Time management is very important to be productive. When you waste time, there's too little left to complete all your tasks in the allotted period. This applies whether you're a student, run your own business, or an employee either working from home or at the office.
Here are 9 essential strategies to get you through the day more successfully.
1. Don't Get Distracted by Notifications
With time management skills, you want to use the best tools. However, beyond that, not being distracted is vital to complete work in the time available. To do this, use a browser tool that lets you block certain websites and their notifications. See the link above to BlockSite, and see if it'll help you.
Also, consider turning off email reminders and simply check your email at set times during the day instead. This avoids you interrupting your workflow.
2. Plan the Day the Night Before
Once the day gets started, it's off and running. You barely stop and something happens. But is it what you wanted to get done or the work that a colleague pulled you into?
It's necessary to plan the night before (or just before leaving) to decide what you will do the next workday. List the specific tasks and how long each one is estimated to take. Add in time for discussions with colleagues and other time-consuming items that will push you off course.
3. Strategic Thinking
When you create your assignments and decide the course of your work, then it's useful to think strategically:
1. What are you trying to achieve?
2. What is the most effective way of getting there?
3. Are there shortcuts or steps to eliminate?
4. What does the outcome get you that isn't already present?
By looking at projects and tasks specifically, it's possible to see the bigger picture. This can result in better decision-making and more meaningful results.
4. Stop Procrastinating
Procrastination is the thief of time and the management of it. Repeatedly putting off a task or project means it gets shoved to the side and may never see the light of day. If it's a task that is important to get completed on time, it could have serious negative consequences when procrastinating on it.
Break down goals into small parts to make them more manageable. Create mini-milestones to work towards that are motivating. If you find it hard to focus for lengths of time, make each period shorter to push to the end of it while still working hard.
Also, avoid overanalyzing things because it can lead to paralysis and an inability to make a firm decision to move forward.
5. Single Task, Not Multi-Task
Multi-tasking is occasionally useful. However, most of the time it creates added distractions. It quickly becomes impossible to do any meaningful work because you're skipping from one incomplete task to the next one, and then back to the first. This stops your flow. The more advanced each task is, the truer this becomes because it leads to lost time getting back up to speed after every switchover event.
Attack each task one at a time. If it cannot be completed in a single workday, then break it into small parts and aim to complete one or more of those. This will give you a sense of progress and help you to maintain a singular focus.
Schedule other tasks for later and defer requests for unrelated work until after your single task is completed. The exception to this is emergency tasks that override all others at that time.
6. Use Checklists
Checklists are an excellent way to be maximally productive. By creating a checklist to reference when starting a project or proceeding through certain stages of regular projects, it's possible to reduce wasted time reinventing the wheel.
Using a checklist means fewer mistakes of omission are made. Reviewing a prepared list lends clarity to what will be required and sometimes sparks additional ideas that wouldn't have occurred naturally otherwise.
7. Automate Basic Tasks
Look at your regular tasks to see which ones may be automated.
Using automation is something many companies are deploying as a way to reduce the necessary resources to get projects completed sooner. This is something you can do too.
For example, with Gmail, it's possible to filter emails into virtual folders based on certain parameters, mark others as junk mail, and put a star next to important emails to highlight them.
One of the most popular apps for individuals to use is IFTTT. It lets you trigger responses to certain events, which saves having to do it manually.
8. Cut Out the Perfectionism
While being a perfectionist is a nice idea, in theory, most jobs don't require it.
Strong attention to detail is very useful but that's not the same thing. For a perfectionist, it goes way beyond dotting every I and crossing every T. The level of attention it requires is exhausting to pursue. Also, it requires considerably more time to go from a job that's done 90% or 95% well to near-perfect one. In most jobs, that extra time is better spent elsewhere getting more results.
9. Be Open to Outsourcing
Some tasks don't make the best use of your time but still need to be completed. These are ones that only need a limited set of skills to complete them. As such, it's sensible to divert these away from your workload by outsourcing them elsewhere.
Outsourcing is similar to delegating internally (that works too), but it embraces working with third parties like freelancers who can complete individual or grouped tasks. The hourly cost to outsource tasks isn't likely to be expensive and it frees up time to refocus on new projects. As a result, it's possible to step past uninspiring mundane tasks and make a real difference in your role. In turn, this makes the job more gratifying too.
Time management is really about managing other things (and yourself) to gain control of time, rather than managing time itself. It's useful to remember that.
