What is the most important factor affecting time management?

6 Min. Read

March 28, 2019

Small businesses and freelancers need to maximize the time they have available to grow their business and proper time management skills can help do that. Time management is important for busy companies so they can prioritize all their work tasks and achieve their goals faster. When you better manage your time, you’ll be able to take on new opportunities and grow your business in a sustainable manner.

These topics explore the importance of time management and offer tips for improving your productivity at work:

What Is Time Management?

Why Is Time Management Important?

The Basics of Time Management

What Is Time Management?

Time management is the strategy of planning out your available time and controlling the amount of time you spend on specific tasks in order to work more efficiently. Effective time management comes easier to some people than to others, but everyone can develop habits to improve their time management skills. Without strong time management, your work and wellbeing can suffer, and it can lead to:

• Producing poor quality work
• Missing deadlines
• Increasing your stress levels
• Ruining your work-life balance
• Harming your professional reputation

Why Is Time Management Important?

Time management is important because it helps you control your workday so you can build your business without compromising your work-life balance. Here are seven benefits of proper time management:

Improve Your Performance

When you learn to block time out of your day for all your important tasks, you’ll have a better idea of everything you need to accomplish and how long each task should take. When you have a schedule to follow, you’ll likely find that you spend less time deciding what to work on or procrastinating and more time getting down to important work. Time management can help you focus on just the essential tasks ahead of you and avoid time-consuming distractions.

Produce Better Work

When you’re not constantly racing to meet a deadline, you can put more effort and thought into your work. Time management helps you prioritize your tasks so that you ensure you have enough time available to complete every project. The quality of your work increases when you’re not rushing to complete it ahead of a fast approaching deadline.

Deliver Work on Time

Properly managing your time involves assigning every task on your list to a specific blocks of time. Many people use time management to allow themselves several days to complete a project, or finish it ahead of the due date to provide a buffer for any challenges that might arise. If you properly schedule the time needed to complete your work, you’ll be able to hit your deadlines every time.

Reduce Your Stress

It’s easy to become anxious when you have a full list of tasks to accomplish both for work and in your personal life. Good time management can help you prioritize your to-do list and set aside the time needed for your most important tasks, so you know exactly what you need to do and how much time you have available to complete everything. Prioritizing your tasks and giving yourself enough time to accomplish them can help reduce your stress levels.

Improved Career Opportunities

Time management can help you become a more reliable employee who always submits high-quality work by your due dates. This in turn will make you more valuable as a worker and improve your professional reputation, which can help you find new opportunities to expand your career.

Boost Your Confidence

When you manage your time properly and successfully meet your deadlines, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence in your abilities. Consistently finishing your daily to-do list is a huge motivator that can drive people to further improve their time management skills and take on new work opportunities.

Become More Efficient

When you understand how to manage your time effectively, you’ll become more focused at work which allows you to accomplish more with less time available. For example, instead of trying to work on a big project when you have fifteen minutes free before a meeting, you can accomplish a few small tasks in that time and save the bigger tasks that require more brain power for when you have a large block of time free. You’ll be able to work more efficiently to achieve more with less time.

The Basics of Time Management

Improving your time management skills can make you more productive and less stressed. Here are five easy steps to improve your time management:

Planning out your time in advance is the most important element of good time management. Understand when you’re most productive: maybe you’re most alert first thing in the morning, or perhaps you hit your stride at night. Save your most important and challenging tasks for when your productivity is highest. Schedule simpler or smaller tasks for times when you’re less alert. Get a good sense before you start each day of how much time you’ll spend working on everything on your task list.

Prioritize Tasks

Evaluate every project you need to work on to determine what tasks are the most urgent and important and make those your top priority for the day. Leave less important tasks or projects that haven’t yet become urgent for later, when you have more time available to focus on those less crucial projects.

Eliminate Distraction

Distractions are one of the biggest productivity killers. Social media sites, smartphones and disruptive coworkers can all distract you from your priorities and derail your schedule. According to a study by Think Money, a third of employees are distracted for as much as three hours of the workday. If you find certain distractions are too much of a temptation, consider leaving your smartphone locked in a desk drawer during the day, or using a browser extension to block the websites that are most distracting to you.

Don’t Multitask

Multitasking may seem like a good way of getting extra work done, but in reality, it actually decreases your productivity. Instead of completing multiple projects, you end up starting but not finishing any of them. The best way to manage your time is to focus on a single task at a time and give it your full attention while you’re working on it, to avoid mistakes.

Reward Yourself for Good Work

Rewards can be a great motivator for good time management. Give yourself a small reward for every task you accomplish in the day. For instance, you could celebrate finishing up a report by taking a 15-minute walk outside. Rewards keep you motivated on the job and can help you achieve a better work-life balance.

Looking for more in-depth tips on how to improve your time management skills? This article can help you become an expert at time management.

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The term Time Management is a misnomer. You cannot manage time; you manage the events in your life in relation to time. You may often wish for more time, but you only get 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds each day. How you use that time depends on skills learned through self-analysis, planning, evaluation, and self-control. Much like money, time is both valuable and limited. It must be protected, used wisely, and budgeted.

