Time Management Techniques and Strategies

“If I only had more time!” Pretty much everyone has had this thought before. Too many things to do and too little time to do it. That’s where time management comes in. Whether you’re in school or at work, good time management habits can help free up extra minutes or even hours for other activities. If you’re really on top of it, you might even complete everything you want to do with time left to spare. Here are some time management techniques and strategies to help you reach that goal.

The Basics of Time Management

Time management is essentially about planning your daily activities so that you complete everything on time. Easier said than done, right? We’ve all made schedules at some point only to find out later that we can’t follow them.

To start, you should focus on a period of time that’s manageable. Planning too long into the future is just like trying to forecast the weather a few weeks from now. Too many things in life are unpredictable and will throw a long-term schedule out the window. I find that planning things on a daily or weekly basis works best. For big events in the distance, I keep them in mind but don’t focus on them in my schedule until they get close enough.

Even with a manageable schedule, sometimes you might still run out of time. There are two main strategies for getting extra time out of each day. Try each of them (or even both of them at once) to see what works best for you.

The first strategy is to simply free up time by managing periods of time that could be put to better use. For example, these could be unnecessary activities or periods of time spent idling. If you find yourself being overwhelmed with too many things to do, this approach might work for you. The second strategy is to make yourself more efficient at doing your tasks. Organization and focus are the key things to being more efficient.

Time Management Techniques

Techniques for Managing Activities

Analyze Your Daily Activities

If you’re having trouble figuring out what taking up all your time, keep track of your activities and at what times you did them for a few days to a week or two. You may find out that you’re spending too much time doing something that you thought was trivial. For example, I tried this time management technique a few years ago and found out that that I was spending way too much time reading and watching news (up to 4 hours a day!). Needless to say, I freed up a few hours by cutting back on this bad habit.

Prioritize Your Tasks

If you think you have to do everything all at once as soon as possible, you’re just going to overwhelm yourself. Make a list of the tasks you need to do and organize them according to urgency and importance. Tackle the ones that are most urgent and important first, then move on to lower priority tasks if you have time. You could also just leave them for another day or eliminate them entirely if it’s safe to do so and have a little extra time.

Here’s an example. Say you have a birthday party to attend tonight, a test tomorrow, an essay due in three days, and grocery shopping to do. Of these, the test is the most urgent and important, followed by the essay, birthday party, and grocery shopping in that order (the party isn’t necessary, and grocery shopping can be done at any time). Study for the test first, and then if you can make it to the birthday party, go for it. If not, use the time to study more or work on the essay. After the test, work on the essay until it’s done. Then go grocery shopping.

An Eisenhower decision matrix or “Eisenhower box”

The way I ordered the tasks is based on the “Eisenhower box” above. You put your tasks into the correct boxes, and then tackle them in the order of the boxes (going from 1 to 4). In my example, the test goes in box 1, the essay goes in box 2, the party goes in box 3, and shopping goes in box 4. The stuff in boxes 2 and 3 can be somewhat interchangeable in terms of priority. You’re going to have to think about what matters to you more in those cases.

Another way to organize your priorities is to categorize them as “must do”, “should do”, and “would be nice to do” (in order of decreasing priority).

Get a Planner

When I was in middle and high school, my schools issued each student a personal planner notebook (the paper kind, not a computer). I used mine to keep track of assignment due dates and other deadlines. Once I finished something, I put a checkmark next to it. This helped me figure out visually which assignments and tests were most in need of my attention. It was also pretty convenient, since I could just whip it out and check out what I had to do today instead of having to check individual class notes or my computer (and possibly get distracted while doing so). Personal planners worked so well for me, I continued using them throughout my university years (I had to buy my own though).

Planners don’t have to be complicated, so you can even make your own. Whether it’s just a sheet of paper with boxes for each day of the week or one with boxes for every hour of the day is up to you.

