Tips for effective time management and productivity

We are bombarded by incessant notifications, text messages, emails, phone calls, social media, and myriad hundreds of other things daily. Distractions come at us from every direction, and juggling many balls at once is the norm. It’s also the enemy of progress. Success in the workplace, and your personal life, is about learning which distractions to ignore, which to prioritise, and how to work smarter, not harder, or even longer. Below, we share nine top tips for effective time management and productivity.

Understanding time management

Time management is understood as the way you coordinate your tasks and activities to maximise, organise, divide, and control your time spent between different activities. It’s arranging your time in a way that ensures you’re channelling your time intentionally and ensuring the effectiveness of all your efforts.? Time management is the ability to get more work completed in less time.

The advantages of good time management

The truth is many of us struggle to assign adequate time to our tasks on any given day. But it’s very important if we want to be successful. Some benefits of good time management are:

• It allows you to not just focus on the tasks at hand but tick off your to-do list in a shorter period
• Reduces stress levels and can catapult your career progression
• Effective time management boosts your productivity and increases your efficiency
• Less time spent on trivial tasks means more time to dedicate to worthwhile opportunities
• You are positioned to reach your goals and objectives in a shorter length of time
• Tips and strategies for effective time management and productivity

Top 9 tips for effective time management and productivity

With an understanding of time management in mind and its benefits, you also need tips on how to effectively manage your time and increase your productivity. Here are a few tools to help you achieve success.

1. Start early

The early bird catches the worm, right? It can be helpful to get a head start on your day by waking up earlier each day. In the morning, when the world is still asleep, you can start some of your impending tasks without the noise and distractions demanding your attention. You are also clear-headed, can plan the day ahead better, and feel less overwhelmed with everything you need to do.

2. Prioritise your tasks

Not all tasks, even those that are seemingly important, are created equal. In pursuing effective time management, you need to know what tasks you have on your plate and their level of importance. At the end of each workday or the beginning of the next, list what you have lying ahead, and rank them on their degree of urgency. The Pareto Principle says that you can benefit from directing all your energy into one task than working on five different tasks at the same time. This means putting 20% of your effort in one direction, and you’ll achieve 80% of your desired results.

3. Get organised

Someone once said, “An organised space promotes an organised mind.” And another, much like it, “If you don’t use it, clutter it.”? And it's true. You don’t have to be a Marie Kondo, but there’s something to be said about the clarity that comes with being organised. Try and create some semblance of order in your day. Create a routine, clear your workstation (at home or at the office), and, as old-school as it sounds, note things down in a planner with dates, times, and locations so that you aren’t operating in a frenzied state.

4. Go digital

Digital help doesn’t mean spending all day on your phone. Instead, this is you doing a time audit to identify where your time is spent. Technology allows you to take advantage of the numerous tools online to help you keep track of how you manage your time. These time management apps are designed to help you assess how much time you spend on different projects and activities, and with a report they generate, inform you of where you spend and waste your time. With this information in hand, you know if you need to allocate more or less time to certain activities, which areas need attention, and more.

5. Remove distractions

How much time do you spend attending to the ‘beep beep’ of incoming messages, notifications and the temptation to scroll on your phone reading the latest news, chatting with friends, or seeing what people are up to on social apps? For most of us, far more than we’d like to admit if we’re being honest.

You can use apps that limit your phone and app usage during work hours, use headphones if you work in a noisy office space, or, if you can, book time in a meeting room to avoid interruptions and other distractions.

6. Have unstructured time

Allocate two to four hours every week that is unstructured. This means you don’t have an activity, task, project, or assignment you have to attend to. During this time, you are free to explore or just sit and think. Our diaries are chock-a-block of things to do and very little, if any, time to just sit and be still. At first glance, this may seem like a waste of time, or you know just what you could do with that extra two hours. But constantly being “on” means you max out your brain’s bandwidth and leave no room to evaluate your goals, vision, be creative and be with yourself.

7. Take a break

This may seem counterintuitive, but there’s a trick to it. Working without taking regular breaks puts you at risk of burnout, rushing through projects, and producing lower-quality work. This may lead to you spending additional time reworking the tasks and making revisions. When you take a break and are less tired, you are refreshed, leaving you more focused on the assignment at hand.

The Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, is a popular time management method used by students, professionals, procrastinators, and anyone needing help getting things done. He suggests breaking up your workday into 25-minute focused intervals followed by 5-minute breaks.

• Choose your task.
• Set a time for 25 minutes.
• Take a 5-minute break.
• Repeat the steps four times.
• Take a longer break between 15-30 minutes.

8. Learn to say “no”

And probably the hardest one of all for most people is learning how to say “no”. We often have the misconception that because it’s a work-related request, we are obliged to say “yes”. This is not only impractical, but it shows inefficiency. You must be clear about your role, responsibilities, and priorities. And then clearly communicate your real and valid reason for saying “no”. When you do, you gain confidence and won’t add more to your plate than you can manage.

9. Get help

Here’s something else we don’t like to admit to ourselves and others. We try, but we can’t do it all. Or, at the very least, do it all well. If we want to advance professionally and achieve some work-life balance, we must learn to recognise that we may need help in some areas and ask for it. At work, this involves you delegating some of your tasks to a junior member of your team. At home, this can look like calling in your support network to help you with different tasks. Additionally, Alison has several online courses you can enrol in that will equip you with the skills you need to master your time management and productivity:

• Time Management Mastery
• How to Manage Your Time
• Peak Productivity Hacks
• Maximising Personal Productivity
• Diary Management: Guide to Effectively Managing Your Time
• Productivity in the Workplace
• How to Stay Productive at Work

A better, more productive you is waiting on the other side of time management. Take back your day and control and get the most out of your every day with these tips. If you do these well and consistently, you’ll develop the skills to create effective time management habits and boost your productivity.