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What are the best time management skills?
Here are my picks for the best time management skills to master.
1. Set tangible goals.
As a freelancer, remote worker, or business owner, you definitely need day plans. It helps to organize work, but there is a small problem: with day plans, you will know whats do; but you won't know wherefore do it.
Abstract goals such as Make more money online don't work here. You can't be productive if you don't understand where that productivity is taking you. For successful work, practice planning and setting long-term goals: Set tangible goals by asking yourself where you want to be in a year or five, and how that goal relates to what you are doing today.
Tangible goals give you long-term vision and short-term motivation to work. To make them more powerful, use the so-called smart goals technique (theSmart acronym):
- Specific (so you can see which direction to take)
- Measurable (so you can have realistic deadlines for completing them)
- Achievable (so you can understand that it's realistic enough to accomplish them)
- Relevant (so that they correspond to the direction you want to give to your career)
- Time-limited (so you can set a deadline for their completion).
2. Convert goals into tasks.
Well, you've set goals for a year or two. Let's say you're considering publishing a book or becoming a leading freelance writer in your country. But when and how are you going to make these goals a reality?
You need to convert these long-term plans into specific important tasks that you will complete to reach the goal. Deadlines play an important role here: you have 52 weeks to implement an annual plan, so assign a related task per week and add it to your to-do lists to get it done on time.
And above all, do not neglect associated activities, if there are any: write for the media, create a series of individual consultations, promote your business accounts, participate in webinars, etc.
3. Dedicate time to self-knowledge and promotion.
When you work on multiple projects and don't make other plans, you risk working 10 to 12 hours a day without personal and professional fulfilment. It's an endless circle, with no way out, but with increased stress levels, exhaustion, procrastination, and low productivity.
When planning your work, consider the following aspects:
- Your work with customer projects - divide them into stages, with checkpoints
- Realize your ideas and your own projects - work on your company's website, write persuasive content for this one, participate in niche conferences, write invited articles, create training courses, etc.
- Networking - social media and brand image development are your tools for finding customers, so be sure to set aside time for that too.
- Self-investment - books, webinars, podcasts, educational newsletters, courses... It takes time, so plan accordingly.
- Take time - schedule time to recover from work and be less stressed: going to the movies, traveling, spending time with friends... Most often, entrepreneurs are go-getters; if they don't schedule rest in advance, they risk spending all their time working. It's not what you need for good time management and better productivity.
And now for the most interesting part:
How do you share the time for all of this? What about proportions?
It depends on your workload and the order of your preferences. The proportion of time cannot be constant, 80/20, or otherwise. When you have a lot of customers and projects, set aside less time for training and self-promotion.
And yet, do it so as not to disappear from the media scene! And vice versa, when there are no new tasks of project management coming soon - direct all efforts and enough time to promote your services. Make a plan and a list of ideas about this in advance.
4. Consider short-term planning.
Most of us know remote work and entrepreneurship as sleepless nights on projects because of the next day's deadlines. But that's nothing but your lack of short-term planning skills.
To avoid peak hours and deadline pressure that kill your productivity, do this:
- If all customers arrive at the same time - rate and value each project plan, consider setting priorities and abandon those that are not your specialty.
- If it is difficult to understand how long you will need to complete the project, break it down into several stages and make any necessary changes to your plan.
- If some approval issues, correction, or any other force majeure event arises, set aside free time in your calendar to resolve them, and review tasks accordingly.
- Use a scheduling app to ensure that you can manage meetings effectively, boost productivity, and improve your collaborative efforts.
5. Don't schedule all tasks for one day.
This error is a follow-up to the one mentioned above. When you can't estimate your abilities and the scope of your work, but you think a day is long enough to be on time for everything, you're putting tons of tasks into it. Needless to say, you are unable to deal with all of them effectively.
Productivity and time management skills are not about “doing as much as you can today.” It's aboutprioritizing and to know how to read time.
Plan one or two time-consuming tasks and three or four small tasks per day. Do the same with your weekly schedule, to avoid panicking or missing deadlines if you haven't completed all daily tasks on time.
6. Plan your work hours.
Freelance jobs and the work from home are synonymous with freedom of movement, aren't they?
