14 Easy Time Management Tips To Apply

Do you feel like you don’t have enough time, or do you need to spend your day in a frenzy to complete your tasks?

Time is probably the most valuable asset that we all have. Our main struggle in life is to catch up with it in the most harmless way.

However, maybe this process doesn't have to be a challenge for us. Knowing how to manage it with some easily applicable "time management tips" may be the answer.

Here are some step-by-step, quick, and easy time management tips BeforeSunset has compiled for you!

1- Make a list.

To-do lists are more useful than they look. Whether writing down your tasks into a notebook or entering into an online tool, you will have a greater perspective on the tasks at hand. Seeing the whole picture in the same place helps you know what to expect from yourself or your team. And you can always stay organized by recording your plans.

Some prefer to keep a single to-do list, while others might use multiple lists for each project. Moreover, by noting, you make prioritizing the tasks easier and more accessible to every member of your team.

2- Focus on results.

With good time management, you work smarter instead of harder, which means you will be doing high-quality work instead of high quantity. If you focus on the results of your task, you will reflect and see how everything worked out for you or subjects that need to be addressed. It's all about imagining the outcome and motivating yourself and your team to create a success story.

3- Have and plan your breaks.

A lot of people work during their break times, especially at lunchtime. Not having a break usually has a counterproductive effect on our work. We need to clear our minds and have a restart to continue.

Try planning your lunch breaks to have time for yourself in a one-hour period where you can ease your mind. Doing a bit of light exercise can also help your afternoon schedule. The most crucial point here is by planning your breaks, you will be having complete control of your time and not feel obliged to work on your holidays. Therefore, you will be more efficient and productive since you can split your workload into manageable chunks.

4- Prioritize essential tasks.

Learn the difference between “urgent” and “important”. Some might be both urgent and important, while others can be one or none. Successful time management includes prioritizing important tasks over others to complete them before they become a nuisance. More importantly, if you can foresee that a task will be considered essential or urgent later on, you can be done with it earlier to save more time on your or your team’s part. Dealing with challenging tasks can be stressful, but you can disregard this scenario way before it occurs with a proper time management plan.

5- Find out where you are wasting time.

Many of us procrastinate, sometimes without even being aware of it. Discovering what steals our time from our hands is critical here. Do we spend too much time on meetings, on social media, or texting? Tracking our time and creating a time plan lets us see where we spend our time and discover our hidden habits. If we know where we spend our time, we indeed can reduce it by any means necessary. So, a time tracking tool such as BeforeSunset can be a groundbreaker step for you to increase your productivity.

6- Create goals.

The focus of time management is to achieve our goals more efficiently. With a time management plan, we can go forward without wasting time on other errands or work. Therefore, we can create much more time to focus on what we need to, whether personal growth or another project that needs our attention. Setting goals for each task -and even creating sub-goals during the process- lets us eliminate the points where we waste our time, reflect on the task, and see how we managed our time in general. We can also set some goals not directly related to our project but about ourselves, such as not checking our phone until we’re done with a task or not answering personal text messages. Doing so also lets us focus on the task at hand.

7- Use a time management tool.

Whether being a software, an app, or a planner, time management tools offer you a great deal of perspective when it comes to planning and being able to manage every detail. In this regard, BeforeSunset allows you to schedule your plan easily, see how much time each task and project took to complete, and even allocate budgets to make the whole business process more manageable. A time management tool is a must if you lead big teams and many projects to efficiently plan and assign team members to tasks. Doing this manually is quite complicated, and your team can’t reach the plan you have all the time; therefore, BeforeSunset also allows you to take feedback from your team and build trust between you and your teammates. Learn more from here.

8- Learn to outsource.

Outsourcing is a great way to complete tasks if you don’t have enough time or resources to achieve them yourself or your team. Businesses don’t have to be a one-person or a single-team show. Outsourcing any task to a third party or a freelancer is a great way to save time on any work process. By outsourcing, you can make the most of your time and work on some other important or urgent matters while work is being done by another professional.

9- Establish routines.

Managing your life becomes easier if you have routines -whether in your personal or professional life- and stick to them. Having breakfast should be one of the routines in our lives. Practices also let us be more productive on the long road. For most people, creating and following routines allows them to get right down to the tasks when needed. Since we have set times for our habits, it also becomes easier to allocate the necessary time we need for them during the day.

10- Don’t wait.

From meetings to appointments, it is impossible avoiding to wait for someone. We don’t have to wait all the time, though! With technology and ongoing improvements, our phone, tablet, or PC lets us stay connected wherever we need to. We can read a report, check a spreadsheet, plan our next meeting, or have a quick talk with the team to boost morale. So by this way, you may also feel that your time is not wasted and be proud of yourself for valuing your precious time.

11- Plan your whole week a day before.

Having a plan before starting to our workweek has many advantages. If we know what we need to complete for the week, we can welcome any arriving task or meeting easily and with confidence. Since we've already prepared for the usual tasks, we don’t have to worry about surprising tasks that suddenly occur in our calendar. It will be much easier to integrate them into our planned week. Planning beforehand, also lets us ease the transition process from the weekend to weekday. And shortly after Monday, Friday will become quicker than expected!

We can also set our plans by how much energy we have during the week. For example, Fridays are one of the days where we don’t have as much energy as we have on Mondays, therefore prioritizing our tasks by following our power, we can start each week with a complete mind to tackle whatever comes in our way.

12- Take advantage of your prime time.

Everyone has a different and unique prime time. For some, this might be midnight, whereas it is after a morning coffee. Knowing when our prime time approximately lets us plan essential tasks in between these periods. In our excellent times, we tend to work most efficiently. Therefore, even the most challenging tasks become more manageable with this method. By including this planning into your weekly plans, you will see how much you can do in a short amount of time.

13- Put a time limit on tasks.

Sometimes you will see tasks that might expend the time you have given them. If you have two hours on a task instead of one, the amount of work you need to accomplish the task will usually expand into these two hours.

We can avoid this by assigning a personal time limit to a task. What is our insight on this task? If we can complete it in a shorter amount of time, we will be using our time more efficiently and create time for ourselves. If somehow the time required on the task at hand is shorter than we assumed, we can notify our leader or revise the plan to avoid untasteful surprises. By setting time constraints, we can also improve our focus and efficiency.

14- Establish a “done” list.

No matter how we plan or try to estimate possible tasks, unexpected tasks will always pop up during the week. Creating a “done” list next to our to-do list shows us how much we achieved and take notes regarding the processes. Not to mention the satisfaction and the feeling of confidence. We can reflect on our successes and even debate with our team on improving and getting feedback. This way is an excellent way of helping our following plans as well.

Start your free trial today with BeforeSunset to manage your time efficiently and increase your productivity!

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