Time Management

Time management is the process of planning and controlling how much time to
spend on specific activities. Good time management enables an individual to
complete more in a shorter period of time, lowers stress, and leads to career
success.

A lot of people believe money is their most important resource but we think
they’re misguided. Their most important resource is time.
You can get more money through various avenues but once time is gone, it’s gone
forever. You can’t buy more or borrow more, so time is a limited resource that
expires every day. As a business owner, you have to be very careful with this
precious resource.
Other people are more than willing to take your time. You’ve undoubtedly
experienced getting stuck on a phone call or having someone drop by your office
without an appointment. Some people think that because you’re a business owner
and have more control over your time, you have more availability. They don’t
realize they’re wasting precious minutes or can’t understand why you’re unable to
get together with them at inconvenient times (family and friends can be the worst
culprits).
To better guard your time, consider these time thieves and how you can control
them:
1. Email. We’re all bombarded with email and it’s one of the worst offenders. It’s
easy to develop a habit of constantly checking your email, especially when one of
those little windows appears on your monitor telling you a new one has arrived.
Who can stand the suspense? But this can be a huge time waster. Consider setting
aside certain times each day to read and answer email, and learn to resist the
temptation to even glace at your Inbox outside those times.
2. Meetings at inconvenient times. Scheduling a meeting at 2:00 instead of 1:00 can
blow your entire afternoon if it chops up your day. Figure out a scheduling process
that will work for most days and try to stick to it. For example, we schedule 2-hour
client meetings at 8:00, 10:00, 1:00 and 3:00 so we can work four clients into a
day. Scheduling someone at 9:00 or 2:00 limits the number of clients we can see.
3. Not creating or sticking to agendas. Meetings can get totally out of hand if
people are allowed to go off on rabbit trails. Not following an agenda and
controlling how the meeting progresses will waste your time.
4. Not having a gatekeeper. Whenever possible, even the smallest business needs
someone to screen calls. This can be accomplished through in-house staff or an
answering service. Your gatekeeper serves as a shield between you and solicitors,
or calls that might not fit into your schedule and would be a disruption.
5. Doing too many of the little things. An unwillingness to delegate work to others
can rob you of time you could spend more profitably elsewhere. It can also steal
your personal time by forcing you to work later to get everything done.
6. Not scheduling time for routine tasks. It’s easy to get busy and put off doing
some of the routine tasks in the business, like paying bills or quarterly taxes until
they become time-critical. Then you’re forced to give them your immediate
attention, whether or not it’s convenient. Your day is disrupted and your time
stolen.
You can either master your time or be a slave to it. You can allow other people to
steal your time or you can be in control. Time is your most valuable resource and
must be guarded carefully or you won’t have enough of it.
The office is a minefield of distraction. Between email, Slack, text messages,
social notifications, mobile alerts, and loud colleagues, we’re constantly
bombarded with potential time wasters.

A UC Irvine study revealed that, on average, office workers are interrupted

every 11 minutes. And yet it takes around 25 minutes to get back on track.

Eliminating distractions—as many as possible—can have a profound impact on

your productivity, output, and mental wellbeing.

So rather than only focus on what you should be doing more efficiently,
consider the detractors you can eliminate. Here are 10 of the biggest workplace
time wasters you should watch out for:

1. Smartphones and other digital devices

Smartphones are a bit of a conundrum for most workers.

On one hand, they enable us to be more connected and tuned in than ever.
However, as well all know, this connectivity comes with a cost in productivity.
While the average person spends about three hours a day on their phone
(according to our research), the top 25% of users spend 4.5 hours or more.

This level of use can mostly be attributed to our natural brain chemistry. We’re
hardwired to receive a hit of the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine
whenever we get a notification. Yet because that pleasure is fleeting, we
continually seek it out. (It’s not wonder most people can’t go 15 minutes
without picking up their phone!)

