Have you ever wondered how certain people could run a business, spend time with their family, hit the conference circuit and write a book? It’s not because they have superpowers. These people have learned the time management hacks that successful people practice daily.
Their success is because they know and have worked to manage their time. What better way to improve your time management than by learning the hacks from some of the most successful people in the world?
1. Create a morning routine.
While these morning routines vary, they usually wake-up early, exercise, read the news, eat a healthy breakfast, and tackle their most challenging task first.
“While I’m known for being predictably unpredictable – I’m always up for an adventure and love a calculated risk – I do, however, have a morning and nightly routine,” writes Richard Branson. “I find structure to start and finish the day helps me to focus, and achieve the things I need to.”
2.Schedule dead space.
You’re probably tempted to book every minute of your calendar. However, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates beg to differ.
Both men have said that the secret to their success and time management is filling their calendars with plenty of blank spaces. Adding a few “vacancies” lends flexibility to schedules to handle any unforeseen circumstances that may arise. More importantly, it gives a person the time to focus on their passions and control their time. As Buffett said, “I mean, I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time.”
3. Know Your Goals, and Organize Them by Their Value and Priority.
How many goals do you have? If you don’t have any goals, create at least one goal today. Goals are essential for effective time management. Perhaps you have too many goals. If so, organize them. You need one goal for each primary area of your life: a goal for your work or business, another for your health, and another to manage your finances, for example.
On any given day, one goal will have the most value and top priority. For many people, this is a work or a business goal. However, if you’re overweight, or have medical challenges, your health becomes your highest value goal, and your top priority. You can’t achieve anything, nor can you manage your time, if you’re in poor health.
4.Audit Your Time
One of the first and best ways to become better at time management is to understand how you’re spending your time. That way you will know what’s taking most of it, what you’re wasting it on, and how much time you dedicate to each activity.
You can do it either manually by monitoring clock and writing down all your tasks with timestamps (which we strongly discourage because after all, you don’t want to waste time on something that should actually save it), or use an electronic solution—time tracking software that will automatically track the time you spend on all your projects and tasks.
Understanding where your time goes is the basis for taking further steps. It will help you take the right approach and choose the most suitable time management technique.
5.Don’t multitask
The science is very specific about multitasking—it’s not good for your brain. According to a study conducted by the Stanford University professor Clifford Nass, multitasking weakens the cognitive ability,
“We studied people who were chronic multitaskers, and even when we did not ask them to do anything close to the level of multitasking they were doing, their cognitive processes were impaired. So basically, they are worse at most of the kinds of thinking not only required for multitasking but what we generally think of as involving deep thought.”
6.Save Time, Say No
If you have a huge workload and are being asked to do more and more, it is usually not a good career move to keep saying no and using the reason you are too overworked.
The best approach is to say yes, it is possible, but which of my current tasks will be deprioritized or delegated to others to make space for this task.
No matter how productive you are, there will always be more work to fill up the space you have managed to free up in your working day.
Summary
Well, I hope you liked the thoughtful advice from our contributing CEO’s, Solopreneurs, and busy professionals. I am sure there is something here you can use. If you liked the article, please leave a comment.
