Introduction

Ever reach the end of the day and wonder… how is my time always sucked away?

You might have had a busy day with all of these tasks that you checked messages, had all of these meetings, checked email in between stacked up small tasks and notifications, and of course, the pesky demand requests. Yet here you are at the end of your busy day having not made any progress on that project you had planned to close.

It becomes quite frustrating to experience this all too frequently. You have wholehearted intentions in the morning and then before you know it, you have task overload. Most of your tasks are time sucks that you end up doing out of sheer convenience. You end up working on tasks that have less priority and replying to emails that were more like consequential conversations. You end up losing time to stretches of mindless apps.

When your workflow gets dominated by tasks and you forget about your goals, that’s when you need time management techniques the most.

Striving for efficient time management doesn’t mean you have to put in back to back work hours towards becoming the ultimate master of time. Rather, you decide where you want to put forward your focus and attention.

You might be wondering with all of the distractions and time sucks , how do you even know what time management looks like. More importantly, what do you do about the seemingly incapable task executors?

For additional online resources, visit banxiaxiaoshuo.com.

What Are Time Management Techniques?

Organizing techniques help with the management of effective time allocation and attention task prioritization.

This definition seems simple, but time management is actually quite complex. It is not about making time go faster. Everyone has the same total number of hours in the day. What you can control is how you spend those hours.

Let’s say you have to prepare a meal for a lot of people. If you were to start cooking everything in a random order, you may discover that you have vegetables to prepare that are raw and sitting on the counter and at the same time other food in the oven that you have forgotten and is now burning. The problem is not your cooking ability, the problem is your lack of preparation and order.

Your day has the same problem.

If you let your morning be disrupted by each and every ping that occurs, each and every call for help that comes, and each and every message, then you allow other people and external distractions to determine what you do. It is more prudent to decide which tasks are of highest priority, in what order you will tackle those, and which can wait.

Let’s say I need a completed presentation by Friday, and on that day I have a lot of smaller tasks such as emails, meetings, administrative work, etc.. A lot of these smaller tasks will try to take my focus unless I have a scheduled time for the presentation.

Being busy and making meaningful progress are also not the same.

For a different easy to understand approach, see how to overcome procrastination (internal link — replace this with your actual URL).

Common Barriers to Improved Time Management

If you want to improve your time management skills, you must first understand why you are struggling. Many people think that they have poor time management skills due to a lack of motivation or being lazy. The reality of the situation is much bigger. Some of the main reasons include poorly planned tasks, inability to focus due to outside forces, and a lack of consciousness around prioritizing.

The Appearance of Efficiency

Falsely believing that you can ‘manage’ your time better by multitasking is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the workplace. The ability to listen in on a meeting and take notes via email, or checking your phone and switching between a spreadsheet and your favorite web pages, gives the illusion of efficiency. Multitasking however, is one of the most inefficient forms of organization in the workplace.

The reality is there are numerous complex activities that require focused attention. Writing an important report while constantly answering messages is one of the most inefficient ways to use your time. Each time you stop writing, in order to answer a message, summon your attention to remember what you were thinking, where you were going with your report, and what you were thinking of writing next, unnecessarily wastes valuable time.

The American Psychological Association has researched and written about multitasking and the associated performance decreases and increased fatigue.

The net result is more mistakes, more time needed to complete simple tasks, and increased mental fatigue.

Lack of Prioritizing

Thinking that all your tasks are critical and of equal importance is another common problem.

If all of your tasks combine into one big to do list, it can be nearly impossible to decide where to begin. Without prioritizing your tasks, your brain will likely choose to tackle the easiest task first. It could be that you complete smaller organizational tasks, like cleaning out your email, while you avoid the larger task of completing the presentation.

Smaller tasks generally do not deserve your brain’s full attention, but that doesn’t mean they are not important.

The best way to decide the order in which you tackle tasks is to determine an effective priority system.

Overly Optimistic Scheduling

Many schedules crumble in the morning because they incorporate tasks that assume perfection.

Report time estimates are often overly optimistic. So are meeting time estimates and the time it takes to cross town. Commonly, a potentially lengthy report leads to a lengthy meeting, which is then followed by a relatively long commute.

This messes with your calendar.

Realistic schedules must account for the unexpected, the probable, the interruptions, and delays.

Schedule perfection in an effortless and thoughtful manner can be difficult.

Let’s say you have some informative slides all ready to go. You’ve spent time adding finishing touches to your text including smart formatting to justify and space sentences to achieve a pleasing layout. Would the average person notice when you spend 2 hours moving these things around? Maybe. Would it really matter? Most likely not.

