6 Time Management Tricks Successful People Use to Boost Their Productivity to 100%
Gentleman. We’ve heard it again and again. Time is our most valuable asset. It’s the one thing we can really never get back. Given the increasing number of things we need to juggle in our lives, it’s no surprise that time management is just one of those topics that I think everyone universally talks about at some point or another. A properly managed day is like an enigma that stumps everyone.
But the fact of the matter is we all have the same 24 hours in each day. So how does it seem like all these people online have everything organized and achieve so much every single day. They wake up, have a great breakfast, hit the gym, work on their side hustle, go to work, spend time with their families and everything in between. Well, the truth is simply that they are organized and smart with their time.
That my friends, is good news because it means we can do it too. By implementing some key time management strategies, we can take control of our day, maximize our productivity and achieve whatever it is we want to achieve.
I have spent years learning about productivity and time management from various books, courses and online resources and I am here to spill the beans on the most important actions you can take to maximize your time. We’ll also go over a number of useful productivity tools to help make things more effective, efficient and enjoyable. Let’s go have a good time.
The Strategies of Effective Time Management
Plan Ahead
You probably know how the saying goes; “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail”. Wise words from brother Benjamin Franklin. One of the most effective things you can do to be prepared is to plan your tasks the night before. It will take you just 5, maximum 10 minutes before bed to outline your goals for the next day, so you can hit the ground running as soon as you wake up
Benefits of Planning Ahead:
- It helps you prioritize the important things that need to get done
- It helps prevent you from forgetting what you need to do
- Your day is more organized
- It helps to reduce decision fatigue, as you already know what needs to be done, so you only need to focus on taking action
- Visualizing your day helps to account for time needed for everything and potential difficulties that could occur, so you will be able to manage them better
- By allocating time for your tasks & goals, you are more likely to complete them
We’ll discuss how you prioritize your tasks in the next section (spoiler alert), but you ideally want just a few important things that are of significance to better your life.
Common Problem:
It’s never advisable to cram a bunch of tasks on your to-do list on the dot of every minute. Knowing how life goes, you will definitely encounter distractions that will push your time a bit. While a well-structured schedule is crucial, it’s essential to remain flexible and prepared for unexpected events or disruptions. This is where a technique called time blocking can be helpful.
One productivity method I highly recommend you try when planning things out is time blocking. You would divide your day into blocks of time, where each block is dedicated to a specific task or group of tasks. This will give you flexibility and set focus to accomplish each set of tasks just for that timeframe. Building buffers into your schedule can help accommodate unforeseen circumstances without derailing your entire day.
Nice example of time blocking from Todoist
You may be wondering now what’s the best way to plan your day. There are so many calendar and to-do apps nowadays which you can utilize to organize and schedule all your tasks. Some of the popular ones include:
- Todoist
- Fantastical
- TickTick
- Things
- Actions by Moleskine
If you prefer something more tangible, you can always use a physical planner book to structure out your day. If you’re more of a digital nomad, you can get yourself a digital planner which you can access on your mobile, tablet and laptop. The Notability app has many planner templates (both free and paid options are available) which I’ve found to be quite nice.
So there’s really nothing stopping you from planning out your day and taking that first step to being more organized. Try it and see how it changes your day.
Prioritize
The second crucial step to take is to ensure you prioritize your tasks. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. You can probably understand how prioritizing your tasks will help you get the most important things done first, so you can start your day with a win. But how exactly do you go about prioritizing?
Method #1: The Eisenhower Matrix
While there are a good number of techniques for prioritization, one of the most common methods is the Eisenhower Matrix. I quite like the origin story here so I will briefly mention it if you don’t mind. In a 1954 speech, US President Dwight Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president when he said, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” The man’s not wrong. Years later in 1989, Stephen Covey, author of the ludicrously famous book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, took Eisenhower’s words and used them to develop the now-popular task management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. It basically categorizes tasks according to importance and urgency.
Step 1:
You want to first list all your tasks for the upcoming day, personal and professional.
Step 2:
Think about your long term goals. What is really important to better your life, personally and at work. You always want to have your goals in mind if you are to actively work towards them.
Step 3:
Categorize your tasks according to the matrix and act on them accordingly. It’s that simple.
Quadrant 1 (Do) – These are the tasks that are at the front of your mind and are likely stressing you out the most. They’re important and urgent, so you start here.
