The Importance of Time Management

What Is Time Management?

Time management is a set of strategies designed to help you plan how to divide your time between specific activities to achieve maximum productivity, efficacy, and results on a daily and weekly level, as well as long term.

Time management can help you learn how to make decisions, set goals, and budget your time skillfully. It’s a way to stay organized and learn to prioritize your activities based on their importance.

Effective time management can lead to increased productivity and efficiency. By prioritizing tasks and setting realistic deadlines, you can focus your energy on the most urgent tasks and accomplish them in a timely fashion. This, in turn, will increase your overall job satisfaction.

Good time management can also help you in your leisure life. Once you master it, you’ll have no trouble making room for activities you enjoy (e.g., hobbies, family time, and hanging out with friends). A well-balanced routine helps reduce stress and positively impacts your physical and mental health.

Why Is Time Management so Important?

A study published in the Western Journal of Nursing Research that centers on how researchers could increase their research productivity confirms that employing several time management strategies, which we’ll outline below, can unlock better productivity for any individual, especially those working in a complex environment and carrying multiple roles and responsibilities.  

Additionally, time management has been linked to stress management.

A 2014 study conducted by researchers of the University of Wuerzburg on a group of students has shown that controlling how you spend your time helps reduce perceived stress and anxiety. At the two and four-week mark of time management training, students reported a reduction in feelings of stress.

These two studies illustrate what a substantial body of research over the past few decades has concluded many times over - with proper time management, individuals can overcome the sinking feeling of being overwhelmed with work and the demands of modern-day life and learn how to lower the impact it has on them. 

7 Benefits of Time Management

Increased Productivity

Good and effective time management can help you prioritize your tasks and tick them off one by one while increasing your overall productivity. 

Improved Confidence

Being consistent when it comes to managing your time, completing your daily to-dos, and staying on top of all your responsibilities can give you an immense sense of accomplishment and significantly boost your confidence. 

Improved Self-Discipline 

Having enough discipline to create and then stick to a specific plan or schedule is another benefit of successful time management. The greater your effort, the more rewarding the whole experience becomes as you see yourself transforming into a more organized person who simply gets things done.

Things Seem Easier 

One of the main ideas behind effective time management is categorizing your tasks and prioritizing them based on their importance, urgency, difficulty, and more. By managing your time efficiently, you can find ways to deconstruct more complicated projects into a group of easier-to-do, smaller tasks. This will make complicated things much less difficult to complete, as they’ll be divided into more “digestible” parts.

Good Work-Life Balance 

A huge part of time management focuses on learning how to balance your work-related and outside-of-work responsibilities. It teaches you the importance of allocating daily time to things you enjoy to regulate stress, recoup, and/or increase your energy levels.

Better Work Reputation/More Career Opportunities 

Effective time management can help you distinguish yourself from your colleagues as a high performer.  By mastering the way you spend your time at work, you can ensure you always send your deliverables by their due date or even earlier.

Time management is a big factor in job performance and can positively impact your or your organization's ability to generate profit.

And not only that, but it can also push other team members to work even harder, as healthy competition is one of the biggest motivators.

In a lot of cases, companies hire or promote people with a good work reputation as opposed to people who just have better qualifications or skills for a particular job. This can lead to more job opportunities, promotions, and an overall better trajectory for your professional career.

No More Missed Deadlines

When dealing with multiple tasks at once, it’s easy to lose your cool and start stressing over how much work you have ahead of you. As soon as you start to organize your work and schedule your tasks in advance, you become confident you will complete your daily/weekly/monthly goals on time.

9 Steps to Improve Time Management Skills at Work

1. Use Time Tracking Software

With time-tracking software, you can manage all your work obligations more easily while actively tracking your work hours, project, or task progress. Just like any other efficient tool, time-tracking apps aim to provide you with the information you need to evaluate the way you spend your time. With this data, you can identify job areas that need improving, work on them, and ultimately improve your time management skills.

