Introduction
How often do you come across this overwhelming feeling of when can I finish my work or keep staring at an endless to-do list or get tensed over missed deadlines? How often do you curse yourself for not being able to balance work and personal life? To be honest, according to a recent study by Linkedin, about 70-80% of the people struggle with this time management.
From a student juggling between assignments, a professional getting sucked in meeting after meetings or a CEO getting stuck between growing a business and managing personal commitment, if time is not managed efficiently, it leads to stress, burnout and sometimes also missed opportunities.
Effective time management is one the key skillset or a trait a person should develop right from the school. It helps one to prioritise tasks, reduce procrastination and achieve more in less time. Efficient time management skills help boost confidence, reduce false stress and create an environment and space for what truly matters, be it career growth, personal development or spending quality time with one’s family and friends.
In this blog, we aim at exploring and discussing about:
- What exactly is time management?
- What are some of the proven time management strategies?
- How can you build your own time management system?
- What core time management skills one needs to develop?
- Some tools that can help you in time management
What is time management?
Time management is the process/skill of organizing, controlling and planning how to allocate your time between tasks, activities and responsibilities with the intention of maximizing productivity and efficiency. It is a skill that is intended to minimize wasted effort that helps an individual achieve more in less time. It helps in gaining control over your day’s schedule and strike a balance between time spent and work done. At a high level, it focuses on:
- Setting priorities
- Avoiding distractions
- Using productivity techniques
The effects of poor time management
Poor time management leads to stress, burn out and also sometimes missed opportunities. Some of the commonly found effects include:
- Increased Stress and Anxiety – Last minute rushes, unfinished tasks can create unnecessary pressure leading to burnout
- Drop in Productivity – Time getting wasted on tasks which are not important where efficiency and output is lost
- Reduced Quality of work – Rushed work because of not scheduling your work may result in errors and below par performance
- Issues with Health and Relationships – Chronic stress from poor time management can lead to fatigue, overthinking and health problems and constant running late or moving plans may upset relationship with important people
- Missed Opportunities – Missed deadlines may hamper your promotions and commitments with other people
How effective time management transforms your life?
Effective time management lets individuals take control of their life. It helps in reducing stress, improving focus and productivity and all this while enjoying life. Effective time management:
- Helps individual’s efficiency
- Reduces stress and helps them in meeting deadlines with confidence
- Strikes balance between passion, relationships and work
- Eliminates distraction and staying on track with increased focus
- Brings success by achieving their goals faster with structured planning
Core Time Management Skills Every Professional Should Master
One should understand what time management is all about and what are the skills that can help them manage their time better. It helps an individual at various levels. Some of the crucial time management skills include:
Prioritization
- What? – The act of arranging the tasks/activities in order of urgency/importance or impact it would generate
- How? – Evaluate the tasks/activities against deadlines, impact or even goals and order them accordingly
- Benefits – Focus and finishing of high value work first and maximising efficiency
- Tips – Use techniques like MOSCOW, Value vs risk matrix, WSJF
Planning
- What? – The act of setting goals, defining tasks, and allocating time to achieve it
- How? – Break the goals into doable smaller tasks and allocating time and resources to achieve the goal
- Benefits – It provides structure to work by providing clarity, reducing uncertainty and helps visualise potential obstacles early
- Tips – Use To-Do lists, Kanban boards to visualise, agile sprints
Goal Setting
- What? – Process of defining specific achievable targets / direction
- How? – Set goals which can be measured , specific, achievable and time bound
- Benefits – It provides direction to a person and helps them stay focussed and motivated
- Tips – Use techniques like elevator pitch, SMART framework
Delegation
- What? – Is the act of assigning another person for a specific task to accomplish a shared goal
- How? – Simply identify tasks which can be performed by others and clearly communicate the What, Why and When part of the task
- Benefits – It frees up time and focus of an individual for tasks/activities of higher growth and importance and develops other team members as well
- Tips – Understand which work can be done by others, choose the right person, enable them with decision making and autonomy to finish the work
Learning to Say “No”
- What? – Setting boundaries and politely declining requests or commitments that do not align with your priority, bandwidth or goals
- How? – Politely Say “No” with adequate explanation and proposing a different way to handle the situation
- Benefits – Ensures no one bosses you, protects your time and energy and burnout
- Tips – Practice assertiveness, Start saying “No” politely with reasonable explanation
Building Your Personal Time Management System
Now that we have understood what effective time management is and the core skills to develop as part of it, let’s also look at how you can develop your system and create an environment for your own system:
- Prepare a schedule and follow it strictly – This involves creating a timetable for your day, week or month and then following it based on priority. It ensures dedicated time slots for tasks and helps in reducing procrastination. Example: I want to read all my mails and reply to them before 10:30 am everyday and also finish ordering daily groceries before 11 am
- Set some boundaries for yourself – Define and understand limits of what you will or won’t do. It helps in preventing overcommitment and burnout. Example: I will not take any work calls after 7Pm
- Fix deadlines – Set clear target time and dates for task completion. It creates positive tension and sense of urgency Example: I will write 3 blogs by Friday for the marketing teams
- Manage your calendar effectively – Block your lunch breaks, coffee breaks, personal appointments and also focus time. It helps others to ensure you are not over blocked. Example: Everyday from 2-3 Pm is my focus time for sleep
- Prioritize your assignments – Set the order of work completion based on importance, urgency or impact it creates. This helps in finishing work which truly matters. Example: I will create the proposal for a new client by 3pm today
Advanced Time Management Strategies
When it comes to time management skills and time management strategies, there are a few things which can directly affect or improve your level of maturity. But there are also certain traits or skills that impact indirectly to it. Let’s understand them in detail:
Stress Management
Effective stress management helps in avoiding burnout and mental stress. When you are less stressed, you think more clearly, make better decisions and feel less overwhelmed by your tasks. This allows you to be more focussed and make full use of your time.