How to avoid getting sucked into your smartphone during the workday
The fix, of course, isn’t just to throw your phone out. But rather to make it less
of a time waster. At one extreme, you can delete all distracting apps. But at the
minimum turn off all notifications and try to have a few sessions where you go
into do-not-disturb mode during working hours. Your notifications will still be
waiting for you once the day is done.

Want to know how much time you actually spend on your phone each day? Find
out how RescueTime for iOS and Android can help.

2. Multitasking and trying to do too much at once

You might think multitasking makes you extra productive. Who wouldn’t want
to do more than one task at a time? But the reality is exactly the opposite.

Studies have consistently found that the majority of people have lower
performance when trying to do multiple tasks at once (unless you’re part of
the 2.5 percent of people who can multitask effectively.)

How to avoid multitasking and stay focused on your most important work
You don’t necessarily need scientific evidence to see that multitasking becomes
a massive time waster. Your workplace task juggling has the same effect as
texting while driving (just slightly less dangerous).

Instead of trying to do multiple things at once, spend a bit of time creating

a focused daily schedule that promotes single-tasking. Better yet, build your
calendar around “Maker Time”—long stretches of time dedicated to specific
tasks.

3. Noisy offices and chatty coworkers

Ambient noise and unnecessarily loud coworkers can have a massive impact on
your productivity. And modern, open-office floorplans often exacerbate this
issue.

Researchers have found that to concentrate on cognitively demanding work, we

should be in an environment no louder than 50 decibels. However, most open
offices are closer to the 60-65 decibel range. It might not seem like much, but
the sounds of conversation, laughter, clinking coffee cups or even mobile
ringtones can quickly wrench you out of a focused state.

How to protect yourself from your office neighbor’s noisy habits

Cubicles and sectioned off spaces are certainly not homely and can be
downright bleak, but they do help eliminate noise that would otherwise carry
across the office. If you can’t physically separate yourself from noisy
coworkers, you’re better off to drown them out by wearing headphones and
listening to soothing, inspirational music.

4. Workplace clutter and disarray

Einstein may be famous for asking “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered
mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” yet messy, unorganized
workspaces have been found to be a productivity killer. Neuroscientists at
Princeton University discovered that physical clutter in your surroundings
competes for your attention, adding to stress and decreasing your performance.

How to clean up your clutter (both physical and digital):

Making a habit of getting rid of your distracting clutter is a great way to protect
your productivity. Set a reminder, either daily, weekly, or bi-monthly to clean,
sort, and discard your physical and digital clutter (like all those browser tabs
you have open). Or, follow the advice of Deep Work author Cal Newport and
become a “digital minimalist” by clearing out and deleting any tool you aren’t
using or doesn’t bring you value.

This doesn’t mean you should work in a barren, stark workspace. In fact,
making your space your own with family photos, plants, and other personal
items makes sure you feel at ease and enjoy coming into the workspace each
day.
5. Unhealthy nutrition and hydration habits
You probably don’t think of food as a time waster, but a drop of energy during
the day can make it difficult to get things done. Our bodies go through natural
ebbs and flows of energy throughout the day, and what you eat and drink will
determine whether you spend the day on a high, or barely make it through.

How to keep your body (and mind) properly fueled:

While there is lots of advice out there on nutrition (and most of it will depend
on what works for you), remember to keep yourself properly fueled throughout
the day. Keep a water bottle or glass at your desk and fill it every few hours (or
more) and try to avoid foods and drinks with high concentrations of sugar,
which give you an initial boost of energy followed by a full-on crash.

6. Procrastination and a lack of motivation

Sometimes, when you find it hard to focus or simply aren’t that interested you
might procrastinate starting a project. Yet procrastination only leads to more
stress. Instead, it’s often better to simply force yourself to start (as creativity and
focus often come after the fact).

Writing is a perfect example. Rather than stress over the blank page, most
writers force themselves through a first draft and worry about editing later.