2. Use Time Management Techniques

Another great way to improve your time management skills is to try time management techniques. For the most part, they are proven methods that have already helped millions of people across the globe. Some of the most popular ones are:

• Deep Work
• Eisenhower Matrix 
• The Pomodoro Technique 
• Parkinson’s Law
• The “ABCDE” Method 
• SMART Method  
• Time Blocking Method 
• Pareto Analysis Technique

If you want to learn more about individual techniques and try them out for yourself, check out our article on time management techniques. It’s a useful resource in which we tackle all of the most popular methods and strategies for time management.

3. Avoid Multitasking 

Successful multitasking, contrary to many people’s beliefs, is a difficult skill to master, and, in most cases, it will not be worth your time. Most people who multitask usually end up spending more time on their tasks than they would if they focused on one task at a time.

To improve your time management skills, try focusing on individual tasks and tackling them as they come up or in order of importance. Don’t spend your time doing multiple different things at once, as it may negatively impact your efficacy and productivity. 

4. Avoid Distractions 

Avoiding distractions is an important part of managing time and one of the easiest things you can do to improve your time management skills. Now, let's be clear here, some distractions are unavoidable. And, there’s no point in thinking about those. Instead, you should focus your efforts on avoiding the distractions that are (or could be) under your full control. To do that, you can:

• Limit the amount of time you spend on your phone.
• Turn off your phone when you start working.
• If turning off your phone entirely is not possible, try just turning off the notifications.
• Set aside a specific amount of time during the day to answer emails. Meaning, don’t spend the entire day constantly checking your email.
• If your work environment is too noisy, try finding a place with less noise and set yourself up there.

5. Take Regular Breaks

Taking regular breaks might seem counterintuitive, but it’s actually one of the best ways to manage and maintain your productivity levels throughout the entire workday. Working without taking a break often leads to being overworked or burned out. 

To improve your time management skills, you should try and recognize when you need a break and then just take one. The only difficult part of this whole endeavor is to figure out the best times to take a short pause without interrupting your workflow. But, you can do it! The whole My Hours team believes in you!

Just note that taking a break means letting your brain and eyes rest, too. So it’s not a good idea to spend your break time looking at social media or scrolling through your phone. Instead, try taking a short walk or listening to some relaxing music. Basically, anything that doesn’t have you looking at a screen!

6. Figure Out When You’re Most Productive

Figuring out the exact time of day when you feel your energy levels are at their highest, and then scheduling and completing the most difficult tasks during those hours, is another great way to improve your time management skills. 

The most productive time of day varies a lot among different people. Some are most productive and efficient early in the morning, while others do their best work late at night. So, exactly when you tackle the most difficult tasks will depend on your own schedule and the times of day you feel the most productive.

7. Break Tasks Into Smaller Chunks

One way to improve your overall time management is to break large tasks into a bunch of smaller ones, making them somewhat easier to accomplish and manage.

By doing this, your tasks will feel less overwhelming and will be much easier to tackle head-on. Additionally, you will be able to make steady progress instead of spending your time feeling stuck on one particularly difficult task.

Breaking tasks into smaller chunks can help you stay focused and motivated. It can also help you identify any roadblocks or problems early on and make adjustments as necessary.

8. Delegate 

Delegating tasks is essential if you want to improve your overall time management, as it will allow you to focus your energy on the most important tasks by utilizing the strengths of your colleagues or team members. 

Some of the most common ways to efficiently delegate are:

• Identify tasks that can be delegated by evaluating your current workload. These can be routine tasks, time-consuming tasks, or tasks outside of your field of expertise.
• Choose the right person. When delegating tasks, choosing the person best suited for the task is crucial. When making a decision, consider their skills, experience, and workload before assigning them tasks.
• Provide clear instructions. Clearly explain the task and any additional details to the person you are delegating work to. Make sure they understand the expectations and task deadlines.
• Provide regular feedback and support to the person you have delegated your tasks to. This will help them stay on track and ensure that the task at hand is completed successfully.