Filter Out Unnecessary Activities You Can’t Commit To

Some people these days are total workaholics and will try to do just about everything. But do you really need to help clean up after a co-worker’s party? Or walk your friend’s dog? Or help plan your cousin’s wedding? Clogging up your schedule with too many unnecessary tasks pretty much guarantees that you won’t finish everything. If you don’t think you have the time to commit to something (don’t be idealistic either), leave it out of your schedule and either get to it only if you have extra time or just apologize and make it up some other time.

Use Waiting Times

Waiting for a package to arrive so you can sign it or for a bus to show up? All those minutes, or even hours, can be put to good use. Whether it’s a little extra studying, planning out the rest of the day, or even catching up with your favorite show, doing it while you wait for something frees up the time you would have spent doing it later.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

You don’t always have to do everything yourself. For small things like grocery shopping or taking care of your pet, you can ask family members or friends to help out. Obviously, it’s not good to just ask everyone to do everything for you, but if you’re utterly swamped, a little outside help now and then can help you free up some valuable time.

Techniques for Improving Efficiency

Don’t Multitask

With smartphones, social media, and other distractions ever present, it can be tempting to think you can juggle them and your work all at once. But really, just focus on just one thing at a time. Multitasking has been shown again and again to be less efficient and time-consuming. When you switch from one task to another, you need time to get accustomed to the new task. If you keep doing it over and over unnecessarily, you’re just accumulating wasted time.

In fact, one study from Stanford University tried to find out if there was any special ability that people who multitasked heavily had over people who didn’t. They gave the participants a variety of tasks that tested various cognitive abilities. Guess what? The heavy multitaskers consistently performed worse on EVERY task compared to the normal group. They simply couldn’t focus on the task and kept getting distracted by irrelevant information.

Jot Down Distractions for Later

If you’re doing your work and some distraction pops up, resist the urge to attend to it unless it’s an emergency. Instead, jot it down on somewhere and deal with it later. Distractions often lead to more distractions, so it’s best to leave them until after you’ve finished all the important stuff.

Do Things When and Where You’re Most Productive

Not a morning person? Then don’t schedule important work in the morning. Doing things when you’re not “in the zone” to do them just means you’ll take longer and get frustrated and distracted more often. For example, I get kind of tired and unfocused after dinner. So for 2 hours or so after dinner, I schedule more unimportant tasks and leave the work that needs my full concentration for some other time.

The same goes for your location. Work in a setting where you’ll be focused. In my high school years, I often read textbooks on my bed. But it was sometimes so comfy that I fell asleep. Not a good idea.

Remember to Take Small Breaks

One of the best ways to study (or work) is to do it in relatively short, intense bursts separated by breaks. Not only will you remember the information better, you’ll be more focused and less stressed out. I’ve tried working non-stop for long periods of time before and sometimes it got so stressful that I got demoralized and didn’t feel like doing anything at all. You need to have a good balance between work and rest to stay both productive and happy.

One way to manage breaks is to use the Pomodoro method. It’s named after a kitchen timer shaped like a pomodoro (“tomato” in Italian) that the creator of this method used during his university years. Basically, you do work in chunks of 25 minutes (one “pomodoro”) followed by a 5-minute break. After you complete four “pomodoros”, you take a longer break (15-30 minutes). This method spaces breaks evenly so you don’t go too long without one.

Split Big Tasks into Smaller, Specific Chunks

Big tasks like “work on chemistry lab” can seem pretty daunting when you encounter them in your schedule. So break them up into specific parts instead. For example, break up “work on chemistry lab” into “finish abstract”, “finish introduction”, “finish data analysis”, and “finish conclusion” with correspondingly shorter time periods allocated to each task. Suddenly that lab doesn’t seem all that tough.

Breaking the a task down into specific chunks also helps you focus on each task more since you’ll have a clear objective in mind.

Set Deadlines and Reminders

Setting reasonable deadlines for specific tasks helps you structure your workflow and keep track of progress and efficiency. They more or less direct your attention to more urgent priorities and “force” you to focus on them. If you’re the kind of person who tends to forget deadlines, set up reminders for yourself like little notes or phone notifications.