How to quickly overcome procrastination in the workplace:

If you’re having a hard time getting started, a simple trick is to follow Instagram
founder Kevin Systrom’s ‘hack’ and tell yourself you’ll only work on a task for
5 minutes. Often, that’s enough to kickstart your motivation.

Once you’ve started, however, evaluating progress can be particularly

troublesome (and can quickly sap your motivation). Small wins can be just as
motivational as big ones, which is why it can be a powerful motivator to use a
productivity tracking tool like RescueTime to see how much you’ve chipped
away at each day.

7. Social networks and online distractions

Just as smartphones and similar devices can be major time wasters, so can
websites, news, and, of course, social media networks. The problem with these
distractions are that they’re what Make Time author John Zeratsky
calls “Infinity Pools”—a source of never-ending content that you can scroll
through and refresh endlessly. In fact, most workers spend an average of 7% of
their working hours on social media.

How to protect yourself from drowning in social media and online

distractions:
Willpower alone isn’t enough to solve the issue of online time wasters. If you
find yourself pursuing distracting sites at work, a better bet is to install or use a
distraction blocker. RescueTime’s FocusTime feature, for instance, will block
distracting websites entirely such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube
when you need to focus the most.

8. Excessive meetings and “quick catchups”

Meetings tend to be huge time sinks. (It’s probably safe to say you’ve been to at
least one this week you didn’t need to be in.) However, it’s often hard to get out
of them unless you’re a member of management or senior staff.

How to cut down the meetings you go to:

If you feel that a majority of your day is wasted on unimportant or unnecessary
meetings it may be time to seriously bring it up. Ask to do a calendar audit and
see which meetings need to be attended and which are just legacy bookings that
can be killed. In the best case scenario, you’ll help everyone spend less time in
meetings or condense frequent meetings into a single event that is better
organized and more focused.

9. Decision fatigue from too many small decisions

Decision fatigue refers to the natural deterioration of our decision-making
abilities throughout the day. It’s why you’ll choose takeout over cooking at the
end of a long day. Or why the average worker switches between tasks more than
300 times per day. Once our decision-making stores are spent, it’s hard
to properly gauge what work is most important and we end up thrashing and
wasting time.

How to reduce your daily decisions:

Start by trying to eliminate the amount of decisions you make each day.
Especially less impactful ones. This could mean developing a set morning
routine, mapping out your most important work the night before, or even eating
the same thing for lunch every day. The fewer small decisions you need to
make, the more energy you’ll have to prioritize your time the right way.

10. Email overload and never-ending communication

Collaboration and communication are great for productivity. Except when
they’re not. Chat tools such as Slack, Google Hangouts, and Skype easily go
from “tool that helps me stay informed” to “place where everyone’s yelling at
once and nothing gets done.”

How to cut back the time communication eats out of your day:
It’s impossible for most of us to cut these tools out of our workday. But it can
be beneficial to limit their use. Consider working in short bursts or establishing
scheduled times to check in and respond when you’re not focused on something
else.

Managers and senior-level staff can help with this by setting better expectations
for response times, such as not requiring employees to communicate or respond
immediately.

Distractions happen, but we can take action to reduce them

As humans, it’s only natural to get distracted. But it’s when we recognize those
distractions and continue to let them take over our lives that we’re doing
ourselves a disservice.

Use this list to help identify your personal time wasters, and then squash them.
The less time these time wasters take, the more time you’ll have for meaningful
work.

THE 6 TIME MANAGEMENT PERSONALITY STYLE TYPE

Have you ever considered that you have a natural time management style type? Or
have you noticed that your friends and family members may approach managing
time differently than you? Have you ever wondered why certain people seem to be
better able to manage time than others? Do you take your personality traits and
habits into account when planning and scheduling tasks? Do you have any idea
how your personality type affects how you manage your time?
We all have natural behaviors regarding how we manage time and how we
organize our living and working spaces.
Sometimes everything seems to work well for us, but tension can arise when we
become inundated, over-scheduled and blocked with clutter.
When this happens, it’s important to understand our dominant time management
type so we are better able to work with our natural style preferences. If we don’t,
we can get in our own way, impede our best intentions and miss our goals.
Understanding what techniques, behaviors and products work for you, and
what does not, impacts the overall quality of your life.
There are six different personality types for managing time. Each person is
different. One may strongly align with one type as dominant, where others may
display behaviors of several. Read the list below, and see where you think you
resonate.
HOPPER TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

