Effective Time Management

Achieving your goals, managing your workload, and meeting deadlines requires the use of effective time management practices. This requires a combination of up-front planning, honest self-reflection, good habits, and personal discipline. The objective is to intentionally and proactively control your time, maintain a results-oriented focus, and achieve (or exceed) your goals.

Throughout the years, I have read many books and articles on how to manage time most effectively. I’ve tried a bunch of different techniques, but none of them is a panacea. No single approach meets all of my needs or lets me manage my time as effectively as I would expect. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of the time management approaches I’ve tried, but none of them by themselves seems to completely meet my needs. It’s likely that in some cases I didn’t fully commit. And maybe some aspects don’t align well with my personality. Regardless, I’ve learned something from each one.

16 Tips for Establishing Effective Time Management Habits

While I’m certainly not a ‘time management guru’ – I still have room for improvement – I have been refining my process over the years based on bits and pieces taken from what I’ve read combined with personal experience. You might say it’s a ‘Frankensteinian’ approach (or a buffet if you prefer that analogy). I encourage you to do the same. Leverage proven strategies and techniques to improve your own performance. Experiment with different ideas and develop a tailored set of approaches and habits that work best for you. Also, consider ‘paying it forward’ by sharing your best practices. Regardless of which system or tools you use, there are a few key components and techniques to effective time management (in no particular order):

1. Understand that your time is limited. You can’t do everything, so you need to focus on the activities that are the most important. You get to choose – YOU are the only one who can control the use of your time. I know you want to say, “but what about…” I’ll stop you right there. You ALWAYS have a choice. Always.
2. Define your goals. Your goals dictate where to focus your time and energy. They are the roadmap (or GPS, if you prefer). Understand the ‘big picture’ – both your personal goals and what you need to get done where you work – and align your actions accordingly.
3. Identify and eliminate activities that waste time and/or don’t serve your goals. Consider using a notebook to track how you spend all your time for several days. Be brutally honest! And refer to #1 above.
4. Create positive habits. Habits reduce friction by making desired actions automatic. Consider using a habit tracker to help build and sustain your habits. If you don’t have a mobile phone, use a piece of paper or a calendar to check off daily progress.
5. Just start. Even tiny actions toward your goal will move you forward, giving you momentum to keep moving. It’s easier to keep going than to start going, so make it easy to start. When I’m struggling to go out and ride my bike on days when it’s cold and dreary and I’m tired and unmotivated, I literally start by just laying out the clothes I would wear to ride. That always creates enough momentum and change in mindset to get me out the door.
6. Do the hardest or most unpleasant things first. Get them behind you. Otherwise you waste time and energy fretting about doing it. Just do it and get it over with. I know, easier said than done. One approach is to attack your most important and/or most difficult task for the first hour of each day. And never start by opening up your email.
7. Block your time and stay focused on a single task until it’s complete (i.e., define tasks as 20-60 minutes each, but blocks can be hours long); 20-minutes is an optimal timeframe for a task duration. Blocking your time prevents constantly ‘switching gears’ – it takes time to get your mind ‘in the zone’, or into the ‘flow state’. Beware that the ability to improve productivity by multitasking is a myth – it’s ineffective at best. “Researchers have found that it takes a typical office worker 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. Work interruptions also decrease accuracy by 20 percent.” No, you are not the exception.
8. Eliminate distractions like email and phone notifications. Turn off everything that pops up, dings, or rings when you need to focus. If you have a door, shut it. You can’t do this 100% of the time, but sometimes it’s necessary.
9. Plan every day in advance. Use prioritized lists to track what needs to be done. Consider maintaining an organized ‘master list’ of everything that you need to do (including someday/maybe), and then using different lists to target your work for increasingly more granular time periods – e.g., 1 year, 90 days, 30 days, 1 week, 1 day (hint: they should align all the way down). Optimally, one database can be used to drive them all (I use Remember the Milk for my personal list), but use whatever tools suit you best.
10. Follow the 80/20 rule: Focus on the 20% of activities that get 80% of the results.
11. Plan your day with 20% of your time reserved for emergent issues and opportunities. Unexpected interruptions and ‘fire drills’ are a part of life – expect them, and plan accordingly.
12. Always identify the next action step. Be specific – for example, if you need to call someone but do not know their phone number, the next action step is to look up their phone number. Having details at this level provides clarity and reduces friction. Ambiguous actions are more likely to be put off until ‘later’.
13. Understand your personal daily energy levels and plan what you do accordingly. For example, if you tend to have high energy in the morning and low energy in the afternoon, use your mornings to focus on tasks that require more of your creative and thoughtful attention and deeper concentration.
14. Don’t work on too many goals at once – it dilutes your focus and can be overwhelming. Instead select a handful of goals to address at a time. You might even start on just one, then as you improve your ability to attack your goals and manage your time, add a couple more.
15. Know when to say “no” – to others as well as to yourself. You can’t do everything. Be selective. See #1.
16. Don’t confuse busyness or effort with productivity and results. Not only do you need to be doing the right things, you also need to avoid being stuck over-analyzing (prevents starting) or ‘polishing’ (prevents finishing). Results are ultimately what count, so focus on the actions that are more likely to get you the desired results. Be honest with yourself.

Recommended Reading

The following books offer frameworks, strategies, and tactics for living a more productive life through effective time management. The last one on the list (Just Start) isn’t really a time management book per se, but covers concepts that support higher productivity and increased chances of success when starting projects that have uncertainty with respect to the success of their outcomes.

1. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen (Theme: Process all incoming requests for action: do it immediately, delegate it, or add to your comprehensive lists of “to-do’s” and “someday/maybe” items)
2. Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, by James Clear (Theme: Create positive, manageable, “low-friction” habits)
3. The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan (Theme: Focus on the “ONE thing” that is most critical for moving forward)
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven R. Covey (Theme: Focus on goals and actions that align with your personal core values)
5. The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months, by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington (Theme: Use actionable 90 day plans to work in “sprints”)
6. Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future, by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown (Theme: Use low-risk experiments and small steps to adapt to new/unknown types of work, learning from low-consequence failures)

Additional Reading

You might consider reading these as well. Each of these books offer useful insights and techniques to support your effective time management approach.

1. Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better, Third Edition, by Adam Pash and Gina Trapani, John Wiley & Sons, 2011
2. The Lazy Winner: How to Do More With Less Effort and Succeed in Your Work and Personal Life Without Rushing Around Like a Headless Chicken or Putting in 100 Hour Weeks, by Peter Taylor, Infinite Ideas, 2011
3. Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, by Brian Tracy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001
4. Eliminate the Chaos at Work: 25 Techniques to Increase Productivity, by Laura Leist, John Wiley & Sons , 2011