Deadlines can also help you pinpoint areas where you might be having trouble. For example, if you keep missing your own deadlines for specific activities, either you need more time for those activities or maybe you need to be more efficient at them. You can learn a lot about your work habits this way and adjust accordingly.

Order Your Tasks Strategically

Attention and efficiency go hand in hand, so you want to order your tasks to maximize your attention on the most important ones. How you do this is really up to you since not everyone thinks the same way.

For example, one study done in a Korean department store found that employees performed worse on their most boring tasks if they did a highly interesting one earlier. Their minds seemed to drift back to the interesting task. In that particular case, you should do your boring tasks after a mildly interesting one (to get your brain working) and save the most interesting tasks for last as something to look forward to.

Another way to order your tasks is to do the hardest and most important ones first when your mind is freshest, so it’s all smooth sailing once you finish them. You could also try the reverse and do all the simpler things first so that you get a sense of progress and don’t have to worry about anything else when you get to the big tasks. Still another way is to spread interesting activities evenly throughout your schedule so that no part of your day becomes too monotonous and boring. Otherwise, you might come to dread that part of the day. Try different orders out and use what works best for you.

Set Up a Routine

For tasks that you have to do every day, you can try setting up a routine, so you’re not stuck with the thought of “what should I do now?”. The longer you stick with your routine, the more automatic it all becomes. Also, if you keep doing things the same way every day, you’ll naturally become better at them. It’s a great way to build good work habits.

Organize Your Work Environment

Keep your work area clean and organized. That way you’re not wasting time looking for things you need for work or getting distracted by random things on your desk. The way you organize your work environment is up to personal preference but do it in a way that maximizes your concentration.

Other Tips

Experiment with different time management techniques. Not every technique I described works for everyone. Try different things out and see what works for you. You might even discover a new method for managing your time.
Be realistic in your planning. If something normally takes you an few hours to do, don’t think that you can somehow finish it in under an hour. And no, you can’t function on 2 hours of sleep. Making unrealistic schedules is just an exercise in frustration and will discourage you from managing your time properly.
Be sure to reward yourself. Seriously, treat it as a mandatory “task” if you have to. Rewarding yourself for a job well done keeps your morale high, so you’ll feel better about following your schedules. If all you do is work and never get around to giving yourself the reward you’ve been promising, you’ll just burn yourself out.
Don’t procrastinate. Yeah, yeah. It’s a bad habit and all that. You’ve probably heard it a million times. But there’s a good reason why you shouldn’t procrastinate. If you leave an important task for later, you’ll have less time later to complete your daily activities. Do it enough and you’ll just be completely swamped with a nearly impossible to complete workload. Heck, it might actually be impossible. Think of it like this: hunkering down and doing important stuff now frees up time later you could use to play games or go out with your friends (all without the stress of worrying about uncompleted tasks).
Factor in buffer time. Life is unpredictable. For example, tasks that you thought would take only a few minutes might end up taking an hour or more if you run into complications. Plan for this by scheduling empty time blocks.
Use technology if it works for you. I personally keep track of things using a pencil and a notepad because I’m old-fashioned like that. But you don’t have to. There are plenty of time management apps available for your computer or smartphone. Use them as you like.
Compromise if you must. Sometimes there are simply too many conflicting high-priority tasks to fit in a schedule. For example, you suddenly learn that your work group for one class wants to have an emergency meeting for a project, but you have to study for a test AND have a homework assignment due for other classes. What do you do? In these unfortunate cases, you’ll need to compromise on one or more of those tasks. In this example, you could ask one of your group members to give you a summary of the meeting or settle for finishing only part of the homework assignment (and hope for partial credit).
Don’t overdo it. The time management techniques I mentioned are useful tools, but if you obsess over them, they can be counterproductive. Some people end up spending more time managing their to-do lists that doing what’s on them. Instead, go for simple, works-for-you approaches to time management.