The Hopper™ style maintains her energy by staying busy. A hopper loves
switching tasks, and finds having several tasks going at one time
exhilarating. Hoppers typically transition with ease, stopping one activity to
transition to something new. This style personality gets involved in many things,
and may have a difficult time completing tasks if there are too many brewing at
one time. As such – sometimes dominant hoppers may have a litany of incomplete
tasks, and struggle with follow-through.

How Hopper Time Management Personality Style Types Can Manage Time
More Effectively: When possible, Hoppers™ should eliminate distractions to
offer themselves more uninterrupted chunks of time in which to finish tasks.
Timers may help them stay on track. They will also find it helpful to be aware of
shifts in their energy levels to recognize when they need to take a break and
thereby reduce the odds of being distracted.

HYPER FOCUS TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

The Hyper Focus™ time management style is absorbed by detail and often
has trouble stopping one activity to transition to something new. This style
preference gets so involved in what they’re doing that they may ignore reminders
and cues to move on to the next priority. When Hyper Focus™ people are deeply
involved in the task at hand, they can become so absorbed in the details, that they
can lose track of time.
How Hyper Focus Time Management Personality Types Can Manage Time
More Effectively: It’s important for Hyper Focus™ people to work from a
prescribed plan and create natural bridges with strategies for moving from task to
task. They can benefit from using backwards planning and scheduling to determine
necessary project phases and start/finish dates, as well as chunking time into 20
minute segments.
BIG PICTURE TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

Big Picture™ individuals are big thinkers but sometimes ignore details, or
may leave the details out of their plans entirely. Big Picture Personality Types
find details less attractive than global strategies. They are typically quick thinkers
and excel at tasks that call for spontaneity. Their lofty vision and high speed of
action can cause them to overlook or ignore the essential small pieces necessary for
success.
How Big Picture Time Management Types Can Manage Time More
Effectively: Big Picture types are much more effective when partnered with people
who will handle the details and follow-through on tasks. On their own, they need
to create simple, basic routines to follow, write things down, and make sure that
their communications are clear and precise.

PERFECTIONIST PLUS TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

Perfectionist Plus™ types thrive on details and an endless pursuit to ‘get

things right’. As such, they have very high personal standards. They believe
that they should be able to do nearly everything themselves and do it all well. They
may be overly concerned about other’s approval and often have difficulty saying
“No” to the requests of others for their time.
How Perfectionist Plus Time Management Personality Types Can Manage
Time More Effectively: Perfectionist Plus™ types must learn to distinguish
between high and low priority activities so that they can spend their time on those
with the highest payoff. If everything is important, nothing is really important… so
Perfectionist Plus personalities need to learn to evaluate tasks upon acceptance,
and then learn how to say no to things that are not important to them. This may
involve disappointing others (which they really don’t like to do…) and learning to
let go so they can delegate tasks where possible. Of course, this involves aligning
with others they trust will do a good job. When they begin to develop these growth
actions, they’ll find they have more room on their plate for the things they most
enjoy.

