5 Tips on how to manage your time effectively

Are you always looking at your watch or clock and wondering where the time went to? Do you constantly worry that you are going to be late, get behind or run out of time before important projects are due? Are people constantly going on at you because of your timekeeping or do you feel guilty around other people because of your time management skills?

Are you one of those people who always set out with the best of intentions to be on time and then somehow manage to end up racing to catch up with your day?

Do you find that you don’t have enough time in the day? Are you always behind on work tasks?

Do you often feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and find that you have too much to do and everything seems to overrun so tasks are never completed successfully? If this is the case you will definitely benefit from time management tips so that you can manage your time more effectively.

Most of us find that our time can be stretched fairly thinly these days. Life is just so busy, especially if you have to factor in children or elderly relatives into the mix, as well as working and all the other commitments we have in life. Planning days sometimes can seem like military operations with many people to accommodate, so many places to be and so much to do.

The key to a successfully run life is time management. When you manage your time effectively, you can achieve so much more and do so in a stress-free way.

How can I manage my day effectively?

As a coach, this is one of the questions that I get asked the most. Clients often struggle with time management and maximising the hours that they have available in a day.

Time management is essential if you want to have a life that is as stress-free as possible and if you want to have a life that includes time for yourself.

All too often. clients feel that they have too much work and not enough “day” left over, and this is even before they factor in family time or self-care time. This way leads to burnout, stress and exhaustion.

Constantly chasing the clock can bring problems both at work and at home. It can cause fractious relationships with work colleagues, family and friends and can lead to resentment and misunderstanding building up in relationships.

Once you have got to this stage you know that it is time that you take positive action before this problem spirals totally out of your control. Follow the tips below to help you to manage your time effectively.

1. What are the best ways to maximise your day effectively? Plan each day in advance

One of the most effective ways of managing your time is to plan your day. This will guarantee that you fit in everything that you want and will still give you time for yourself.

Instead of approaching each day without a set agenda, make sure that you take time out, either the night before or first thing in the morning to plan your day ahead.

This allows you to see what are your main priorities, and in what order you will be doing things, and will make sure that you have acknowledged everything that you need to do so nothing is missed. Make sure that you include some “me time”, things that are fun or relaxing such as exercise, meditation, or meeting up with friends or family.

You need to make sure that your days are not all about work, downtime is important for good mental health and to prevent burnout. Effective time management is all about being organised. Once you get into the habit of planning a day, you can then get into the routine of planning your entire week.

Although this may seem daunting when first starting, and can also seem time-consuming, this way of managing your time shows you what your real priorities are in life and can also highlight how much time you wasted before because of being disorganised. Once in this habit, it will become second nature and will bring you a life of stress-free planning and time management.

2. What is an example of using your time wisely? Work when you are most productive

Clients will often ask me for an example of using their time effectively. Until you get into the habit of using your time well it can seem daunting to understand how you are going to do it. Following an example is often one of the easiest ways in which to get into the swing of managing your time effectively.

One of the simplest examples to follow is working when you are most productive. This is going to be completely personal to you, as we all work on different rhythms and different times of the day.

Some people are more productive early in the morning and some are far more productive late at night. You know you so stick to your rhythm.

Determining when you are most productive is a great way to make sure that you are managing your time effectively.

If you are an early riser, then plan your day to start early, this could include fitting in exercise or meditation if you can’t begin work until later in the day. Starting the day off in this way is a great way to achieve the focus of the day ahead as well.

If you are a night owl then plan your day to start later, there is no point in trying to push your body into performing when it is not at its optimum time. Working this way should see you achieving the goals that you have without feeling stressed about time.

3. How to manage time wisely at work? Learn to understand the difference between “urgent” and “important”

For anyone who has ever suffered from burnout in a working situation or who constantly feels stressed by the time management pressures at work, this is a tip that you need to take on board immediately. It can make all the difference in how you feel about your job or your role within an organisation. Understanding the difference between “URGENT” and “IMPORTANT” can save much stress and angst.