Quadrant 2 (Schedule) – These tasks affect your long-term goals but don’t need to be done right away, you can schedule these tasks for later. First, finish the tasks from quadrant 1, then you can move on to the scheduled tasks. You can dedicate small amounts of time over the course of the week(s) to finish these.
Quadrant 3 (Delegate) – This quadrant is for tasks that must be completed now, but don’t affect your long-term goals. If you work with a team and have the ability to delegate it to others, go ahead, as you don’t want to spend a lot of time doing things that do not contribute to your goals. If delegating is not an option for you, you can treat these tasks in a similar way to the ‘Schedule’ tasks and try to find a pocket of time to finish them off.
Quadrant 4 (Don’t Do) – Once you’ve gone through your to-do list and added tasks to the first three quadrants, you may notice that a handful of tasks are left over. These unimportant, non-urgent distractions are simply getting in the way of you accomplishing your goals. Get rid of them.
Alpha Tip
One emerging category to consider when prioritizing tasks is ‘Significance’. This adds a whole new dimension to your to-do list. By adding significance along with importance and urgency, you include how significant this task is to your life and if it will have a lasting impact. Is this task going to better your future? For those of you who really want to make an impact or even change the world, this is something worth considering.
Method #2: The ABCDE Method
Another simple tool you can use is the ABCDE method. If you don’t feel like making a matrix or you’re more of a list aficionado, you can just assign your tasks into different categories as follows:
- A tasks are things you must do.
- B tasks are things you should do.
- C tasks are nice-to-dos.
- D tasks are tasks you should delegate to someone else.
- E tasks are tasks you should eliminate.
There are many other ways you can prioritize your tasks such as the Bubble Method, MIT and 1-3-9 technique. If you’re interested, i’ll link to an article here with details on all of them.
Maximize Your Day
Now that you’ve planned and prioritized everything, you’re already leagues ahead. In order to maximize your ability to get everything done, you need to maximize your time.
I’m sorry but you’ve got to wake up early. I know this is a struggle for a lot of people, especially since most people seem to be night owls nowadays, but the truth is, we live in a world where things happen in the daytime. Not to mention, there is a certain peace in the early hours of the morning if you can get yourself to be a part of it.
“There is a certain peace in the early hours of the morning if you can get yourself to be a part of it.“
I know some of us are genetically predisposed to being night owls and if you really can only work at night, it’s not the end of the world. Just plan your day accordingly. For the majority of people who are either morning people or in-between, this is really something you should work towards. It’ll take a couple days of discipline and tiredness, but you will get there as your body adjusts.
I do struggle with this as well and am on a journey to perfect my sleep to really optimize my days. If this is something that interests you, there is a full video/podcast series by Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Matt Walker, two of the leading names in sleep science and they cover everything you can imagine to optimize your sleep routine. Not to mention, there are articles, courses and everything in between.
Can you imagine having your most important task done by 10am? It’s like the day has just begun and you’re already done with something. You will feel so much more relieved and successful when you start the day with a win.
Start Small
Thing to Do #1:
Just start with 5 minutes. If you’re having a hard time getting started, just start with 5 minutes. Usually the unwillingness to do something is only there before you start.
Think about going to the gym. Before you go, you’re lazy, don’t feel like doing it, you tell yourself it’s fine to skip it today etc., but once you get there, you’re good to go. You try to get in a good workout (I should hope so). The same applies to general tasks; just show up. Set a timer for 5 minutes. If you feel like continuing, keep going. If you feel like stopping, you can stop. The point is to get something started without feeling overwhelmed to complete the task. Often, once I get something started, I find myself taking more than 5 minutes cause I now feel like finishing it or at least finish a good chunk of it.
If you keep repeating this day after day, you’ll find yourself building the habit of performing that task and incorporating regular work into your routine. Needless to say, that’s going to set you up for success.
“just show up. Set a timer for 5 minutes. If you feel like continuing, keep going. If you feel like stopping, you can stop.“
Thing to Do #2:
Another way you can start small is by breaking down big tasks into smaller ones. If you have any major goals in your life, I’m pretty certain you have a task on your list which seems daunting. It’s a big task that’s a bit overwhelming and you don’t really know where to start. Breaking the tasks down into simpler smaller ones will help you avoid procrastinating and will more likely allow you to get the job done sooner rather than later.