IMPULSIVE TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

Impulsive™ Time Management types love to leap but may forget to look first.
Enjoying the rush of adrenaline, they would rather act spontaneously than
follow a pre-set plan. However, lack of planning, or diminishing its importance,
can result in missed deadlines and letting others down. Impulsives tend to get
bored easily and can find routine and maintenance tasks distasteful. Impulsives run
into trouble when the feed their impulses more often than finishing tasks.
How Impulsive Time Management Personality Types Can Manage Time
More Effectively: It’s helpful for Impulsives™ to gain perspective by looking at
the bigger picture in order to make better decisions. They will benefit from longer-
term planning, routine reviews, and daily targets that allow time for spontaneity.
Posting mantras, intentions and reminders of their overall goals will often help
remind them to stay focused on their highest priorities.
CLIFF HANGER TIME MANAGEMENT STYLE

Cliff Hangers™ believe that they work most effectively when under the
pressure of a deadline. They like having an adrenaline rush which helps them
focus, but when they run their deadlines with this approach this often doesn’t leave
enough time to check work thoroughly or to handle things that might go wrong.
Waiting to start until the last moment often causes added stress, tension and even
missed deadlines.

How Cliff Hanger Time Management Personality Types Can Manage Time
More Effectively: Cliff Hangers™ need to monitor their time to better estimate
how long things really take to complete. They will benefit by identifying their
highest priorities and scheduling earlier start dates for those tasks. If they still
choose to procrastinate, it should be on the less significant priorities.

The more time you have, the more money you can make. I think this can be applied
to everyone’s professional lives and to a lot of personal lives as well. Anyone who
has a second business that they work at in their off time to earn passive income can
attest to that. And professionally speaking, I think it is common knowledge that if
we had more “time” at work, we would in fact make more money.

So how do we make more time? Is that even possible? Well, what it comes down
to is proper time management. This is a major factor in what makes me more
effective and more productive than a lot of my peers at work. I can simply get
more done than they can with the same amount of time.

How can you do it too? It is really pretty elementary. You need to simply employ
some of the basic tenets of time management in both your personal and
professional life. Once you do, you might see more “time” appear in your everyday
life and find that you are becoming more efficient at completing your tasks.

To help you get started, I’ve picked out the 5 most important pieces of the time
management concept and outlined them here for you:

1. Eliminate the Unnecessary

This becomes more and more true every day. Either professionally or personally,
eliminating the “unnecessary” in life goes a long way in making you more
productive. What do I consider unnecessary? Well, strictly speaking, anything that
prevents you from reaching your particular goal. If your goal is to clean out your
email inbox, then don’t spend 45 minutes on Facebook. If you have a deadline to
make at work, don’t spend 25 minutes per day fielding unnecessary phone calls.
Put simply, you need to draw a firm, distinct line between the “necessary” and
“unnecessary” in your life. The stricter you define these terms, the more you’ll find
that a lot of things are truly unnecessary in your life.

2. Plan Your Work

If you go into work every day having no idea what you want to accomplish, then
guess what? You’ll probably accomplish nothing. Set aside ten to fifteen minutes
before work and either write down or mentally plan what you want to accomplish.
Personally, I plan my work each morning as I am driving in to work. These
several minutes that I spend planning contribute more towards me being productive
and effective than anything else that I do. After you decide what you want to
accomplish, then execute the plan.

3. Multitasking
Multitasking skills are a talent that not all of us possess. Realizing whether you are
the type of person that can do it or not is important. If you’re able to multitask,
great. If you’re not, then don’t bother trying. Many people make themselves less
effective by trying to multitask when they simply can’t do it. This leads to multiple
projects being started and none of them being finished, sloppy work, and
discouragement.

4. Know When To Multitask

So, for us multitaskers, does that mean that we should just multitask our way
through every single minute of every day, constantly having four or five things
going at once? Absolutely not. You also have to know when not to multitask. For
example, every day at work for me, there are four to five mundane little checklist-
type things that have to be completed. They are boring and mundane. So guess
what? I try to accomplish as many of them as I can at once and as fast as I can. But
when my boss gives me a special project that he needs done in a timely fashion and
of the highest quality, the time that I devote to that is usually uninterrupted and I
usually concentrate on nothing else other than that project. Know when to
multitask and when not to.

