1. Time blocking
- Best for: Busy workers and students
What do Bill Gates and Elon Musk have in common? Well, except for being staples of the Forbes Billionaires rich list, they both use the time-blocking method.
Time blocking is a popular time management technique where you schedule blocks of time for specific tasks or activities. Working in a similar way to a ‘to-do list’, the method requires you to identify all the key tasks you need to accomplish in a day – both personal and professional – before estimating how long it takes you to complete each one.
Apps like Zapier help you create time blocks to manage your workload more effectively. Source: Zapier
You then allocate a specific time slot to each task, using a piece of paper, calendar, or task management software – and voilai! We also recommend adding buffer times in between each time block to allow for adjustments during the day. And if you’re creating one manually, utilizing different colors is a great way to quickly distinguish between tasks and activities.
2. Apply Parkinson’s law
- Best for: Procrastinators
Parkinson’s law is the theory that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In other terms, if you give your time a specific amount of time to complete a given task, say a week, that’s how long it’ll probably take to finish, even if you end up filling up spare time with unnecessary procrastination.
However, the same can be said for the inverse. When you apply Parkinson’s law to your workflow and give yourself shorter amounts of time to complete tasks, you’ll be capable of working more efficiently in a shorter space of time.
Applying Parkinson’s law to your time management strategy is a great way to boost productivity
There are a number of ways you can implement this method, including setting yourself a strict deadline to complete tasks, prioritizing harder tasks by getting them out the way early, or even aiming to complete as much work as possible before your laptop dies. This method also works well in conjunction with other strategies like to-do lists and task prioritization.
3. Pomodoro Technique
- Best for: Burned-out workers
The Pomodoro technique is one of the most popular time management strategies out there. Invented by the entrepreneur and author Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, the technique involves breaking your work down into 25-minute intervals, followed by short five-minute breaks, before taking longer breaks after every four work intervals.
Humans don’t work like robots. So, by allowing time for breaks and setting clear boundaries between work and rest, the technique helps to minimize mental fatigue and prevent larger bouts of procrastination from occurring. Working in short bursts is also a useful way to maintain focus and motivation throughout your working day.
The Pomodoro Technique encourages schedules break to increase productivity
The technique is super low maintenance too. You don’t need a dedicated app or piece of software, all you need is a physical or smartphone timer, and you can get cracking.
4. Pareto analysis
- Best for: Analytical thinkers
Otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, Pareto analysis is the idea that 20% of actions are responsible for 80% of outcomes. The concept is commonly used to aid decision-making in the fields of business and economics but has useful applications in the realm of time management too.
To use the rule in time management, you need to identify 20% of tasks that contribute to 80% of your results. This could include a range of impactful activities including high-revenue sales, high-stake project management tasks, or critical planning tasks. Then, you need to focus more time and energy on these high-impact tasks and schedule them during your peak productivity times to minimize distractions.
The Pareto graph allows people to prioritize their most important tasks first
As a result, you should also consider delegating tasks that are less central in helping you complete your goals. Priorities change frequently, so we recommend reviewing your strategy regularly to make sure you’re always investing more time into high-impact activities.
5. Eisenhower matrix
Also known as the Urgent-Important Matrix, the Eisenhower Matrix is a time management concept that involves prioritizing tasks based on their urgency.
Popularized in Stephen Covey’s book ‘The 8 Habits of Highly Effective People’, the matrix is thought to have been inspired by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s quote: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
The Eisenhower Matrix encourages you to prioritize urgent tasks
In practice, the method involves you separating your tasks into four different quadrants:
- Urgent and Important
- Important, Not Urgent
- Urgent, Not Important
- Not Urgent, Not Important
You should then work through these tasks in ascending order, prioritizing urgent and important tasks, and then consider delegating or eliminating tasks in the bottom to quadrants.
6. Rapid planning method (RPM)
- Best for: People with long-term goals
Often abbreviated to RPM, the rapid planning method is a time management strategy developed by the motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
Rather than passively listing tasks, the goal of the RPM method focuses on actively defining clear, designed outcomes. It also encourages you to identify the underlying motivations of your goal, to help you be motivated.
The Rapid Planning Method helps people achieve their goals by focusing on their underlying purpose. Source: Clockify
To use the RPM to manage your time, you need to write down all the tasks you need to accomplish in a given amount of time and group them into chunks. Then, for each chunk, ask yourself the following three questions:
- Results: What results do I want to achieve?
- Purpose: Why do I want to achieve this?
- Massive Action Plan (MAP): What actions will I take to achieve this?
After you’ve completed this step, you need to put your MAP into action by scheduling specific times in your calendar to work on each of your action steps.
7. Eat that frog technique
- Best for: Procrastinators
Haven’t acquired a taste for escargot? Don’t worry, the Eat that Frog technique simply describes starting your day by doing the most onerous task first.
Named after a Mark Twain quote “Eat a live frog the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”, the time management method sets you up for success early in the day by taking advantage of your more efficient working hours.
All you need to do is compile a list of things you need to do to achieve a goal, organize the list in order of difficulty, and tackle the most difficult task first.
This productivity method does require a bit more willpower than other time management strategies, as it requires you to tackle complex tasks without much of a mental warm-up. But it’s a great way to free up the latter part of your working day, it’s still a lot easier than eating an actual frog.