Just break it down. Split it into 3-5 (or more) easier tasks to make it more manageable. For example if I want to make money from real estate, what the hell do I do to complete this task? I certainly am not going to do it in a day. I would break it up:
- Learn about making money by real estate
- Assess my finances to understand my budget
- See what type of property fits my budget
- Do market research to see the available properties
- Contact the real estate agent to negotiate a deal
- Buy the property
- Tend to government regulations (if any)
- Check the furnishing and maintenance of the property
- Rent out the property
See how it clearly breaks down everything I want to do? Very manageable. Very demure (apologies to anyone reading this after 2024).
Be Smart With Distractions
Alright, you’ve got everything sorted out and you even started doing some work! Success, here we come! Wait, what’s that? A notification on your phone. Someone sent you a video of a cat playing the piano. Hilarious. Oh there’s another cat who’s actually Batman! Aaaand it’s been an hour.
“Wait, what’s that? A notification on your phone. Someone sent you a video of a cat playing the piano.“
Gentleman, you need to keep distractions at bay. These come in all shapes and sizes; from your TV and PlayStation (forgive me) to the notorious mobile phone. They WILL hinder your progress.
The key is to be disciplined and effectively manage them so that they don’t interfere with your productivity. Look, it’s quite unlikely that you are going to get rid of them altogether, so you need to embrace them. You should incorporate times in your day to allow for these distractions so that you can relax and not feel bad about missing out on your work.
We already spoke about time blocking, where you can block out chunks of time for different things. If you’re finishing all your main tasks during the daytime (imagine finishing it all in the morning, I’m drooling), you can certainly allocate 2 hours in the evening/night for PlayStation or to watch a movie with your wife There is usually time in the day to accommodate bits of everything. It’s all about being smart about your time.
What about the need to check your mobile all the time? I got you covered. Yet another productivity tool/technique you can use is called Pomodoro. This is where you set a timer – you can find these easily online – usually for about 25 minutes and work. When the timer rings, you take a break for 5 minutes. Here you can check your phone or have a chat with someone. When the break is done, back to work for another 25 minutes and repeat until you’re done with that task or your block for that time. Once you finish 4 pomodoros, you take a longer 15 minute break. Simple enough right? And honestly, it works. It does help me keep my phone aside when I see that timer ticking down.
Overview of The Pomodoro Technique from Shortform
Rewards & Rest
Now that you’re actively working on your goals and making the time to complete your tasks, you shouldn’t forget to reward yourself. Like the 4th law of Atomic Habits states (great book by the way), “Make it Satisfying”.
Make sure to give yourself rewards by getting to do something you like after you’ve completed your tasks. This could be getting some gaming time or treating yourself to something you crave after a week’s job well done. There are also a number of habit-building apps that track your progress and have intuitive ways of rewarding yourself habits. Some nice ones I’ve come across include:
Another way you can reward yourself is by simply taking time to rest and recharge. Yes, you may take breaks in between work sessions but I’m referring more towards taking a day or two to relax and not worry about any to-dos.
I’ve come across many stories online where people were basically burnt out from weeks/months of productivity and were just not performing the same anymore. They took like 2 days off and voila, good as new.
So taking a good break from time to time can actually improve your focus and productivity in the long run and keep your brain energized and healthy with period of work, rest and rewards. That’s what matters most right?
Conclusion
I think it should be pretty clear now that there are quite a number of things associated with time management and how you can really accelerate your productivity. It all comes down to being organized and discipline with what you do.
By planning ahead (ideally the night before) and prioritizing your to do list using techniques such as the Eisenhower Matrix and the ABCDE method, you can free your mind and set yourself up for action.
Make sure to maximize your day to maximize your time and chances of finishing everything you want. Certainly don’t forget to manage your distractions smartly so that you can get your tasks done as well as have fun, no sacrifices needed.
Don’t forget to reward yourself for building good habits, ticking things off your to-do list and of course, take breaks to rest and recharge as these can also impact your productivity. By implementing these strategies, time will become an issue of the past for you. You will definitely see an increase in your productivity focus and will be one step closer to achieving your goals. Who doesn’t love a more balanced and enjoyable life?
Stay skilled gentlemen.