5. Reduce Interruptions
And finally, reduce the number of interruptions in your life. Realistically, you can’t
reduce the number of things that are going to interrupt you, but you can alter the
fashion in which you deal with them. If I am working on something important and
one of my employees comes to me with something that I know can be dealt with at
a later time, guess what? That’s exactly what I do. “Sure, we can get to that, but let
me finish what I am doing right now and then we’ll take care of it.” You see?
Respectfully, I put them off to complete what I was doing at the moment. On the
other hand, if my boss calls me when I’m in the middle of something, well, that’s
an interruption that is worth making a priority.

Final Word
Whether you are a salaried employee, self-employed, or a big-shot manager, more
time will allow you to focus on the most important tasks. Being prepared,
organized, and disciplined will give you the time necessary to become more
productive, which will ultimately lead to more money.

BUSINESS0
7 Steps to More Effective Time Management
Step 1 – Write A To Do List
Arming yourself with a daily to-do list is one of the most effective time
management strategies around. By knowing exactly what it is you need to do on
any given day, you are less likely to waste time on unnecessary tasks. A to-do list
that has been properly thought out will help you identify what is essential, and
what is largely unnecessary. I personally recommend checking off items as you
complete them; this will help you to retain focus and drive.

Step 2 – Remove Yourself From Distraction

It is my experience that the vast majority of problems that people have with time
management are as a result of being distracted, often by websites, social media, or
electronic devices. If distraction is interfering with your daily routine, then you
need to remove yourself from that distraction. For example, switch off your cell
phone while working and place it somewhere out of arm’s reach. If you find
yourself being side-tracked frequently by social media sites, then consider
installing site blocking software that will prevent you from accessing such content
(or at least set a daily time limit on it).

Step 3 – Take Breaks When Working

Taking regular breaks while working is one of the easiest ways to ensure you keep
your productivity high, which in turn makes managing your time a breeze. A well-
timed break will restore your energy and focus for a particular task, and let you
plan out the work ahead of you. It is foolish to think that you can power through a
big task or project in one go without taking breaks – this will only lead to further
lost time.

Step 4 – Break Big Tasks Up Into Smaller Chunks

Virtually every task or duty you could ever hope to perform can be broken down
into a series of smaller steps. Even something as basic as brushing your teeth
before bed can be transformed into different actions, such as applying the
toothpaste to the brush, performing the brushing motion, and rinsing out your
mouth. If there is a particular task you are procrastinating hard on (and it is
throwing out your time management feng shui) then try to visualize it as a series of
smaller, more manageable components. This will do wonders for your ability to get
things done in time.

Step 5 – Find Your Most Productive Times

All of us are our most productive at different times of the day. For example, I work
best later at night; often from the hours of 9pm until midnight. However, you
might be at your most productive in the morning, and slow down significantly in
the afternoon. If you work a job where there is a possibility of flexibility with
regards to hours, then consider asking if it is possible to shift the bulk of your work
to a more productive time slot. You can sell this to your manager on the basis of
you being able to complete more work in less time – a win-win scenario.

Day 6 – Become More Efficient

No matter what work it is you do on a daily basis, there is bound to be at least one
way (if not multiple techniques) to improve your efficiency at doing it. For
example, if you work a lot with computers and word processing, then learning how
to touch type could result in you completing your work a lot faster, which in turn
cuts down the risk of falling behind and throwing your time management out of
sync. If you’re a student, then coming up with a method of studying that allows
you to learn more in less time – such as the use of flash cards – is another example
of improving the efficiency of your work.

Day 7 – Accept Your Limitations

Even if you give a 110% effort, there will be occasions when you simply cannot
get everything done that you wanted in any given time frame. Don’t let these
unavoidable limitations deplete your drive and determination, which will in turn
make it harder to manage your time effectively. Accept that there are limits to your
productivity, efficiency, and ability to manage your time – and many of these
limits are simply beyond your control.

Deploy these time management strategies in your daily routine and enjoy
significantly enhanced productivity. In turn, this will result in you feeling more
confident and happy about yourself. You have the power to manage your time
properly, and now you have a toolkit of useful resources to ensure the job gets
done.