20 time-management tips that put you in charge of your day

It’s hard to learn how to be happy when you constantly feel swamped by too much to do. If your task list just keeps getting longer and longer, the number of hours in the day isn’t always to blame. If you know how to manage your time properly, you’ll start checking things off your list more frequently. Focusing on how to set goals and protect your non-negotiables is the first step to prioritising your most pressing needs. Doing this will help you start to tackle your to-do list more efficiently to get the most out of your day.

Read on for some time-management tips that actually work to help you get all your tasks completed. It’s amazing what a goal-setting vision board and a positive attitude can do!

Time management is the ability to use your time effectively during the day to accomplish what you want to get done. It’s an important skill, because without it, we find ourselves swamped at home and at work, with a to-do list that only ever seems to grow. Knowing how to manage time reduces hours in the day lost to procrastination, ineffective multitasking or lack of focus.

Nobody can be ‘on’ all the time, and it’s essential to take time to rest, rather than try to be productive at every moment. So why is time management important? Good time management helps separate out the working part of your day from the resting part of your day, so that you’re able to accomplish what you need to and then take time to unwind. Without smart time-management strategies, the scales can tip too far to either side, and we find ourselves working longer hours than necessary or resting all the time and not accomplishing what we need to. Ultimately, time management is about balance.

Before you begin your work for the day, it’s important to take a moment and consider everything you’re hoping to complete. A great way to do this is to visually map out your agenda using Post-It notes. “I arrange items based on priority/deadline and add other agenda items I would like to try to accomplish before the day ends,” Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation, told Reader’s Digest. Each time Sweeney finishes a task, she crosses out the corresponding Post-It note.

“The act of physically crossing off makes me feel even more accomplished and keeps me encouraged to tackle more assignments as the week progresses,” Sweeney explains. Hanging Post-It notes above your desk is a smart organisation idea and an efficient way to maintain a sense of urgency and stay focused on a task.

Adopting a steady sleep schedule really does improve productivity. “I make it a point to wake up every morning at the same time so I stay on schedule. This is on the weekends, and holidays too!” Kristin Marquet, CEO of FemFounder, told Reader’s Digest.

While everyone knows that getting seven to nine hours of sleep strengthens our cognitive abilities, you may be surprised to learn that it’s important to sleep the same seven to nine hours each night. Experts have found that irregular sleep patterns can disrupt the body’s circadian rhythms, which prevents biological processes from working favourably together. In turn, this can negatively impact our cognitive capacities, productivity and health. By maintaining a regular wake-up time, Marquet says, “I can think clearly, which means I can meet deadlines and get more stuff done overall.”

Bottom line? Committing to a consistent sleep cycle is a great way to optimise your efficiency and manage your time. Doing a digital detox to remove screens before bed is a great way to improve the quality of your sleep too.

Check out these things you should do all day long for better sleep tonight.

If you’re leading a meeting, make sure to set a goal before you step into the meeting, and let your team know the desired results beforehand as well. It’s easy to waste time in meetings if no one is aware of the result you want. This can also help to cut down the length of time you’re actually meeting, allowing everyone to get back to their desks and start working sooner.

When you have a busy schedule, it can be tempting to open multiple tabs on your computer and flip back and forth between assignments. However, while it may seem as though tackling several projects at once improves your time management, it actually has the opposite effect. Multitasking weakens our attention spans, makes us prone to distractions and increases our processing times, according to researchers at Stanford University.

As a busy CEO, Marquet has been tantalised to improve her time management through multitasking, but ultimately found that it is “just not effective.” Now, rather than responding to emails as they emerge on her screen and working across numerous projects, Marquet says, “I only do one thing at a time, with laser focus,” also known as monotasking. Concentrating on each task separately enables Marquet to manage her time well, move quickly through her schedule and produce thoughtful, quality work.

Many companies use messaging applications such as Microsoft Teams or Slack to quickly communicate with one another. It can be convenient, but it can also be super distracting when you’re getting 10 notifications every 30 seconds while people discuss something in a group chat.

If you have an important task you need to focus on, utilise the ‘do not disturb’ feature, and leave a status message saying you’re working on a project, so that people don’t get offended when you don’t respond right away. Setting yourself to ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your iPhone can silence those pesky mobile notifications too.

Tracking your time might sound like one of the most obvious time-management tips. But if you’ve ever misjudged how much work you could accomplish in a day, a week or even a month, chances are you didn’t really know how long each task would take to complete.

John Breeze, the founder and CEO of Happysleepyhead, advises that you “write down the time you start your task and the time you finish it,” in order to “determine your working pace.” After spending a week tracking how long it takes to complete a range of different duties, you will be better equipped to estimate how much time future assignments will take.

Additionally, this time-management tip can also help you “find out where exactly you’re wasting time” so you can improve your working methods and optimise your productivity, says Breeze. For example, if you’re spending too much time agonising over wording your messages, brush up on your email etiquette to help speed up the process.

Even the best time-management tips can’t change the fact that the human brain can only focus for 90 to 120 minutes at a time before it needs a break. Make sure to schedule in breaks throughout your day in between tasks. It will help you get more done in the long run.

Take a break to refill your water bottle, grab some lunch or just get away from your desk for a few minutes. Let your brain unwind from the last thing you did, and get ready to focus on the next task at hand. This is also a great way to work small moments of joy into every day – a short walk, a stretch or a hot drink all count!

Here are some things healthy, happy people do on their lunch breaks.

When your profession requires you to work across divisions or contribute to many different operations, switching gears can be the most time-consuming part of your day. It’s hard to jump between assignments – trading a marketing hat for a sales hat, and then fumbling to grab your marketing hat again.

That’s why Laura Hertz, CEO of Gifts for Good, suggests assigning a theme to each day of the week. ‘Theming’ our days “helps us become much more efficient, because we’re grouping similar tasks together” and “it establishes a rhythm of attention and focus,” says Hertz.

Plus, this time-management tip completely eliminates the long, wasteful minutes that you would otherwise spend shifting your focus between departments. Mondays might be dedicated to marketing, Tuesdays to administrative tasks, Wednesdays to meetings and so on. ‘Theming’ your days is a quick, easy and organised way to improve your time management and efficiency. Maybe it could be the secret to a four-day workweek?