Top 5 Tips to Boost Time Management

You cannot manage time – time is finite – you can only improve your time management to make the most of the time that you have available to you. These time management tips will help you plan and control how much time you spend on specific activities so you can achieve more results in less time.

The 4 D’s of time management

The 4 Ds of time management, sometimes referred to as the 4 D’s of productivity, is a popular strategy for discerning whether or not a task or project is worth your time. It involves making a quick decision about what to act on now either by doing it yourself or delegating to someone else, what to act on in the future, or what to drop from your to-do list.

The technique encourages you to, before acting on requests, first filter the request through the 4D’s. The 4D’s are:

● Delete – First, you should discard all your unnecessary and unimportant professional and personal obligations
● Delegate – If there is something on your schedule that has to be done but is a waste of your time, then you
need to assign that task to someone else
● Defer – If you have a task that only you can complete but you don’t have time for it, you should defer the task to when you have more time.
● Do – This refers to any tasks that can be done quickly, in a couple of minutes. Make sure you do not let these tasks pile up, just do them. The “do” also refers to the tasks you have filtered through the previous 3Ds – to those tasks that are important, that you cannot delegate to anyone else and that you need to do right away.

Time management boosting tips

1. Plan and organise

Planning and organisation make efficient use of your time at the office by keeping you focused from beginning to completion of a project. A comprehensive plan for work activities and projects ensures you tackle all necessary steps for success.

Once you have created your comprehensive plan stick to it! Self-discipline is critical for self-time management.

2. Prioritise

An important method of time management is to prioritise your tasks. The best way to do this is to identify URGENT tasks and IMPORTANT tasks. Something is URGENT when it demands our immediate action. Something is IMPORTANT when it has considerable significance or consequence.

If something is URGENT and IMPORTANT it becomes a HIGH PRIORITY. When discussing priorities, the challenge is to differentiate between importance and urgency.

3. Efficiency and concentration

At what point during the day do you feel at your intellectual best? Observe yourself, perhaps during each particular shift at work, and you will be able to establish your personal rhythm.

You can then reserve your high-performance time for the most difficult tasks. You will not waste this valuable time on mundane chores.

If you have to perform a difficult task when your energy is low, it may take you three times as long to do a job half as well and you will become frustrated. Try to organise your schedule to make the best of your peak times and leave the less demanding tasks for your low periods.

4. Take action immediately

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.
“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in organisations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

5. Rest, release, and energise

Working too hard and for too long is valueless. We reach saturation point very quickly without being aware of it. The average individual should try to take a short break every hour. If it is not possible to take a break of say, ten minutes, then try to perform a simpler task for a short period which will act as a break from your principal activity.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management system that encourages people to work with the time they have — rather than against it. Using this method, you break your workday into 25-minute chunks separated by five-minute breaks. These intervals are referred to as pomodoros. After four pomodoros, you take a longer break of 15 to 20 minutes.

Be aware of time stealers (Also known as the Deadly Sins of Time Management)

These are the 10 most common time stealers:
1. Emails
2. Losing things
3. Meetings
4. Interruptions
5. Procrastination
6. Junk paperwork
7. Social media
8. Reverse delegation
9. Perfectionism
10. Distractions

Are you ready to take the next steps to boost your time management?

Now that you know how to manage time, you should be able to improve your efficiency and productivity. There are many benefits of time management, and you might end up surprising yourself with how much more you can get done in your day. Just remember that there are many ways you can manage your time better, so be sure to try out as many of these techniques as you can.

If you have any questions about time management skills, feel free to get in touch with us today. We’re more than happy to explain these strategies in more detail to help you maximise productivity in your working day.