• Are more productive.
• Have more energy for things they need to accomplish.
• Feel less stressed.
• Have more free time to do the things they want.
• Get more things done.
• Relate more positively to others.
• Feel better about themselves. (Dodd and Subdheim, 2005)

Finding a time management strategy that works best for you depends on your personality, ability to self-motivate, and level of self-discipline. By incorporating some, or all the ten strategies below, you can more effectively manage your time.

1. Know How You Spend Your Time

A time log is a helpful way to determine how you use your time. Record what you are doing in 15-minute intervals for a week or two. Evaluate the results:

• Did everything you needed to do get done?
• Which tasks require the most time?
• What time of day when you are most productive?
• Where is most of your time is devoted (i.e. job, family, personal, recreation)?

Identifying your most time-consuming tasks and determining whether you are investing your time in the most important activities can help you to determine a course of action. Having a good sense of the time required for routine tasks can help you be more realistic in planning and estimating how much time is available for other activities. Many apps exist to help you keep track of your time, as mentioned in Strategy 3.

2. Set Priorities

Managing your time effectively requires a distinction between what is important and what is urgent (MacKenzie, 1990). Experts agree that the most important tasks usually aren’t the most urgent tasks. However, we tend to let the urgent tasks dominate our lives. Covey, Merrill, and Merrill (1994) categorize activities into four quadrants in their Time Management Matrix: urgent, not urgent, important, and not important. While activities that are both urgent and important must be done, Covey et al. suggests spending less time on activities that are not important (regardless of their urgency) to gain time for activities that are not urgent but important. Focusing on these important activities allows you to gain greater control over your time and may reduce the number of important tasks that become urgent.

Creating a "to do” list is an easy way to prioritize. Whether you need a daily, weekly, or monthly list depends on your lifestyle. Be careful to keep list-making from getting out of control. List manageable tasks rather than goals or multi-step plans. Rank the items on your “to do” list in order of priority (both important and urgent). You may choose to group items in categories such as high priority, medium priority, or low priority; number them in order of priority; or use a color-coding system. The goal is not to mark off the most items, but to mark off the highest priority items (MacKenzie, 1990). A prioritized “to do” list allows you to set boundaries so you can say “no” to activities that may be interesting or provide a sense of achievement but do not fit your basic priorities.

3. Use a Planning Tool

When using a planning tool:

• Always record your information on the tool itself. Jotting notes elsewhere that must be transferred later is inefficient and wastes more time.
• Review your planning tool daily.
• Keep a list of your priorities in your planning tool and refer to it often.
• Keep planning tools synchronized. If you keep more than one, make sure your phone, computer, and paper planning tools match.
• Keep a back-up system.

Apps on your phone can be great planning tools. Apps typically fall into one of the following categories:

• Time Trackers – Gain an awareness of how you spend your time.
• Time Savers – Increase productivity and break time-wasting habits.
• Task Managers – Prioritize and organize tasks to improve time management.
• Habit Developers – Create healthy habits to encourage time management.

4. Get Organized

Disorganization leads to poor time management. Research has shown that clutter has a strong negative impact on perceived well-being (Roster, 2016). To improve our time management, get organized.

Set up three boxes (or corners of a room) labeled "Keep," "Give Away," and "Toss." Sort items into these boxes. Discard items in your “Toss” box. Your "Give Away" box may include items you want to sell, donate, or discard.

The next step is to improve the time you spend processing information. For example, tasks such as email can eat up your day. To combat wasted time, implement an email organization system that allows you to process the information in each email as efficiently as possible. Use folders, flagging, or a color-coded system to keep track of what’s what.

5. Schedule Appropriately

Scheduling is more than just recording what must be done (e.g., meetings and appointments). Be sure to build in time for the things you want to do. Effective scheduling requires you to know yourself. Your time log should help you to identify times when you are most productive and alert. Plan your most challenging tasks for when you have the most energy. Block out time for your high priority activities first and protect that time from interruptions.

Schedule small tasks such as drafting an email, creating a grocery shopping list, reading, watching webinars or listening to podcasts for long commutes or when waiting for a call or appointment. Capitalize on what would otherwise be time lost. Avoid nonproductive activities, such as playing games or scrolling through social media. Limit scheduled time to about three-fourths of your day to allow for creative activities such as planning, dreaming, and thinking.

6. Delegate: Get Help from Others

Delegating means assigning responsibility for a task to someone else, freeing up your time for tasks that require your expertise. Identify tasks others can do and select the appropriate person(s) to do them. Select someone with the appropriate skills, experience, interest, and authority needed to accomplish the task. Be specific. Define the task and your expectations while allowing the person some freedom to personalize the task. Check how well the person is progressing periodically and provide any assistance, being careful not to take over the responsibility. Finally, reward the person for a job well done or make suggestions for improvements if needed. (Dodd and Sundheim, 2005). Another way to get help is to “buy” time by obtaining goods or services that save time. For example, paying someone to mow your lawn or clean your house, or joining a carpool for your children’s extracurricular activities frees time for other activities. The time-savings from hiring someone for specialized projects is often worth the cost.

