12+1 Time Management Tips To Do More

Do you feel the need to be more organized and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven't accomplished much? If this is your case, then these time management tips could be useful to improve your daily work.

They'll help you increase your productivity and stay cool and collected.

1) Time can’t be managed, but you can manage yourself!

The first thing you have to understand about time management; no matter how organized you are, there are always only 24 hours in a day.

All you can actually manage is yourself and what you do with the time that you have at your disposal.

2) Multitasking is a Myth

Multitasking does not work, it makes you waste 20% of your resources. The optimal number of threads in any system is one thread. That is a computer science fact and if you think you can multitask, you're wrong. When you do multitask you're really doing "task-switching" which requires context switching.

3) Create your time management goals

The focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not to have more time (this is impossible to obtain).

A good start could be the elimination of  personal time-wasters. For one week, for example, set a goal that you're not going to take personal phone calls or respond to non-work related text messages while you're working.

4) Implement a time management plan

Think of this as an extension of the third time management tip. The objective is to change your behaviors over time to achieve whatever general goal you've set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress.

So you need to not only set your specific goals, but track them over time to see whether or not you're accomplishing them.

“Write down three outcomes for the day.

… for the week.

… for the year.”

5) Know things that waste your time.

Our daily routines are full of time-wasters that steal you time you could be using much more productively.

What are your time-wasters? Most of people admit to spend too much time 'net surfing, reading email, Facebook posting (or just scrolling in the news feed), texting, or making personal calls.

This is how answered the 89% of respondents, in a survey by salary.com:

• 31 percent waste roughly 30 minutes daily
• 30 percent waste roughly one hour daily
• 16 percent waste roughly two hours daily
• 6 percent waste roughly three hours daily
• 2 percent waste roughly four hours daily
• 2 percent waste five or more hours daily

"Effectiveness is doing the right things,

but efficiency is doing things right."

- Scott Hanselman

6) Use time-management tools.

Whether it's a Day-Timer, an integration software or a phone tracker app, the first step to physically managing your time is to know where it's going now and planning how you're going to spend your time in the future. A software program such as Outlook, for instance, lets you schedule events easily and can be set to remind you of events in advance, making your time management easier.

7) Prioritize your tasks.

Every morning you should start with a session prioritizing the tasks scheduled for that day and setting your performance benchmark.

If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish?

8) Learn to delegate and/or outsource.

Delegation is one of the hardest things to learn how to do for many business owners, but no matter how small your business is, there's no need for you to be a one-person show — you need to let other people carry some of the load. Delegation in Business provides an overview of tasks you'd be better off delegating or outsourcing while Decide to Delegate provides tips for actually getting on with the job of delegating.

"Being busy is a form of laziness—

lazy thinking and indiscriminate action."

Timothy Ferriss

9) Establish routines and stick to them as much as possible.

While crises will arise, you'll be much more productive if you can follow routines most of the time. For most people, creating and following a routine lets them get right down to the tasks of the day rather than frittering away time getting started.

10) Get in the habit of setting time limits for tasks.

For instance, reading and answering email can consume your whole day if you let it. Instead, set a limit of one hour a day for this task and stick to it. (The easiest way to do this is to assign a solid block of time to this task rather than answering email on demand).

"If it's not helping me to make money,

if it's not improving my life in some way,

it's mental clutter and it's out."

Christopher Hawkins

11) Organize your system

Are you wasting a lot of time looking for files on your computer? Take the time to organize a file management system. Is your filing system slowing you down? Redo it, so it's organized to the point that you can quickly lay your hands on what you need.

12) Exploit the time you usually waste waiting

From client meetings to dentist appointments, it's impossible to avoid waiting for someone or something.

But you don't need to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs. Technology makes it easy to work wherever you are; your tablet or smartphone will help you stay connected and many software can help you stay updated with your activities even when you’re out of office. Use a cloud integration product as Claudio to create connections between services and be notificated for whichever alerts.

Conclusion: Your Time Belongs to You

Here's the most important time management tip. You can be in control and accomplish all the tasks you your tasks, you only need to eliminate disturbing elements from your work and exploit technology at his maximum.

Let software do your repetitive work and focus only on high valuable tasks, you’ll gain on productivity and gratification!

Contact us to know more on the ways technology can help you