9. Learn how to say “NO”

No one likes being encumbered by extra work, especially when that work lands in your lap at the end of the regular work day. When this happens (and it undoubtedly will), it can potentially disrupt your entire day, week, or even month (depending on the complexity of the additional task). It can negatively impact your work-life balance, the quality at which you perform your other tasks, overall productivity, and more. For those reasons, learning to say “No” is an important aspect of learning how to improve your overall time management.

You don’t want to be bogged down with extra tasks, but you also don’t want to sound rude when communicating with your manager or colleagues. There's a delicate balance you need to think of when saying “No” to additional work. To do that you could:

• Offer an alternative — Instead of simply saying “No,” offer an alternative solution. Either suggest that you’ll do the task the moment your schedule frees up, or recommend a colleague who is more suitable to deal with that particular task (and whose plate is clear).
• Be polite — When you’re saying “No”, which usually has a negative connotation in the work environment, try to be as polite as possible. 
• Give adequate reasons — Just saying “No” to additional work is not gonna cut it in the workplace. You’ll also have to share the reasons that prevent you from taking on extra work. 

Top 4 Time management Challenges And How To Overcome Them

You’re Easily Distracted

Solution: Make eliminating distractions a long-term goal

For those who have a hard time focusing, distractions can be detrimental to their productivity. 

The goal of time management is to help you neutralize the negative impact they have on your daily life. Distractions are very individual, but there are some things most people find distracting:

• Social media sites
• Smartphones or tablets
• Disruptive co-workers
• Various phone notifications
• Emails of less importance/significance

To eliminate them, you could:

• Limit the amount of time you spend on your phone.
• Turn off your phone when you start working.
• If turning off your phone entirely is not possible, try just turning off the notifications.
• Set aside a specific amount of time during the day to answer emails instead of constantly checking your email.
• If your work environment is too noisy, try finding a place with less noise and setting yourself up there.
• Learn how to say “No.” 

However, it’s important to remember that not everything is in your control. Maybe you have a persistent colleague who constantly asks questions, or you can’t influence your work environment as much as you’d like. 

While there is always room to exercise setting clear boundaries and voicing your concerns with your team or practicing better communication in general, at the end of the day, it’s good practice to start by eliminating the distractions you’re actually in control of.

You Multitask to Get Things Done

Solution: Unlearn multitasking to work smarter

Multitasking, contrary to popular belief, makes you spend more time on your tasks than you would have if you focused on one task at a time, although it doesn’t always feel that way.

However, most time management techniques are designed to help you steer away from this practice by focusing on individual tasks and tackling them one by one or in order of their importance.

If you still find yourself going off your list and multitasking, it means two things: a) you haven’t learned to prioritize b) the technique you’ve chosen might not be the one for you.

Your solution would be to stop, reassess, and tweak your process until you find a technique that feels intuitive.

You Always Procrastinate

Solution: Identify patterns in your behavior that lead you to procrastination

Procrastination usually happens when you are not focused enough and lack a clear goal (either a daily goal or a long-term one). It can be defined as avoiding the more important tasks, despite the possibility of experiencing negative ramifications. Prolonged procrastination can negatively impact productivity and increase stress levels. 

The practice of time management helps you identify the main reasons behind your procrastination and work on eliminating them or lowering their impact. The goal is to reduce the idleness until it becomes negligible and you feel more in control of your day. 

Each person is unique, so your reasons for procrastinating might differ from someone else's. To identify them, you need to pinpoint the exact time in which you stop being productive and reflect on what triggers that shift.

The most common reasons for procrastinating are: 

• Task aversion
• Fear of failure
• Fear of criticism
• Perfectionism
• Low self-esteem
• A self-defeatist attitude
• Trouble focusing
• ADHD
• Resisting challenges
• Fatigue
• Difficulty defining goals
• Lack of energy
• Depression
• Conformity
• Burnout
• Being bored
• Not being challenged at the workplace
• Escapism

If you identify that your trigger for procrastination is low energy or trouble focusing, you could try out the Pomodoro technique. It’s a beginner-friendly time management method in which you set up a 25-minute timer and work until it goes off. 

