Looking to make a change in how you manage your life? Here’s our guide to time management.
By: Lara Reden
Life is often messy and making the most of the time you have each day can be a challenge. By learning how to manage your time, you can take control personally and professionally to achieve your goals. Let’s discuss time management techniques, the benefits of managing your time, and some tips to manage your time more efficiently.
What is time management?
You can only accomplish so much in a day, so how do you determine what to spend your time on? You can take control of the length of time spent on each activity by creating some sort of schedule.
The time management process involves analyzing what you need and want to do, prioritizing each aspect, and planning how to approach each item. This process is often associated with efficacy and productivity at work. These skills can be transferable to your personal life, too.
Time management techniques
Effective time management is somewhat dependent on how you like to work and the type of work you’re trying to manage. It’s good to keep in mind that you will likely have to try multiple methods to find one that works for you. Here are some of our favorite methods for time management:
The 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle)
Vilfredo Pareto claimed that 20% of our actions lead to 80% of results, which led to the 80/20 Rule. First, list the challenges you’d like to solve. Identify what’s causing each obstacle and create a measuring system. Give more weight to more immediate challenges by giving them a higher score. From there, categorize listed items by cause and see which category needs to be addressed first by adding up the scores of each associated problem. Then, you’re ready to take action.
The Pomodoro Technique
With the Pomodoro technique, you can break tasks into more manageable time blocks. Choose an item on your list, set a timer, and focus solely on that task until the timer runs out. When the timer goes off, take a short break. Repeat this process until you’ve accomplished the task.
The Eisenhower Matrix
Start using the Eisenhower matrix by creating a matrix with four quadrants. Label the matrix important, unimportant, urgent, and not urgent. If the task falls into the quadrant intersecting important and urgent, do it as soon as possible. If it’s important but not urgent, you can decide to do it when you have space in your schedule. Tasks that aren’t important but have a sense of urgency, delegate. Shift your focus away from anything that’s neither important nor urgent.
Getting Things Done Method (GTD Method)
By writing tasks down and breaking them into action items, you’re using the GTD method. Start by creating a list of tasks then decide which tasks are actionable and prioritize these items. Review your list regularly, cross off your accomplishments, and reassess priorities to decide what’s next. Add more tasks as necessary and keep in mind that you may need to reassess tasks daily.
