6 STRATEGIES TO BETTER MANAGE YOUR TIME
Spencer • June 14, 2024 • 5 mins read
Time management is the process of consciously planning and controlling time spent on specific tasks to increase how efficient you are. You may be familiar with setting deadlines, writing to-do lists, and giving yourself small rewards for accomplishing certain activities.
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Motivating ourselves is a core part of time management—and it takes a bit of effort not only to motivate yourself but to cultivate good habits to work and live more efficiently.
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To develop good routines and habits, you can start by knowing what strategies and best practices are out there. You can experiment with them in your own life to see what works for you.
Benefits of time management
Good time management can lead to a healthy, balanced lifestyle that may manifest as:
Reducing stress
Increasing energ
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim,” wrote Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life [1].
This quote summarizes how humans conceptualize time and how we can develop skills and schedules to maximize productivity and achieve our goals.
6 time management strategies
If you’re looking to take control of your time, here are six tips and strategies to get you started:
1. Conduct a time audit.
Start by assessing where you actually spend your time. Create a visual map of the approximate hours you spend on work, school, housework and chores, commuting, social media, and leisure activities. Then, you can drill in on school or work, dividing your previous week into days, then hours. How much time did it take to finish that paper? Did a work project take longer because you were scrolling on your phone?
Set goals based on this outcome. Planning ahead and setting time limits on your tasks and priorities can free up time for what’s most important to you, like spending more time with friends and family.
2. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to set your priorities.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a popular tool that helps you distinguish between tasks that are important, not important, urgent, and not urgent. The quadrant has four boxes in which you can split your tasks to prioritize what you should focus on first. They also correspond with the 4 D’s of execution: do, defer, delegate, and delete.
Quadrant 1: Important and urgent. Do these tasks first. These are the priorities that are most relevant to your goals.
Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent. Defer these for later in your schedule.
Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important. Delegate these to others, if possible, especially if they do not contribute to your long-term goals.
Quadrant 4: Not important and not urgent. Delete these tasks, or do them when you have free time because they are distractions from your priorities.
For an even simpler approach, create a task list and mark each item as urgent or important. Often, we prioritize urgent tasks instead of important ones—such as tasks that may be creative, important, and fulfilling but do not have a deadline—so identifying and labeling them can be a helpful step toward accomplishing your personal and professional goals.
3. Employ methods to “chunk” your time.
Once you have a better idea of what your priorities are, setting limits can be an excellent time management tool. There are several options for chunking your time into digestible pieces.
Try the Pomodoro method. This technique was developed in the late 1980s by Francesco Cirillo, a university student who was overwhelmed by studying and assignments. The Pomodoro method requires using a timer to break down your work into 25-minute intervals, separated by 5 minutes of break time. After four pomodoros, you may take a longer 15-30 minute break. Pomodoro (“tomato” in Italian) promotes concentration and relieves mental fatigue, which is especially useful for open-ended work like conducting research, studying for an exam, or finishing a consulting project.
By “chunking” time, you make big projects and goals less daunting. Less procrastination, more productivity.
Start by dedicating a half hour every Sunday to intentionally planning your week ahead and setting daily goals.