There are, of course, important scenarios where precision is key. However, it’s important to know that not every task calls for the same level of effort.

If we consider the level of importance and context of each task, we begin to notice where ‘best efforts’ are applied in differing scenarios. More importantly, placing a task within its context helps carry out other responsibilities and tasks that are more deserving of our best efforts.

Tech Distractions

A lot of technology today is geared toward easy interruptions.

Your phone begins its chatter and you cannot ignore the notification forever.You check it, see a message, move over to your social media app to check it and remember what you were doing…oh wait!

One small interruption alone isn’t that big a deal. However, multiple small interruptions ultimately fracture your ability to engage in work for an extended period.

The APA even talks about how the distractions and task switching interferes with productivity and your attention, definitely something worth paying attention to. APA: Productivity and interruptions

Not having tech is always an option, but technology can be determined whether or not it should have your attention.

Best Ways to Manage Your Time Effectively

The key to improving your schedule is not some fundamental system overhaul. It’s more about simple additions and habits.

The main thing is to select strategies relevant to your actual obligations. A good looking method on paper, that is not sustainable, will not help you much.

1. Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a method that helps lessen the perceived burden of focused work by breaking up a large task into many smaller ones.

As a general rule, one focused work period (or Pomodoro) lasts 25 minutes, and the rest is a 5 minute break. After several Pomodoros, take a longer break.

Let us say you have a writing task you have been avoiding. Writing an entire article may feel daunting. You can work for 25 minutes to create a task outline instead.

You are not saying you have to finish the article. You are simply saying you will work on it for one concentrated session.

Making this small commitment can help you get started.

The biggest mistake is turning this into a race. The goal of the technique is to avoid exhaustion. The breaks allow your attention to reset.

2. Setting Tasks Using Time Blocking

Tasks are scheduled using time blocking by placing chunks of time on a calendar for specific tasks.

Rather than adding a general item to your to do list like “work on project,” time blocking may include 9:00-10:30 focused work on project, 10:30-11:00 to handle emails, and 2:00-3:00 to take care of other tasks.

This gives you a massive advantage: you can see how much time you actually have.

Say you have three meetings, an appointment, lunch, and many daily obligations, but if you have ten hours work scheduled on your task list then there’s obviously an issue.

A calendar will reveal that to you.

Time blocking can be used to ensure that tasks are not indefinitely postponed. Write that session of your book on the calendar for when you sit down and write, as opposed to planning to do it later.

3. Follow the Two Minute Rule for Quick Jobs

Some tasks are so trivial that listing them on your task list is just an unnecessary hindrance.

Most things that can be done in two minutes, can be. This could be confimring a calendar invite, filing a document, putting away an item, or answering a quick email.

The crucial part is realizing it is actually a quick tasks.

You might think a quick email reply is just that, but then you might get drawn into a long conversation. An email may contain a request that requires you to do some amount of research. These things that may seem quick can draw you away to other more important tasks.

The Rule should be utilized on an as needed basis.

4. Give your most important Tasks the First slot

Email is a good example. You open your inbox to check one message and find several more requests. Now, you’re working on other people’s priorities instead of your own.

Try giving your main task some uninterrupted time before it gets swamped by routine communication.

Say you have to do a report. Don’t check your email every couple minutes during the first hour. After that, communicate and do the admin tasks.

It doesn’t mean everyone has to become a morning person. Simple priority general time planning is all it’s about.

5. Organize Tasks With the Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower matrix separates tasks into four categories (and therefore doesn’t allow for a random to-do list). This system helps you focus on the most important tasks rather than the timeliest. The four sections help you know if something should be done immediately, scheduled, delegated, or completely removed.

If you have to do an important project, respond to an email that you can do later, prepare for a presentation and respond to a request that isn’t important, which one do you have to do now? Choose the important project.

Without this system, tasks that just showed up are likely to get done first.

The matrix spotlights a new subject: what truly matters?

Task separation tends to be very effective for people who view everything as a priority. Once segregated, most task lists become a lot less alarming.

6. Group Similar Tasks Together

Instead of spending the day jumping from one completely different task to the next, spend time batching similar tasks.

An example would be choosing to answer routine emails during only two scheduled blocks of time instead of opening your email several times throughout the day. You could choose to make several calls in one batch, process several invoices in one batch, or do a given batch of administrative paperwork.

It is a large mental switch to change from one type of work to another.

Task switching may take a tiny amount of time individually, but they can add up to take a large amount of time collectively.

One benefit of task batching is that it tends to support work in the same mode for longer.

7. Create One Distraction-Free Hour

If you use one completely distraction free hour to its fullest extent, it can be a game changer.

