Time Management Strategies for 2023
Friday, July 21, 2023
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Time Management Strategies for 2023
1. Self-Audit Your Time
The biggest problem with time management is not knowing where your time is spent and not managing it to be most productive. Take two weeks to self-audit your time from the moment you wake up to when you go to bed every day. Track everything you do throughout each day, and determine what are productive and non-productive uses of your time. Then, adjust how you manage your time in the future.
2. Work in 90-Minute, Uninterrupted Increments
There is scientific evidence that proves humans concentrate on a task for 90 minutes at a time. Our productivity shifts to diminishing returns after that time period. To reactivate concentration, you have to rest the productive part of your brain and use another part of your brain by doing an activity such as walking or running.
3. Understand the Energy Each Task Will Require
For each major task, ask yourself, “Does this require head, heart, or hands energy?” Deep thinking or soulful engagement or executional excellence, for example, requires vastly different physiological states. Sometimes, we’re ready to crank things out; other times, we are open to deep introspection or conversation. Be sure you are as clear about your “to-be” list as you are about your “to-do” list.
4. Prioritize Your Work Items
Use Stephen Covey’s time management matrix to plan your week by directing your attention to the things that are most important to you. Use the matrix to plot work items, their level of importance and their due dates in one of four quadrants: 1. urgent and important, 2. not urgent but important, 3. urgent but not important, or 4. not urgent and not important. Over time, doing the important work first will reduce urgencies.
5. Look at the “Big” Picture First
The most impactful time-management skill one can develop, is the discipline to start each month and week by telescoping your view all the way out to a year-long perspective. Remind yourself of the big-picture goals before taking a look at your to-do list for the immediate future. This helps prioritize what matters, delegate what you can, and eliminate distractions from your schedule.
6. Focus on Managing Your Physical Energy
Manage your physical energy, not the time it takes to complete a task. You will become more efficient by identifying how much energy it takes to complete your most important daily tasks. The first step is to identify where and when you feel depleted, and then incorporate simple strategies, such as taking intentional breaks, rather than draining yourself with extended work hours.
7. Journal Your Important Goals Each Day
Start every day by journaling important goals. Keeping your list to the top five goals, plan your calendar so that these top goals find their way onto your calendar when you are at your most productive and least distracted times.
8. Plan to Work at Your Most Productive Times
Save projects that are very urgent, and especially those that need the most concentration, for your most productive time of day. Leave other types of smaller projects that don’t require as much focus for the other time slots. That way, you’ll get your most urgent projects completed on schedule.
9. Reward Yourself for Completing Tasks
One of the most effective methods to complete work is connecting a reward to finishing a task. For example, if you need to write a chapter, link something positive that will happen when completed. Conversely, if there’s something that you enjoy doing, you will only get to do it once you finish what you need to do. A reward might be calling your loved ones in the middle of the day, a healthy snack, or some other sought-after goody!
10. Handle Priority Tasks First
Time management is about priority management and creating a clear pathway to success. Break down annual, quarterly, monthly and weekly strategies and action steps based on your core business focus and SMARTER (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound, effective, and reviewed) goals. Identify potential barriers and resources for overcoming those obstacles so that you know how to navigate your growth path with more ease and will struggle less when you hit a road bump.
11. Create Your Own To-Do List System
Developed your own to-do list system that ensures your priorities are aligned with your available time. The to-do list is organized by end-of-day, end-of-week, end-of-month and medium-term priorities. The EOD list is split into the three priority areas that are identified at the beginning of the year and then “other.” Each night, you move items from EOW to EOD depending on what’s realistic based on your next day’s availability, and work on your tasks in priority order.
12. Timebox Your Work
Break larger projects into chunks, put them into your calendar and timebox the work so you don’t allow a project to take more time (or much more) than you have allotted. If you would have spent all the time you wanted to or felt that you should on projects, you would never complete anything!
13. Do The ‘Hardest’ Thing First Every Day
“Hard” is not necessarily related to a task’s level of difficulty—it’s often that thing we don’t like or want to do, that task or conversation that keeps moving from one to-do list to the next. When you tackle this task first, everything that follows feels like a gift, and your energy soars. You free up mental, emotional, and calendar space, too!
14. Using the Pomodoro Technique - A physical timer
My most productive work happens during 30-minute slots when you work on one task at hand with absolutely no multitasking - no phone, no email, no browsing, and no chitchat. It is surprising how much you can accomplish, even in 30 minutes, when you stay focused on the job. Track how many Pomodoro’s you do daily, which is a surrogate metric for productivity.
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