Every 25-minute block is followed by a short break. This break is intended to help you keep your energy levels up and give you a designated slot in which you don’t need to focus on anything. 

If you are task averse, the limited and relatively small amount of time you’ll spend continually working is a painless way to increase your discipline and teach yourself to push through adversity, one 25-minute interval at a time.

However, if you realize that you procrastinate as a consequence of a deeper and more complex psychological pattern, implementing a time management technique won’t be enough. It might be a good idea to make it a long-term goal to work on the underlying issue and seek professional help.  

You Never Seem to Get Everything on Your Plate Done

Solution: Delegate 

Delegating tasks is essential to successful time management, as it allows you to focus your energy on the most important tasks and use the strengths of your team members for the rest:

• Identify tasks that can be delegated by evaluating your current workload. These can be routine tasks, time-consuming tasks, or tasks outside of your field of expertise.
• Choose the right person. When delegating tasks, choosing the person best suited for the task is crucial. When making a decision, consider their skills, experience, and workload.
• Provide clear instructions. Clearly explain the task and any additional details to the person you are delegating work to. Make sure they understand the expectations and task deadlines.
• Provide regular feedback and support. This will help them stay on track and ensure that the task at hand is completed successfully.

Solution: Communicate

By being proactive when it comes to communicating your progress, you can avoid unnecessary distractions that can impede your productivity and efficiency. Distractions such as:

• Getting emails asking you about your progress
• Other team members or higher-ups interrupting you during your work to ask you about progress
• You being unsure about your progress
• Clients asking you about your progress

More importantly, if the reason you can’t complete your tasks is that you have too much on your plate, asking for help will reduce your anxiety around your workload and support your productivity.

Solution: Take regular breaks

Working long hours or until you can’t work anymore puts you at risk of making mistakes and being less productive, and can lead to burnout.

Here are a few signs that could indicate you need to take a break from work:

• Restlessness  
• Feeling hungry
• Not being able to concentrate
• Low energy
• Feeling demotivated
• Feeling stressed

 A big part of successful time management is knowing when to take a break without interrupting your workflow and overdoing it. However, most time management techniques, like Pomodoro or timeboxing, for example, are designed to help you learn to navigate this challenge, as they make taking regular breaks a part of your workflow, not a disruption. 

With a time management technique, you learn how to stop for a break to keep your productivity streak going, not to be “unproductive.” Additionally, using the technique makes it easier to communicate with your team that you need a break since it ensures you already have a list of to-dos you’ve completed behind you.

Solution: Break tasks into smaller chunks

One way to improve how you manage your time is to break large tasks into a bunch of smaller ones, making them somewhat easier to complete.

By doing this, your tasks will feel less overwhelming and will be much easier to tackle head-on. Additionally, you will be able to make steady progress instead of spending your time feeling stuck on one particularly difficult task.

Breaking tasks into smaller chunks can help you stay focused and motivated. It can also help you identify any roadblocks or problems early on and make adjustments as necessary.

Solution: Figure out when you’re most productive

Track your time to identify obstacles or “bad time-spending habits” that don’t result in productive work. They could be an indication that you might want to switch up your routine.

This also works the other way around: figure out the exact time of day when you feel your energy levels are at their highest, then schedule and complete the most difficult and important tasks during that period.

The most productive time of day varies a lot among different people. Some are most productive and efficient early in the morning, while others do their best work late at night. So, exactly when you tackle the most difficult tasks will depend on your own rhythm and the times of day you feel the most productive.

Key takeaways 

• Time management can help people divide time in a way where they achieve maximum productivity and efficiency.
• The benefits of good time management include things such as increased productivity, improved self-discipline, better work-life balance, and work reputation.
• Time-tracking software can be used to improve your overall time management.
• Learning how to say “No” can help you set healthy boundaries in the workplace and improve your overall time management.