Flexibility and Adaptability
In today’s VUCA world, uncertainty and changes are inevitable. One must be flexible and adapt in time management as well. That is, you must be able to make changes to your plan or schedule and priorities without making it a concrete plan. You must pivot based on changes so that urgent changes with high value can be finished at the earliest.
Communication
One of the biggest aspects that could hinder time management skills is misunderstanding, misconceptions and rework. You can clearly and concisely set expectations, deadlines and progress to avoid any confusions which may result in over heads and delays and follow ups. The idea is to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Balancing long- and short-term goals
If you just concentrate on immediate goals and plan your day, there could always come a point where you are not dedicating enough time which could become valuable later. You need to ensure time which is being allocated must also drive your significant lasting future goals as well.
Time Management Tools
Time Management tools help individuals by making it easy to plan, prioritise, track, and visualise how you use your time. One should leverage these tools to effectively implement the time management strategies. Below is a table of what tools you can use for what purpose
| Tool and Features Name | Purpose |
| Todoist, Notion | Organizing your work and de clutter tasks and to have clarity |
| Label, Sort or filter (Most apps) | Prioritization |
| Calendars | Scheduling and reminders |
| Clockify , RescueTime | Time tracking and reporting |
| Trello, Asana, Jira, Azure DevOps | Team collaboration |
| Forest | Focus and Priority (POMODORO) |
| Habitica | Building habits |
How To Improve Your Time Management Skills?
Self-assessment of current habits
First start with analyzing how you work, where do you spend time, where are the delays, and understanding your peak productivity hours. Next is to identify inefficiencies and understand the specific areas where improvements are most needed.
Implementing tailored techniques
Next is to understand strategies and techniques which are available to help improve time management. Understand each framework and choose the right fit for you. Some of the techniques include,
- POMODORO – This technique uses a timer to break a work day into 25 minutes focussed intervals called Pomodoros. These are separated by short breaks. After 4 such cycles a longer break is taken. This technique helps in preventing burnout and increases focus
- Eat the Frog – Involved identifying your most challenging and important work for the day called the frog and completing it first thing in the morning.This technique helps overcome procrastination
- Rapid Planning Method (RPM) – Focussed on Results, Purpose and Massive action plan. It shifts focus from just tasks to clearly defining the desired outcomes and the “why” part behind it
Tracking progress and making adjustments
Next is to monitor how well your new techniques are working and helping you. By regularly evaluating their effectiveness you can know what is working and what is not, where you need to change or improve and make appropriate adjustments.
Building sustainable time management habits
Time management is not a skillset which you will develop overnight or by just following. You need to ensure that it becomes a habit over just following it for sometime and then slipping back to a stressful situation. For this you need to build your time management systems so that you can repeat, and that becomes your routine without even having to think about it.
Conclusion
Time management is not just a productivity hack. It is a life changing skill/trait which needs dedication and effort. By understanding its importance and consequences of poor time management, one can take control of your schedule, reduce burnout and stress and unlock one’s true potential. From getting control on core skills like prioritization, delegation and even changing the mindset a little so as to be able to say “NO” one can easily move away from sentences like “I don’t know what to do?”, “I am confused”, “Let me do it later” to sentences like “I am satisfied with the outcome I planned for today”, “I have moved closer to my goals”.
Effective time management is not just about doing a lot in less time. It is about doing what truly matters. There are tons of tools and strategies that help people in improving their time management skills. One should be able to assess their current status, implement and pick the right technique and tools, and track your progress to build a sustainable routine.
With this, our blog on “Master Your Time: Essential Time Management Skills for Peak Productivity” comes to an end. We sincerely hope our readers have found it useful. We would be glad to discuss your unique agility adoption bottlenecks at Benzne Agile Transformation consulting and support your agile journey. Please write to us at consult@benzne.com for any suggestions or feedback.
FAQs about Effective Time Management:
1. Why are time management skills important in the workplace?
Time management skills are particularly helpful in any workspace. It helps individuals and teams to,
- Helps employees achieve more in less time and improving overall outcome
- Proper planning helps in avoiding last minute rushes and missed deadlines
- Meeting deadlines consistently builds trust and increases career growth opportunities
- Reduces symptoms like overtime hours working, giving more personal time and higher job satisfaction
2. How can I manage my time better with a busy schedule?
Busy Schedule is a symptom of lack of prioritization and a few more effects of poor time management. Below are a few points on how you can manage it better:
- Prioritize work for the day, week or the month
- Schedule your day till the end of the day for the work you have planned
- Batch similar work together
- Use Pomodoro or other techniques to work with focus
- Learn to say “No” and learn other delegation techniques
3. Are time management and productivity the same thing?
No, time management and productivity are not the same thing. But they are interrelated. Time management enables better productivity.
- Time management refers to the process of how you plan to utilize your time by scheduling, prioritizing task etc
- While Productivity is about output or results you achieve from the time you have invested
4. What is the best time management technique for beginners?
One of the simplest and most used time management techniques for beginners is POMODORO technique. This technique uses a timer to break a work day into 25 minute focussed intervals called Pomodoros. These are separated by short breaks. After 4 such cycles a longer break is taken. This technique helps in preventing burnout and increases focus.
