Simple Time Management Tips That Work

In this post, you’ll find tips and insights to look at time management from multiple perspectives. First, we will go over questions and considerations. We will then go over some powerful but simple time management strategies. Finally, at the end of the post, you’ll find some resources to help you manage your time more effectively.

Let’s get started

Why Time Management Is Important:

Time management is a very important part of your personal and professional life. Every day, we all have 24 hours, and that doesn’t change. The factor that varies is you. Time is one of the few things everyone in the world has an equal share of.

A common question is: why is time management so important? Once you use your time, that time is spent. There’s nothing in the world that can give it back.

Many of us watch our money closely. We know that once we run out, we have problems, so we stay focused on our income and how we spend it. We’re not nearly as focused on the time we spend. Below are a few reasons why.

Time is given to us freely. You don’t have to work for it, and when you get something free, it’s easy to take for granted.
You can’t work harder or smarter to acquire more time, so people aren’t focused on it.
Because you get the same amount of time every day, you expect it, you know it’s coming and you don’t worry about it.

Time Awareness:

When you focus on time, you begin to change. Let’s look at a few of the issues you may experience.

You start to appreciate the time you have.
You’ll stop wasting your time.
You’ll start to question yourself, for example, is this the best use of my time.
You’ll get more things completed in less time.

Time Considerations:

Let’s look at an eye-opening exercise.

Suppose you were told you will live to be 100. What would you do with the years ahead?

Now imagine the opposite: you’re told you have 90 days left. Would you manage every minute differently? Wouldn’t you think twice before doing anything that wasn’t a good use of it?

It helps to become aware of how much you waste, and to use what you have more wisely.

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Is Time Management a Skill?

Time management is a skill. It’s a skill you will want to develop and use daily. A big change can come from a few simple steps to manage the use of your time.

Self-motivated people work on many skills to make their lives productive, easy to manage and to achieve the success they are looking for. Time management should be at the top of the list because you will need to manage your time to do well and achieve the success you’re looking for.

A skill is something you can learn. Time management is no exception, and it’s one skill you will want to practice and use every day.

What Is a Waste of Time?

Let’s look at what counts as wasting time. Would you consider the following activities a waste?

Watching TV
Spending time going out with friends
Laying in the sun
Spending a day relaxing and doing nothing

You could answer either way. None of the above have to be a waste — relaxing and spending time with friends and family matters.

A better definition: wasted time is time spent on something you don’t want to do, without getting any real benefit from it. For example, most people would rather not go to work. But because their income depends on it, they go anyway — and they benefit from doing it, even though they didn’t want to.

A simple way to tell is by how you feel afterward. If you enjoyed the activity, it likely wasn’t wasted, even if it wasn’t “productive” in the usual sense. If you feel drained or guilty afterward, that’s worth a closer look — but guilt alone doesn’t mean the time was wasted.

Your time is yours. It’s up to you to decide how you spend it.

Time Management Strategies:

In this section, we’ll go over simple and condensed tips, insights, and strategies you can use to significantly improve how you manage your time. Let’s have a look at each.

Using The Time Management Matrix

You can save time and manage it more effectively by using the Time Management Matrix. The technique is commonly traced to a principle used by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th U.S. President, and was later popularized by Stephen Covey in his 1989 book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” This technique allows you to categorize your tasks according to their importance and relationship to your overall goals. It helps by doing more of what’s important and less of what isn’t. See our article The Time Management Matrix for more information on this technique.

Scheduling Your Time:

How you schedule your time will make an impact on your productivity. When you schedule your day, you set a target, and that’s a good way to get everything finished.

Scheduling can be done in a variety of ways. You can keep a simple to-do list, or use a detailed schedule that sends notifications from your smartphone.

Let’s look at a simple time management strategy:

Every day you have 24 hours. Start subtracting the time most people use daily. You need about 8 hours to sleep, which leaves 16. Take out 9 hours for work, including your commute, and that leaves 7 hours a day for family, leisure, and everything else.

From this point of view, there’s a lot of time to work with each day. But if you look closely, there are gaps and plenty of room for improvement. The example above breaks your day down by hours. If you schedule by the minute instead, you have far more room to fit in small tasks, and adding time estimates for each one allows for better planning.

For example:

9:00 am – 9:05 am – Check email.
9:10 am – 9:25 am – Run the numbers report, analyze and email operations.
9:30 am – 9:45 am – Attend daily operation meeting.
9:50 am – 10:00 am – Update budget entries.

Scheduling by the minute this way makes it possible to fit many small tasks into a single hour. Each task has a start and end time, with 5 minutes built in between in case something runs long.

When you schedule your day by minutes, you can fit in more small tasks and stay on track, because everything is laid out in small, achievable steps.

Depending on your schedule, you’ll benefit from preparing in advance and adjusting as needed. If your schedule changes daily, update it each day. If it stays consistent, build a template you can run through like a checklist.

