Time management helps you prioritise your most important tasks so that you ensure you have enough time available to complete your biggest projects.  These time management tips will help you manage your time better, be more productive and achieve your goals faster. 

The benefits of time management are simple.  Good time management allows you to be more productive and efficient, lowers stress and anxiety and creates more opportunities for growth.  

These 8 time management tips will ensure you take control of your time and make confident progress towards achieving your goals.  Time management and energy management are intertwined.  When you have control of your time and energy, you feel less stressed, and less stress helps you achieve more in less time.

With time management, it’s important to understand where your time goes, so you can improve how you manage your time in the future.  The advantages of good time management allows you to achieve more productive results in less time, and without the stress.

These tips for better time management will ensure you prioritise better, become more productive and ensure you stop wasting time on activities that aren’t productive. 

Learning how to manage your time effectively will help you achieve your long-term vision and achieve bigger and better goals in the short-term.

Manage time better with my guide to effective daily planning.

Why is time management important?

Time management is important because it ensures you prioritise and structure your time in a way that allows you to be more focused and productive.  Time management is important because it allows you to plan your available time in the most productive way and use your time wisely on your most important tasks.  

Effective time management can help you achieve your goals faster, so it’s important to improve your time management skills.  Good time management means using your time effectively to focus on your biggest opportunities that will move you closer towards your goals. 

Learning how to manage your time effectively increases productivity, creativity and focus.  It also gives you more time freedom to spend with the people that matter most. 

Read more about the benefits of time management. 

8 time management tips to manage your time 

Use these 8 time management tips to manage your time better.

1. Get clear on your goals 

Effective goal setting improves your time management.  When you are clear on your goals you can prioritise your time better and understand how you currently spend your time. 

Having long-term goals and short-term goals allows you plan and organise your time between specific projects, which helps you manage time better.  Good time management helps you work smarter, not harder so that you can focus on your goals and get more done in less time.  

Goals reduce stress and overwhelm because you know where to spend your time on your biggest priorities.  This ensures you manage time effectively instead of drifting, losing focus and getting distracted.

By creating clarity on where you are now and where you want to go in the future, you can manage your time, achieve more and be more effective. Goals give you the time management skills to plan and control how much time you spend on your biggest priorities.  Good time management, therefore, enables you to achieve your goals faster. 

Read my essential guide on how to set and achieve your goals 

2. Prioritise important tasks 

Prioritisation is a key time management skill that will help you manage your time better and get more done.  When you manage your time and prioritise effectively you can be more productive and make the best use of your time. 

To prioritise your most important work, start each day by making a list of your most important tasks to help you stay organised.  Them identify and focus you time on your biggest priority. 

Prioritisation increases productivity and reduces overwhelm and procrastination.  It’s easy to be busy without being productive and lose control of your time.  Prioritising your most important tasks ensures you focus on your biggest priorities first instead of tackling easy or low value activities first.  

When you prioritise work you manage your time better and move from being busy to being productive.  Use the evenings or week-ends to plan in advance to improve your prioritisation skills and manage your time better. 

Read my guide on how to prioritise effectively

3. Create a time audit 

If you want to manage your time effectively, the first step is to understand where your time is going right now so you can improve your time management in the future.  You may have a sense of where your time goes, but the reality is often very different. 

A time audit helps you keep track of where you spend your time during the day.  You can use a time audit to track your time over a period of time to better understand how you are spending your time. 

A time audit allows you to analyse how you actually spend your time versus how you want to spend your time in the future.  Tracking your time in this way allows you to think about what which activities you want to spend more time doing and less time doing. 

4. Practice working in blocks of time  

Good time management is hard if you are constantly distracted or spend a lot of your time multi-tasking.  To manage your time better, start time blocking to stay focused and productive.  

Time blocking will help you work in chunks of time on your priority projects, and stop you switching between tasks or projects.

Many people use the pomodoro technique to help with time blocking.  I personally work on the 60/60/30 principle, working in chunks of 50 minutes, then taking a 10-minute break for the first two chunks of time before then taking 30 minute break to read, walk or meditate.

Time blocking will help you stay focused and productive throughout the ay.  It also boosts energy and ensures you feel a sense of achievement when you make real progress on your important projects. 

Get more tips for effective time management 

5. Plan your time effectively 

Good time management enables you to work smarter, not harder, so you can be more effective and productive.  Good time management requires an important shift in focus from worrying about time spent, to a focus on achieving a specific result.  It’s difficult to manage your time properly if you feel fatigued, exhausted or tired all the time.

Effective time management means working in a peak state on activities you love to do and are great at.  To create a peak state it’s important to eat healthily, take regular exercise and sleep better at night.

Taking more time out of work on a regular basis will also ensure you are rejuvenated, motivated and productive. 

Plan your time effectively with my guide to weekly planning. 

6. Eliminate half of your to-do list  

Good time management mens you focus on the quality of work you do, not the quantity.  If you focus on doing lots of tasks you are likely be very busy, but not productive.  Spending hours on a long to-do list is not the most effective way to manage your time.  

To manage your time better, start each day with just three items on your to-do list. When you complete those three items by the end of the day you’ll feel productive and accomplished.  If you still have time in your day to tackle additional priorities, add another item to your to-do list.

This time management technique ensures you are always making progress and feel confident about what you’ve achieved.  Not completing your to-do list each day lowers confidence and self-esteem.  When you focus on a small number of priorities, you feel happier and productive.

7. Plan ahead 

Planning ahead reduces stress and helps you manage your time effectively.  When you pan ahead you can identify your biggest priorities and identify the time you have available to work on them. 

When you plan your time, it ensures you schedule high priority tasks and make the time to work on them.  This gives you greater direction and focus and reduces distraction, overwhelm and multi-taking.

Planning ahead helps you set a time limit to complete a task in and ensures you take a break between tasks to stay productive.  Two effective times to plan your week are Friday and Sunday.  Planning on these days allows you to get a clear sense of what you achieved that week.  It also gives you the focus to prioritise the following week. 

Organising your time in this way gives you greater clarity, instead of being busy and unable to think clearly.

To improve your time planning, take 5 minutes at the end of each day to note down what you achieved that day and plan for the following day.  Read more about the benefits of time management coaching.

8. Stop procrastinating 

Time management and procrastination go hand in hand.  Managing your time effectively can help you feel in control of your time and increase your productivity.  When you feel in control of your time, you’ll feel less inclined to procrastinate and waste time.

Procrastination is caused by having too much going on and being unsure of what action step you should take first.  When you manage your time better, you take action on your most important activities, which reduces procrastination. 

To stop procrastinating, get clear on the result you want to achieve and identify the obstacles that stop you from taking action.  Then outline the first action step you can take to overcome that obstacles. 

Learn more time management tips on how to stop procrastinating.

Conclusion 

Time management is important if you want to achieve your goals in business and life.  Good time management allows you to prioritise effectively and manage your time better.  

Effective time management will help you set better goals, prioritise your time and organise your time in the most productive way.  When you plan your week ahead and create a daily plan your time management skills will improve. 

Use these time management tips to help you manage your time better and reach your goals faster.

More time management tips

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How to be more productive: 9 productivity tips

Now I’d love to hear from you. 

What’s your number one obstacle to effective time management?

How do you get out of busyness?

Let me know in the comments.

About the Author

Mark Pettit is a time management coach based in Colchester, Essex, UK.  He is the Founder of time management coaching company Lucemi Consulting.

Mark provides time management coaching programs and accountability coaching programs to entrepreneurs and leaders in London, Essex, Suffolk, East Anglia and across the UK, US and Canada. 

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