Effective time management includes the productive management of time to complete tasks using techniques relating to action and activity prioritisation, problem-solving, goal setting, multi-tasking and decision-making. But is it actually going to help you to free up more of your time?
The truth is that genuinely effective time management really can help to spare more time for you to be able to focus on the things that you love and enjoy doing. This is only going to happen if you streamline your time management processes though.
Otherwise? You’ll spend so much time on the management of time that your spare time will simply slip on by. It’s all about adopting time management techniques that genuinely cover the most important, critical areas of your life and letting the rest lay on the back burner. For now at least.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR MANAGEMENT OF TIME AS EFFECTIVE AS POSSIBLE
People typically have a different view on what they actually want to achieve when they adopt effective time management techniques, but the most common desirable outcomes are having more spare time and completing the most vital tasks required for personal and professional advancement or emotional fulfilment.
Let’s take a closer look at how you can use time management to do this, but also consider how this can completely work against you, too.
Better Management Of Time To Create More Spare Time-How To Do It Meaningfully
A super effective way to manage your time well in order to create more spare time to focus on anything of your choosing is to prioritise the fulfilment of the most critical tasks that are likely to take away from that time.
These tasks are often the “hardest” tasks on our list and the tasks that we’d really rather not do first, or now. Yet by completing them before other tasks, we’re going to ensure that we have more available time spare.
It’s important to strike a balance between the completion of critical tasks and time consuming tasks. Time consuming tasks aren’t always critical tasks. Always aim to complete the most fundamentally important and most fundamentally time consuming items on your to do list in synergy with one another and as immediately as possible.
By doing this, you’ll avoid any potentially negative personal and professional situations whilst also ensuring that you’ve got more time left for yourself. The rest of the tasks on your list can absolutely wait, provided they don’t fall into the categories we’ve just mentioned.
Make a space in your diary to complete the less time consuming and advancement critical tasks later and hold yourself accountable. Just try to ensure that this date doesn’t eat into your personal time. You’ve already worked hard to create some, after all.
When Your Management Of Time Becomes Counterproductive
Adopting effective time management techniques in line with the type of guidance we’ve just provided is great, but it’s when you start to obsess over the completion of absolutely every task on your list before you’ll allow yourself to relax that you begin to face problems.
Time management is only effective if you use it to achieve a progressive or personally satisfying outcome. The key is to know when you’ve done that and to simply let go.
Due to the always on nature of the modern world, some people find it incredibly difficult to know when the most relevant and meaningful tasks that they actually need to complete based on their long and short term goals are done.
If you can arrange your tasks in terms of priority, you’ll have no problem with being able to press the “off” switch. If you don’t take the time to understand what really needs doing today or now and what doesn’t though, you’ll spend so much time trying to manage your time that you actually become completely ineffective at time management.
The Difference Between Working “On” Work And Working Effectively
Not all of the tasks we complete or the time that we spend focusing on workplace progression provide a meaningful outcome. A great example is a workplace seminar or online course.
It’s healthy and fruitful to feel the desire to progress via activity outside of the workplace, but there are some people that spend so much time trying to learn about the “best” management techniques or systems that they don’t actually spend the time that they need to focusing on the fundamentals that really drive the core of their business forward.
It’s really important to learn enough that you’re able to be as successful as possible at what you do and in the most time efficient way that you can. This should never come at the cost of putting these teachings into action though.
As with your daily tasks, try to gain an understanding of when you’ve reached a point where enough productivity has occurred (in this instance in the form of workplace relevant teachings) to be able to take practical action and advance forward in the area you’re looking to progress. Try not to drain too much of your time on the same area beyond that, though. At least not until you genuinely need to invest more time to progress.
Fundamentally, the underlying principle of truly effective time management is to only focus on the management of time for the minimum duration needed to achieve your goals to a successful and meaningful level. Time spent beyond that is arguably wasted unless it provides you with genuine emotional fulfilment.
When you’ve completed your primary tasks and learnt what you need to know for the day, if doing something or learning something feels good, you should absolutely do it. But if it doesn’t then remember that you probably don’t need to do it right now.
WHAT ARE YOUR TOP TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS FOR BETTER MANAGEMENT OF TIME?
What time management tips do you find personally work for you and allow you to spend more time focusing on what you really enjoy and love? Do you think focusing on time management is actually wasted time or do you think that when done effectively, it can be an invaluable personal and professional tool?
We’d love to hear what you think and for you to share today’s post so that other people can benefit from adopting truly effective time management techniques that won’t actually drain their time and energy in the process.