Time Blocking Method:

Time blocking is another method of scheduling your time. Instead of using the method above, you split your day into blocks. Each block is used to complete specific tasks.

When scheduling, consider the times you are most productive. Match the most important tasks when you operate at your peak performance. Schedule the less important tasks when you’re not as productive.

Let’s look deeper into your patterns of productivity next.

Learn Your Patterns of Productivity:

Two things shape your productivity: when you work, and how you work. Let’s break down each one:

Peak Timing:

The time of day when we’re most productive varies by person.

For example, some people are sharpest in the morning, some in the evening, and others fall somewhere in between. It helps to understand your own peak performance window so you can tackle your most important tasks during that period.

Will you always handle your most important tasks at your peak time? Probably not — things come up, and you’ll get interrupted. Still, once you understand your most productive hours, you can schedule your important tasks around them.

Let’s look at an example:

Suppose one of your most important tasks is writing content for your newsletter. You’ve identified your peak time as 7:00 am to 10:00 am. Going forward, you create your newsletter content during that window. The quality of your writing and the speed at which you finish it both improve, because you’re working on it when you’re at your best.

How You Process Tasks:

Some people work best when focused on one task at a time. Others need to switch back and forth, or juggle a few things at once, to stay engaged.

Is it better to work on one task at a time or several at once? There’s no single right answer — only what works best for you. Worth knowing: the American Psychological Association reported in 2006 that switching between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of a person’s productive time, so even people who feel energized by juggling tasks are paying some cost for it.

If you’re better at focusing on one task at a time, you’ll likely be less productive when handed multiple things at once. If you’re a natural multitasker, sticking to a single task for too long may leave you bored and less productive.

Understand how you operate best, and schedule your time around your own productivity patterns.

Split Large Projects Into Smaller Pieces:

Large projects can take up most of your time. Especially if you’re the type of person that works on one task at a time. If you focus on one project, it’s difficult to get to other work because your effort is going into this project.

One way to get around this is to split your project into smaller tasks to complete in one session. If you can’t finish the split task in one session, you can split it up again using markers. Then, just set up a simple document that allows you to continue where you left off.

Avoid Distractions:

Distractions are one of the key things that reduce productivity and eat into the time you have each day. A few of the most common distractions include:

Texting
Gossip
Social Media
Personal Email
Chatting with Coworkers
Extended breaks

When you’re on a tight schedule, distractions can easily throw you off track, so avoid them as much as possible. Research backs this up: UC Irvine researcher Gloria Mark’s studies of workplace interruptions, dating back to 2008, found it takes roughly 23 minutes to fully return to a task after being interrupted. A single distraction costs more than it looks like in the moment.

One key to avoiding distractions is to change how you think about them. Recognize them as something that holds you back and steals time away from you.

Be Aware of the Time You’re Spending:

Often you get so involved in a task that you forget how long you’ve been working on it. Sometimes it’s a good thing, like when you’re in the zone.

One way around this is to set a timer for the task you’re working on using your smartphone. Before you start a new task, set a timer for a reminder that you need to move on to the next task.

This way, you’ll get a gentle reminder when time is up; you don’t have to worry about how long you’ve been working. Instead, let your phone do all the work for you.

Learn To Say “No” More Often:

On days when people keep asking you to do things for them, don’t you feel like you haven’t accomplished anything for yourself?

Doing other people’s tasks takes a lot away from your own work. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be helpful — but if the requests are constant, you can politely say, “I don’t have the time. My schedule is full today.” Say it enough times, and people will get the hint and think twice before asking again.

If you let people depend on you for everything, it becomes harder to finish your own work, because you’re spending your time on theirs. Part of the fix is simply saying “no” more often.

Avoid Office Gossip:

When coworkers gossip, it can take a lot of time away from the tasks you’re working on. Sessions can go on for hours. It’s a time stealer, and nothing good tends to come out of it.

When you sense a gossip session starting, you can avoid it by staying focused on your work. Skip enough of these sessions, and people will stop including you in the next ones. You’re probably better off.

Set Priorities

Setting priorities is an excellent way to get organized. When you set your priorities ahead of time, you organize your tasks on a conscious and subconscious level.

Have you ever noticed that when you make a to-do list, and everything is written down clearly, you usually always get your list completed? When you plan and organize ahead of time, you find ways to get things done.

Whether setting priorities daily or weekly, it’s an important part of time management, ensuring your most important tasks are completed first.

Priorities are not set in stone. You can change them as needed. Whether you’re using a time management app or a spreadsheet, you can sort your items on your list of things to do by priority. When you add or delete an item, the list is updated according to priority.

Delegate Tasks

You have to do many things during your day, and sometimes you can’t get to all of them. What you can do is delegate tasks. When you can delegate, you free up more time for the important issues only you can handle.