Decide upon an hour during the day in which interruptions is at a minimum (i.e. email is unavailable and phone is silent). Distracting tabs and notifications should be closed.

Once this is done, decide upon a large task that can be completed in 60 minutes.

A writer could choose to draft an article. A student could use this time to do practice problems. A finance worker could choose to analyze a report without answering messages during this time.

An hour won’t fix every work issue. However, especially dense work can sometimes make progress with an hour of undistracted time.

If complete isolation isn’t possible in your work environment, even a short break can help you make progressive work moves.

8. Decide Your Priorities for Tomorrow

With just a few minutes of preparation, you can alter the beginning of your day for the better.

Before finally leaving work for the day, make a list of the tasks you want to accomplish in order of importance for the next day. For each of those tasks, write the first, and therefore easiest, step to accomplish the task.

Rather than just writing the task as “work on presentation,” write, “complete slides 8-12 and review the figures.”

This makes the starting step of the task obvious.

This simple task changing habit will also remove the dreaded first-task-of-the-day decision, which often includes the 30 minute “filler” of staring at a computer in the morning, while you figure out what you should actually do.

9. Schedule Buffer Time

Schedules without empty space appear efficient and productive, but they are actually very fragile.

If you have back-to-back meetings, and the first one is scheduled to end at 10:30, but actually runs over until 10:40, then the second meeting starts at 10:40, and it’s all downhill from there.

Adding buffer time adds some flexibility to your schedule.

The same concepts apply to non-work schedules. If you need about 20 minutes to get to an appointment, it’s better to schedule it in about 30 minutes to account for the unknowns of everyday life.

Your schedule should have adequate wiggle room.

10. Learn to Say No to Low-Priority Work

Filling out your schedule with other people’s requests makes time management difficult.

It’s ok to say no to tasks.

You can inform the person that you currently have a deadline and to decide which of the two tasks should come first.

An example of this would be, “I understand the request you’ve made, however, it will interfere with my current deadline. Which of the two do you want me to prioritize?”

This example makes more clear the consequence of the request.

Time Management 101 also teaches you to guard your available time.

Also consider how you can create and improve your daily routine (internal link – replace with your actual URL).

Expert Tips

It’s critical to understand some of the basics. However, the system will become much more efficient and realistic with a few subtle changes.

Pay Attention to Energy, Not Just Hours

Two hours aren’t always the same.

If you notice the morning hours are sharper for you and the afternoon hours are slower, schedule demanding work during the morning hours.

Use lower-energy hours to answer messages and do less demanding work.

The goal is not to force yourself to be productive every hour, but to match the right work with the existing mental energy you have.

Create a Do Nothing List

Usually, people compile to-do-lists and fail to include activities that they must avoid. A simple Do Nothing list could include things like repetitively checking email or social media, when you should be working. It could also include attending pointless meetings or updating your productivity system when you really should be working.

This is a surprisingly effective and time saving method.

Removing time wasters can lead to the discovery that you actually have estimated time for all of your daily tasks.

Define What “Finished” Looks Like

If you fail to set a goal completion date or drastic goal limits, a project has the tendency to grow infinitely.

For example, you telling yourself to “improve the article” has potential for endless work, and could include changing every aspect of the article; from the phrasing of individual sentences, all the way to the organization of the article.

Before you start, set something concrete to finish. This could be for example, fact checking, reading level improvement, example adding, and a final review.

If the goal you set is reached, the task can be considered finished.

This is a good control technique for perfectionists who lose time polishing work that is already acceptable.

Set A Restart Point

Large projects can include work stops that make a return to a task difficult. A workspace that you close should include a summary of what you did and what you hoped to accomplish next.

As an example, while writing half of an article, leave the following note: “Next: explain how distractions make long tasks harder and add a workplace example.”

This means that you can come back the next day and start writing from there, rather than spend 10 minutes trying to remember where you left your thoughts.

Recovering Rather Than Giving Up

Not all days are good days.

You could lose an hour to social media, you could spend too long on a secondary problem, or you could find that your well-thought-out plan no longer makes sense during the lunch break.

Don’t let one mistake ruin your whole day.

Close that unwanted distraction, re-evaluate, and choose the next significant action. You don’t even have to rescue the rest of your schedule. You just need to improve your next choice.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

One of the biggest beginner mistakes is making schedules that rely heavily on assumptions. Planners fail to account for the time it’ll take to complete difficult tasks and try to fit every minute in the planner. The smarter route is to leave gaps in your plan.

Another problem, especially for repeat offenders, is having long to-do lists. Having 20 or 30 tasks on your to-do list that are not completed is a discouraging sight to begin the day.