You step into your cabin, take your seat; turn on your workstation just to see a lengthy list of tasks waiting for you. Technology has allowed us to work harder, longer, and from literally anywhere with a WiFi or cellular signal. When you closely analyze the list of tasks, you see some of the tasks from yesterday that you failed to complete and some new ones added to your daily tasks. You start thinking how I can finish both old and new tasks before the workday ends. The answer lies in efficient time management.
Remember, everyone has 24 hours per day. It usually boils down to how you use these 24 hours that makes all the difference. Have you ever wondered how the most successful entrepreneurs spend their 24 hours? How they manage their time and which time management tactics do they use? After reading this article, you will get the answers to these questions on increased efficiency in the workplace.
1. Never Waste Time
Tony Robbins, best-selling author, entrepreneur and life coach shares his time & money management secrets with his loyal followers in “The Ultimate Guide to Time Management”. He asks them to consider time as money. Do you waste money? No, so why do you waste time? Time is a finite resource and you should never waste it in non-productive activities. Try to eliminate waste and try to make up for the lost time by doing two things at once. For instance, you can listen to audio books on your commute or watch news when you are exercising.
2. Focus On The Most Important Stuff
Most successful people are great at focusing on what is important and leave the rest. Warren Buffet’s pilot asked him about career advice and Warren Buffet said he should make a list of 25 goals to achieve by the end of the year. He did that. Warren Buffet asked him to choose top five of the most important goals and cancel out the 20 goals. You can use the same approach to stay focused on the most important tasks. As the 80-20 rule points out, you can achieve 80% results with 20% effort. That is where task management software can come in handy.
3. Load Up Your Schedule
Most successful people do not dedicate hours to tasks. They dedicate minutes. Unlike all of us who divide their days into blocks of hours, successful entrepreneur schedule tasks in every minute of their day and don’t leave anything blank on their schedule. Bill Gates follows this approach and thinks that there should be no dead zones in your planner. He thinks that filling up dead zones will give you the flexibility to change according to the situation. Warren Buffet summed it up brilliantly when he said, “I can buy anything I want, but I can not buy more time.” When you wake up in the morning get ready to perform!
4. Wake Up Early
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, wakes up at 3:45 am and he is not alone. The infamous billionaire playboy thrill-seeker Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group also wakes up at 5:00 am. The list goes on and on. When you wake up early in the morning, you can get precious time when the whole world is snoozing and you can make the most of it by being most productive. It gives you competitive edge over others and gets you off to a flying start to the day. As the saying goes, “Early Bird catches the worm.” and “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise.”
5. The First Hour Of Your Day is Most Important
Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E Time Coaching & Speaking is the time management coach, speaker and bestselling author. She believes that the first hour of the day lays the foundation for the rest of your day. She suggests that you should complete most important tasks in the first hour as your productivity is at its peak in the morning.
Elizabeth Grace Saunders shares her valuable experience here:
“I find that it helps immensely to not have meetings to start my day. During this first hour, I take time to organize myself, including completing my daily plan, getting an email in order and taking care of other small, time-sensitive tasks. This allows me to come at the rest of the day from a place of clarity and strength. I feel prepared for my meetings and know which larger tasks are most important for the day.”
6. Batch Process Emails
Emails are the biggest time wasters at work. Author Kevin Kruse interviewed 200 of the world’s most successful people for his book “15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management”. The author found an interesting correlation. All the interviewees managed their inbox efficiently and did not reacted to incoming email messages as most of us do. They only checked their inbox twice throughout the day and batch processed all the emails instead of checking emails every hour. Most successful people treated email like any other tasks and have dedicated a time for checking their inbox. They made sure that they don’t waste too much time on emails.
7. Go On A Much Needed Vacation
Are you surprised to see going on a vacation on a time management hack list? Unbelievably, most successful entrepreneur thinks that way. According to CNBC, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and many other CEOs consider vacation as a time management hack. Even some scientific studies prove that going on a periodic vacation can actually boost your productivity. A study conducted by project showed that employee who goes on to vacations has lower stress and higher productivity.
Top Time Management
After reading this article, you might have understood the difference between how we manage our time and how most successful people manage their time. Use some of these aforementioned time management hacks and do more in less time like the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Start by experimenting with some of these hacks and then take it from there.
Stop wasting so much time on your social media and start being more productive! Time is money after all.
Which time management hack do you use to manage your time efficiently throughout your workday? Feel free to share it with us on Twitter @MikeSchiemer #LeanStartupLife. We would love to hear from you and your productivity hacks.
I hope you enjoyed this helpful article on 7 time management hacks from business and productivity experts.
Interested in more articles about improving performance?
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