However, without clear boundaries, your work time can get out of control. Do you like to start working before brushing your teeth in the morning? And finish your work in bed before going to sleep because your brain is still running at full speed?
If you don't plan your schedules, your mental health and your private life may suffer, and procrastination and stress are commonplace.
Remember that there are “working hours.”
Create a schedule, work a set number of hours per day, and avoid devoting your free time to work.
That doesn't mean you have to work 9-to-5; it means you know you're working six hours a day, for example, and that you won't sacrifice your seventh or eighth hour on phone calls or even on urgent tasks.
And never work on the weekend, or have at least one day off per week. It's a day when you forget your abilities to make business decisions and you don't even think about something like, “I'm just going to check my email for a second.” As a rule, these seconds turn into hours, making you think back to work and ending in nervous outbursts.
7. Don't try to realize every idea.
Don't even try to realize every idea that goes through your head. Yes, it seems unproductive to give up so many creative things that you wrote down in your notebook but didn't realize: new courses, projects, activities, services - as a rule, only 30 to 50% of them are implemented; the rest are buried in drafts.
But it's good.
It's good to generate tons of business ideas and to write them down so as not to forget them. But get in the habit of evaluating each idea at the preparation stage: how much time and effort it will take you to realize it, and what benefits or benefits you will get afterwards. Is it worth the effort?
8. Making the most of technology.
Some of us start by creating to-do lists on sheets of paper, then understand that it's inefficient and decide that they're disciplined enough to remember everything without any lists. It's okay if you're working with only one project or if you don't plan on doing anything other than that project. For productive work in different areas of life, you need instruments. Don't try to keep everything in your head.
Feel free to choose anything that helps you organize work, stick to the schedule, and follow the plan: Trello, IsoTimer, Toggl - anything you want. But here's a pro life tip for you: mix up a few instruments or change the one you already have from time to time. This allows you to save your energy and avoid feeding yourself with a single tool and getting lost in tasks.
9. Don't respond to emails right away.
There's no need to talk about common distractions and time wasters like TV series or social media feeds. Most people know them and know how to manage them, but some people are still unaware of these time eaters and their productivity killer that are immediate reactions to project offers or customer questions.
Entrepreneurs and remote workers are their own marketing and sales managers, so they try to be available online all the time. Messaging, emails, phone calls - it's hard to resist the temptation to respond in the blink of an eye. You think you're going to lose a customer or offend them anyway if you don't respond to their message here and now; but that's not the case.
It's simple: the faster you respond, the faster your customer will respond. Plus, the more emails you send, the more you get.
Once distracted, you lose focus on the task at hand. You'll need to take time to get back in the swing of things again and again several times a day.
The solution?
Turn off the messengers when you start working. Check your emails a few times a day at most (allocate some time between main tasks for this purpose). Use email tools to schedule your messages to be sent with a delay.
If it's hard for you to ignore distractions from other websites, use tools that will block your access to these resources.
10. Remember to develop your soft skills.
You can't manage your time and productivity at work without managing your life in general. Detailed planning won't make you super organized and happy: you can learn to write a plan and smooth your workload, but this skill also requires knowing how to build relationships with customers, how to understand if you should work with this person, how to say no to toxic people, and so on.
As you can see, the skills of a professional in their niche go beyond time management.
To avoid mistakes and organize your work, you need to take into account all the particularities of your niche, rely on your expertise and experience, and be aware of your weak points, by refining yourself. Once taken into account, these details will help you establish a work schedule for good time management and improved productivity.
- Delegate. The world won't fall apart if you don't do all the tasks by yourself.
- Learn to say no and create the algorithm for selecting customers. Work on projects that interest you and alternate between long-term and short-term projects.
- Don't be afraid to increase the price of your services if it pays off.
Time management is not a mathematical or operational program, but creativity and awareness that change your life for the better.
A specialist who meets deadlines is a valuable asset. Consumers add these people to their favorites list and gladly recommend them to their friends.
Thus, your excellent time management skills allow you to become highly in demand and more expensive on the market. More than that, you get a brighter life and a resource of time and effort to take it to the next level.
Further reading: Want to know how artificial intelligence and time management work together?
No less than 52% of respondents agree that the proper use of AI contributes significantly to their time management productivity.
