How often do you start your day with 10 items in your To-Do list, and end up finishing not even 5 of them. How often do you think, I wish I could have more time for this or I don’t have time for this? I know the answer, ALWAYS! Time is the only thing that keeps running out whether you are sleeping, working or enjoying your vacation. It is the most undervalued asset that is often taken for granted by most of us.

To become successful at work, you need skills, knowledge, experience and of course opportunities. There is one aspect though which is always sidelined is TIME!

I’ve curated a list of 7 ways to not just manage your time but also save your time which you can use for other valuable tasks. This is totally based my little experience in the software industry. This has done wonders to my day-to-day work. I hope those will be helpful for you too!😊

The first 5 minutes

What do you do when you start your work? Read news, Open your mailbox or directly jump on the task which you left off yesterday? Ideally, it helps if you spend first 5 minutes on managing your day. You can write down items that you wish to complete throughout the day. You can also open the mailbox and list down any action items based on the emails you receive. Now when the list is ready, you can re-order the items based on priority.

Doing this will give you the whole picture of the day.

Timeboxing

Elon Musk once said, if you think it may take 3 days to clean a room it will eventually take 3 days! There are two things that often done wrong

1. Wrong estimation of time
2. Not estimating at all

In both of the above scenarios, the mind will run like an aimless bull. You should always estimate the time before working on any new task. You can either keep in mind or write it down somewhere. It may happen that you will not be able to finish your task before time, and that’s fine, but not estimating it would make you less focused.

Manage Distractions

“If you don’t separate yourself from distractions, your distractions will separate you from your goals!”

– Steve Harvey

Like they say, Money saved is money earned, same applies to Time. Social media is the most common reason for distractions these days. Even a single notification from any of the social media app is sufficient to break your concentration without you noticing it.

You can do below things to stop yourself from being distracted –

1. Turn off the notifications on your mobile phones
2. Keep your desk clean – no books, no gadgets
3. Set focused time, for e.g. next 20 minutes I won’t respond to chats, emails or any other things, till I complete tasks at hand.
4. Keep 5 minutes every 1 or 2 hours to respond to emails – no need to check emails every now and then, unless you are into application support 😊
5. Set a small-time window for social media if at all needed

Optimal To-do List

Create a to-do list if not maintaining already. It helps you to track your work. You should also keep in mind, that there shouldn’t be too many items on this list. I prefer not more than 7 items on my list.

You can use your diary to maintain your to-do list or if you want to make use of a software, then you have many apps like Microsoft’s To-Do, Google Keep etc.

Meetings Management

Studies show that, employees generally spend 3-5 hours on an average per week, while it increases to 10-15 hours a week for mid to senior level managers. There are few things you can always do to save your meeting time

1. Setting up clear agenda for a meeting and share it in advance probably as a part of meeting invite itself
2. Try to collect all the necessary information before the meeting and share in advance if possible
3. Make sure there are no off-topic discussions that may cause waste of time
4. Feel free to decline the invite in case you think you will not be able to actively contribute to the discussion or forward the invite to right person
5. Sometimes the meeting can be entirely avoided and the discussions can happen over a chat with a particular person. You can always try to cancel such meetings and update stakeholders over email.

Delegation

However exciting your work is, you just cannot complete all the tasks on your list. Sometimes you can, but not always! You can go through your task list and identify items that you can delegate to someone. It can be your peers or it can be juniors working under your supervision. There is nothing wrong in seeking help if you feel the time squeeze.

Take Breaks

Wait a minute, how come taking break will save my time. Let me tell you a short story. I was once neck deep into a production issue towards end of the day. I had already spent couple of hours investigating it. Even speaking to my colleagues didn’t help. Frustrated me stood up and went downstairs for a quick walk. My mind and body started to settle down, and after 5-10 minutes I figured out some better ways to tackle problem at hand. Went straight up to my laptop, and voila, had a breakthrough in next 5 minutes. Trust me, this has happened many times with me, sometimes during toilet break, sometimes having cup of tea.

Sitting for longer time is nowadays considered to like smoking. Taking breaks is important, it helps your body and mind to calm down. Your efficiency definitely increases when you take break. Instead of having long breaks, try having more shorter breaks.

Conclusion

Time management is that superpower that anyone can acquire. It will take some time to get yourself aligned to things mentioned above. I would recommend below books for further sharpening your time management skills.

Eat that frog by Brian Tracy – Buy

Deep Work by Cal Newport – Buy

Atomic Habits by James Clear – Buy

I hope you liked this article. Which techniques do you know other that these, please feel free to mention in comments. Thank you!