Time Management Tips to Help You Increase Your Productivity (Part I)

Success in almost everything requires time management. It seems there aren't enough hours in a day to accomplish all your tasks, but if you want to make more achievements than others in a shorter period of time, you need to improve your time management skills.

What is time management?

Time management refers to how you organize your time to do different activities. There are many different tools and techniques to help you get more done in less time. Good time management will make you feel productive and successful in all areas of your life.

Time management skills also include prioritizing what you have to do, setting a specific deadline for certain projects or items, mastering the use of effective techniques to manage your time skillfully, and organizing and coordinating your task schedules.

Why are time management skills important?

Time is one of your most valuable resources. It is ephemeral and irreplaceable; it cannot even be conserved, but it can be invested by shifting focus from low- to high-value activities. All tasks require time, and thinking about the importance of your time before it runs out will help you improve your time management skills and increase your productivity immediately.

Time management tips to help you effectively organize and manage your day:

1. Develop effective time management skills

These tips are the basics for developing the skills you need to make the most of your time. When you master these skills, you will be able to overcome, using your self-discipline, any bad habits you may have and become very skilled at managing your time effectively.

1.1. Planning in advance

One of the best ways to make sure you'll have a productive day is to write down a list of your goals and tasks the night before. Your ability to make good plans before you act is a measure of your overall efficiency, and the better you have a plan, the easier it will be for you to overcome procrastination and rush to get started and keep going.

By writing your goals before bedtime, you'll think about the things you need to do and prepare yourself mentally to do them to be ready for them before the next day even, and when you plan each day in advance, organize your priorities, and stick to your plan, you'll notice that your work is going smoothly and at an unprecedented speed.

You'll feel more powerful and efficient, get more done faster than you ever thought possible, and eventually, you'll be invincible.

1.2. Avoid wasting time

We often fall into the trap of letting distractions steal precious time we have to invest in more important tasks. For example, checking your email in the morning can often distract you and waste a lot of time. It starts with you just missing one email, so you end up wasting many hours of your day without doing anything.

Instead, start your day by doing your most important tasks, and set aside some time during the day to check your email.

Social media and notifications can take up a lot of your working hours. So keep your phone out of sight or turn it off to avoid distractions. After work is done for the day, you can check social media.

1.3. Do similar tasks together

When creating your daily to-do list, group similar tasks together, then start doing them at the same time. This technique is called task batching.

To practice time management, set aside time in your day to do related tasks together, such as scheduling meetings, making phone calls, checking emails, checking work-related websites or other sites, and completing projects, other activities, or other work-related tasks.

Also, remember when doing this that the "learning curve" applies to everything you do. This means that when you start something new, it can take a while to learn how to do it, but as you consistently do it, the learning curve straightens out and the time required to complete each task decreases by up to 80% by the time you complete the fifth similar task.

1.4. Focus on one task

Focus on doing one task whenever possible. Multitasking prevents us from doing our most productive work. We can only handle a few tasks before we get tired since it diverts our attention.

Stay focused on the task at hand until you finish it, and you'll be surprised how much time you'll waste if you start working on a task sporadically.

1.5. Set an early delivery date

Speed is the most important measure of time, and the most important advantage you can develop in terms of time management is a "sense of urgency." So make your delivery date a day or more in advance in your calendar; this can only reduce your constant stress of time constraints and also make you urgent, thereby increasing your productivity.

A sense of urgency helps you seize opportunities. So working with enthusiasm and speed is essential to success, and successful people not only work hard but also learn quickly.

By giving yourself an early deadline, you will challenge yourself to beat procrastination as well as get extra time, which will improve the quality of your work.

2. Deal with the most important tasks first

One of the most effective time management tips is to start your day by doing the most important tasks first. You'll be surprised at how much time you'll save by doing the most important things first.

Use one of the following time management techniques to increase your productivity:

2.1. Eat the Frog

Mark Twain once remarked, “Eat a living frog at the beginning of every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.” The most crucial daily tasks that you can put off until you start working on them right away are what is meant by "frog" in this context.

If you have two urgent tasks, start with the hardest and most important task first, and train yourself to start working immediately and continue to complete the task before moving on to something else.

2.2. Apply the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle states that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. So make sure that your most important tasks are included in the 20% of your work that will have a significant impact on reaching the goals you set.

2.3. Divide tasks by priority

Dividing tasks into priority groups is an effective prioritization technique that you can use daily. The effectiveness of this technique lies in its simplicity because it is action-oriented. Here is the mechanism of its work: Start by writing a list of all tasks for the next day, and after doing so, assign some time to organize these tasks according to their priority:

• Group A: Includes the most important tasks you need to get done before the day is over.
• Group B: Includes tasks that will have no consequence, whether you finish them or not.
• Group C: Includes tasks that have no consequences if you don't do them.
• Group D: Includes tasks that you can delegate to someone else so that you can accomplish Group A tasks.
• Group E: Includes tasks that you should eliminate from your to-do list.

The essential factor in applying this method is to train yourself to begin the tasks of group A, so use your willpower to move forward until the completion of your most important and necessary tasks.

In Conclusion:

We often face some difficulties on our way to achieving our goals, and effective time management is the key to success. But if you want to achieve more than others in a shorter period of time, you need to improve your time management skills.

In this post, we mentioned two-time management tips that help you increase your productivity, along with some examples and methods of application. In the second and final part, we will discuss additional tips, so be sure to check back.