you don’t keep track of your time

Master Goal Setting & Reflection

Get some perspective

• Develop an action plan
• Break it down into manageable steps
• Take action
• Reflect on your progress
• Ask for feedback
• Be ready to take criticism
• Use data to identify trends and opportunities for growth

Use Your Energy Wisely

Focus on the end result

• Use peak performance time
• 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
• 20% of input produce 80% of results
• Practice self-care

Develop Self-Awareness

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

• In terms of time management, self-awareness 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

Improve Focus & Concentration

Use productivity apps

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter F. Drucker

First published in 1967, this book remains one of the top reads with time-tested general practices for project managers.

• Adaptability skills, stress management, prioritization
• Cal Newport addresses the problem of an increasingly distracting world that reduces our cognitive and concentration abilities
• Self-awareness, focus and performance

Save Your Brain Power

Create to-do lists: Document key points of meetings and conversations with colleagues to unload your mind and consult them at any time.

• Take notes and create running lists: Create a list with ideas to explore, discuss with your manager, etc.

Arrange Your Tools

Know your tools. Document important guidelines, meetings, procedures to unload your mind, refer to and share them with others in a few clicks.

• Save passwords, backup important data, and keep a copy of important docs on your cloud or external storage.

Improve Your Time Assessment Skills

Estimate your activities

• 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
• Ask for feedback
• To reduce estimation errors, ask a neutral party for feedback about your task estimates

Leave Out Low-Output Activities

Identify unproductive activities that don’t contribute to the project’s success and can be eliminated with little or no damage to the outcome.

Eliminate Distractions

Manage your attention: Redirect your focus when it slips up

• Block time for emails: 28% of workers spend most of their workweek on emails
• Declutter: Organize your workspace to relieve stress and anxiety
• Turn off email notifications and schedule time blocks for checking emails

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

• This skill set consists of sub-skills like communication, creative thinking and problem-solving skills which allow people to manage high-pressure situations, deal with stress and distractions

Further Time Management Reading

Effective time management is a hard skill to master because it includes dozens of sub-skills that allow us to manage our thoughts, emotions, communications, and environment.

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