7. Stop Procrastinating

People put off tasks for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the task seems overwhelming or unpleasant. To help stop procrastination, consider “eating the big frog first.” A quote commonly attributed to Mark Twain says, “If it’s your job to eat a frog today, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the big frog first.” Unpleasant tasks we procrastinate completing are “big frogs.” Complete these tasks as your first action of the day to get them out of the way. Another option is to “snowball” your tasks by breaking them down into smaller segments, completing preparatory tasks, and eventually completing the larger task at hand. Whether you choose the “big frog first” or “snowball” method, try building in a reward system for completed tasks to help stay motivated.

8. Manage Time-Wasters

Reduce or eliminate time spent in these activities by implementing some simple tips.

Handheld Devices

• Take advantage of voice-to-text features such as transcribed voicemails or to make notes or draft emails and text messages when you are on the go.
• Avoid small talk. Stay focused.
• Take any necessary action immediately following a call.
• Impose screen time limits and regularly monitor your digital wellness (see Strategy 10).
• Schedule breaks from your devices.

Email

• Set aside a specific time to view and respond to email, but don’t let it accumulate to the point it becomes overwhelming to sort.
• Turn off notifications for email.
• Handle each item only once if possible.
• Immediately delete or unsubscribe from junk emails.
• Keep address books up-to-date and organized.
• Utilize built-in shortcuts to sort email.

Unexpected Visitors

• Schedule time for face-to-face visits.
• Inform visitors of your time constraints and politely offer to reschedule.
• Set a mutually agreeable time limit for the visit.
• When someone comes to the door, stand up and have your meeting standing to help keep it brief.

In-Person and Virtual Meetings

• Know the purpose of the meeting in advance.
• Arrive early.
• Start and end the meeting on time.
• Prepare an agenda and stick to it. Use a timed agenda, if necessary.
• Don’t schedule meetings unless they are necessary and have a specific purpose or agenda.
• Use recording software or designate a note-taker.

Family Obligations

• Use and sync virtual calendars for easy sharing between busy family members.
• Make each family member responsible for consulting the master calendar for potential conflicts.
• Create a central area or agreed upon app for posting communications such as appointment reminders, announcements, and messages.

9. Avoid Multi-tasking

Psychological studies have shown that multi-tasking does not save time. In fact, the opposite is often true. You lose time when switching from one task to another, resulting in a loss of productivity (Rubinsteim, Meyer, and Evans, 2001). Routine multi-tasking may lead to difficulty in concentrating and maintaining focus. Do your best to focus on just one task at a time by keeping your area clear of distractions, including turning off notifications on your devices, and set aside dedicated time for specific tasks.

10. Stay Healthy

The care and attention you give yourself is an important investment of time. Scheduling time to relax or do nothing helps you rejuvenate physically and mentally, enabling you to accomplish tasks more quickly and easily. Be sure to monitor your screen time as a part of your digital wellbeing, setting boundaries to stay healthy. A study conducted by Google showed that four out of five study participants who took steps to improve their digital wellbeing believe their overall wellbeing was positively impacted as well (Google, 2019). To improve your digital wellbeing, set time limits or utilizing built-in software on electronic devices such as phones and tablets to help maintain your digital wellness. Blue light blockers and grayscale mode may also help you improve your digital wellbeing. Set a time each night to shut off all digital devices to give your mind time to relax; this can also help improve your sleep schedule.

Unfortunately, poor time management and too much screen time can result in fatigue, moodiness, and more frequent illness. To reduce stress, reward yourself for time management successes. Take time to recognize that you have accomplished a major task or challenge before moving on to the next activity.

Conclusion

Whatever time management strategies you use, take time to evaluate how they have worked for you. Do you have a healthy balance between work and home life? Are you accomplishing the tasks that are most important in your life? Are you investing enough time in your own personal well being? If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then reevaluate your time management strategies and transition to ones that will work better for you. Successful time management leads to greater personal happiness, more accomplishments at home and at work, and a more satisfying future.

Authors

Updated by: Roxie Price, University of Georgia ExtensionDana Carney, University of Georgia Extension

Rachael Clews, K-State Research and Extension

Originally written by:Sue W. Chapman

Michael Rupured

References

Covey, S. R., Merrill, A. R., & Merrill, R. R. (1994). First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Dodd, P., & Sundheim, D. (2005). The 25 Best Time Management Tools and Techniques: How to Get More Done Without Driving Yourself Crazy. Ann Arbor, MI: Peak Performance Press, Inc.

Google, Global (DE, ES, FR, IT, PL, U.K., U.S.), “Digital Wellbeing Survey,” General population, 18+ years, n=97–1,401, 2019. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/digital-wellbeing-statistics

MacKenzie, A. (1990). The Time Trap (3rd ed.). New York: American Management Association.

Roster, C., Ferrari, J., & Jurkat, M. (2016, March 16). The dark side of home: Assessing possession ‘clutter’ on subjective well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology.

Rubinsteim, J., Meyer, D. & Evans, J. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology – Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763-797

Status and Revision History Published with Full Review on Apr 25, 2014Published with Minor Revisions on Aug 26, 2020