Unfortunately, this is something that many people get confused with, especially in working situations, where they have a manager pressurizing them and they feel that they are under a lot of pressure to perform.

An “urgent” task is something that demands your immediate attention but it may not matter so much to you or anybody else if you perform it straight away.

An “important” task does matter if it is addressed straight away and may bring about consequences if it is not dealt with.

Understanding this distinction is the key to prioritizing your time effectively. If you are unsure about which order to prioritize your tasks you can always use The Priority Matrix tool to help you

This is a tool that you can use to prioritize your work and that can help in time management and decision making.

This simple framework can be applied to all sorts of work schedules. It is a step up from a basic to-do list as it is designed in a way to help you determine what tasks are critical and need work on straight away and which tasks can be left to a later date.

Click the link to see an example of The Priority Matrix. Once you get into the habit of using tools such as The Priority Matrix, you should find it much easier to distinguish between urgent and priority, regardless of what a manager has to say. Understanding this difference can make your time management so much more effective and your role much less stressed.

This tool can be applied to other areas of your life as well, it is not just for work situations, and it can help you achieve a happier work/life balance.

4. Learn to delegate

Are you someone who feels that you should shoulder all of the responsibility when it comes to getting things done, either at home or at work?

The sort of person who agrees to everything and then finds that they don’t have enough time or that they are stressed by the end?

This is a common problem for many people.

They just don’t know either how to say no or they are something of a control freak and feel the need to do everything. If you fall into one of these camos then you need to rethink your actions.

If you are one of those people who take on too much in your day-to-day life you may find that it leaves you feeling stressed and lacking in time. Learning to delegate is an important part of effective time management.

Delegate tasks to other people to ease your workload, this is especially important in working situations where you have competent colleagues or employees.

It is also vitally important in the home environment. If you are the one doing everything, even if it is by your choice or because you feel nobody else is capable, this is going to leave you tired and stressed.

It will also end up causing resentment and arguments. other people need to have a certain level of responsibility as well, and if you are someone who takes charge of everything, you are denying them the opportunity to learn and grow.

Give some responsibility to others around you and everybody wins. It will free up some of your time but is also good for creating harmonious working and home environments as well.

5. Ditch the distractions

We live in a world that is full of devices that are meant to save us so much time so how come so many of us are always looking for more time in the day to get things done? Yes, we have excellent time-saving devices such as washing machines, dishwashers, and microwaves and many people have access to a car which can save greatly on their travelling time. Yet we still often complain that there isn’t enough time.

The problem is the other devices that we all have access to that zap our time. Television, smartphones, laptops and game consoles, although entertaining are all ways that cost us time.

These are the devices in the home or work that we get hooked on and before we know it, we could have lost hours. These external devices, instead of enhancing our lives, can cause stress and rob us of vital time that could be spent doing more important activities.

It is all too easy on a day-to-day basis to get distracted by these external factors. These distractions can take you away from things that you should be working on and you can lose valuable time during your working day messing with them.

Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites are easy ways to be enticed away from what you are doing, they occupy so much time in our minds when really we should all be limiting the amount of time spent on them. Other distractions such as tv, and the internet can all drain us of time that would be better spent elsewhere.

While you are at work try to make sure that you remove such devices from your immediate environment so that you can focus on the job at hand. When you are at home, limit yourself to a set time that you look at social media, so that you limit how much time you are spending on it. You will find that not only is this better for your time management, and getting things done, but it will also improve your mental health as well.

Final thoughts

There are many ways that you can manage your time effectively to make sure that you accomplish all of your goals, but that you also do it in a stress-free manner whilst giving yourself some quality “me time” as well.

All it takes is some organisation, productivity, learning to delegate managing important tasks over urgent tasks and ditching devices that starve us of time.

This is something that everyone can work on to make their lives as stress-free as possible and to give themselves a happier and more productive work/life balance, whilst also benefiting from a healthier lifestyle.

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