Time management hacks to improve your productivity

The overall experience of working daily and generating ideas can sometimes lead to a state of burnout, as we mentioned in a previous blog (click here to read). Time-consuming activities can make a shift more productive or, on the contrary, a more demanding process to finish.?

We all know the usual feeling of waking motivated in the morning with an attitude of world-conquering and then life happens, and you find yourself involved in a series of unfortunate events that backtracks you from your initial plans.

Effective time management is a skill that many people need a little help building, and it's something most people find difficulties with before achieving a successful organizing process.

1. Identify your current workflow and possible reasons that may be influencing meeting your final results

To optimize your time management, you first need to figure out where the time is going. Try diligently logging your time for a week by tracking your daily activities at work and identifying your regular tendencies to approach the tasks that you have to finish.?

Evaluate how realistically you estimate your time. At the end of your audit, compare how much time certain tasks or projects took you to finish versus how long you expected them to take. We often overestimate how quickly can complete things.

2. Create a daily schedule to walk you through?

Multitasking has become a very popular approach in workspaces, and we mostly see it as a requested skill when seeking job opportunities.?

Setting a to-do list to walk you through your regular assignments is very efficient and easy to implement when you try to have more control over your performance productivity.?

A nice hack to improve your scheduling process is to check your to-do list at the end of every shift, this can give you a heads-up in case you missed any important detail so you can follow up the next day.

3. Prioritize wisely

?As you manage your to-do list, prioritization is key for successful time management at work. Start by eliminating tasks that you shouldn’t be performing in the first place. Then identify the three or four most important tasks and do those first, that way you will make sure you finish the essentials.

4. Support yourself with convenient tools

If you think control over the time you spend on every task is something you may have problems with, try supporting yourself with tools on your reach.?

There may be many tools for paid available, however, you go for more affordable and even free options such as the task option on your regular Gmail, this one will allow you to set reminders and schedule time frames while you can also customize notifications for each of your tasks to keep track of them.??

5. Eliminate distractions?

Social media, web browsing, text messages, and distractions at work can be limitless. A key to personal time management is being proactive about limiting their use.

At the end of the day, no “pro-tip” or calendar tool will magically make your time management woes disappear if you don’t have a foundation of good time management skills.?

We would like to close this entry with The Harvard Business Review's three primary skills that separate time management success from failure:

• Awareness: thinking realistically about your time by understanding it is a limited resource.
• Arrangement: organizing goals, plans, schedules, and tasks to most effectively use your time.
• Adaptation: regularly monitoring how you use your time while performing activities, including adjusting to interruptions or changing priorities.
• Use the tips above to help you develop these skills and create effective time management habits that stick.