Delegation pays off in measurable ways. Gallup’s 2015 research on Inc. 500 CEOs found that leaders with strong delegation skills generated 33 percent more revenue than those who delegated poorly. Becoming good at delegation is a skill worth building and using as much as possible.

It’s important to only delegate tasks to people who are competent to handle them. Don’t hand off work to someone who isn’t qualified for it. The goal is to manage your time without compromising the quality of the outcome.

Take Regular Breaks

Taking regular breaks can help you get more work done because you are re-energizing. Have you ever noticed when working on a problem, sometimes after a break, you find a solution that comes to you? It’s because your mind is always working. When you take a break, your mind is processing a solution in the background.

Sometimes people will skip a break when they’re behind to get more done, but you’re struggling when you don’t take that break, and you need that little time away.

Imagine working in an intense labor position. Would you be able to keep working for eight hours nonstop without a break? You would probably pass out, so just as it is important to give your physical body a break, it’s important to take a mental break as well.

Organize Your Work Area

You could waste countless hours every day if you needed to search for every little thing. Suppose your work area isn’t organized and your desk is piled up with paperwork, and you have clutter over clutter. In that case, your productivity will diminish, and your frustration will rise. This is the same for your computer. If your files are all on your desktop, you’ll have difficulty locating the files you need.

An organized workspace saves hours because you know where everything is. In addition, you can get what you need and put things away in a matter of seconds compared to having no organizational system in place.

Organizing your workspace is a simple task. Once you have a system, then it’s a matter of creating a habit to put things away in their proper place and make adjustments as needed.

Set Your Focus on the Task at Hand

When you are focused, the quality and speed of your work improve, compared to thinking of other things while working.

Before starting on any task, make it a point to forget about everything else and focus only on the job at hand. It may feel weird because you’re not used to doing this. Make it a habit, and soon you won’t have to think about it, and it will come naturally.

Conclusion:

We have reached the end of this post. Takeaways include how time is valuable because you can’t acquire more; you can only spend it wisely. You can’t control time; you can control how you use it! So, the choice is yours. You can practice time management to get the most out of your time!

For a quick summary, action steps, and answers to common questions, keep reading below.

Key Points and Facts About Time Management

Why Time Matters

Everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, and once time is spent, it can’t be recovered.
Most people track their money closely but pay far less attention to how they spend their time.
Time awareness — noticing how you use your time — is the first step toward managing it better.

What the Research Shows

The Time Management Matrix, tracing back to Dwight D. Eisenhower and popularized by Stephen Covey in his 1989 book, helps you sort tasks by importance and urgency.
Switching between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of your productive time (American Psychological Association, 2006).
A single interruption can take roughly 23 minutes to fully recover from (Gloria Mark, UC Irvine, 2008).
Leaders who delegate effectively generate about 33 percent more revenue than those who don’t (Gallup, 2015).

Action Steps for Time Management

Schedule Your Day

Block out your day by the hour or by the minute, including time for breaks.
Use a to-do list or a scheduling app that sends reminders.

Work With Your Energy, Not Against It

Identify your peak productivity hours and protect them for your most important tasks.
Match easier or routine tasks to your lower-energy periods.

Cut Down on Distractions

Turn off notifications during focused work blocks.
Set a timer for tasks so you know when to move on.

Protect Your Time From Others

Practice saying no to requests that don’t fit your priorities.
Delegate tasks you don’t need to do yourself to someone qualified to handle them.

Break Down Big Projects

Split large projects into smaller tasks you can finish in one sitting.
Use markers or notes so you can pick up where you left off.

Checklist for Time Management

Plan your day
- Write a schedule or to-do list before you start work.
Identify your peak hours
- Note when you feel sharpest and schedule important tasks then.
Limit distractions
- Silence notifications and set timers for focused work.
Say no when needed
- Turn down requests that don’t fit your priorities.
Delegate what you can
- Hand off tasks to someone qualified, and free up time for what only you can do.
Take breaks
- Step away regularly to recharge and let your mind process problems.
Review and adjust
- Update your schedule daily, or build a template if your days are similar.

FAQ: Time Management

Why is time management important?

Because time, unlike money, can’t be earned back once it’s spent. Managing it well means getting more out of the hours you have.

What is the Time Management Matrix?

A tool that helps you sort tasks by importance and urgency, tracing back to Dwight D. Eisenhower and popularized by Stephen Covey in his 1989 book.

Is multitasking bad for productivity?

Switching between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of your productive time, according to 2006 APA research, so single-tasking is usually more efficient — though it depends on the type of person you are.

How long does it take to recover from an interruption?

Roughly 23 minutes on average, based on 2008 research from Gloria Mark at UC Irvine.

Does delegating tasks actually help productivity?

Yes. Gallup’s 2015 research on Inc. 500 CEOs found that leaders with strong delegation skills generated about 33 percent more revenue than those who delegated poorly.

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