How to Manage Time Wisely | Tips by Kapeel Gupta, Career Counsellor

Has your to-do list has gotten out of control? Maybe you’re asking, “How can I improve my time management skills?” So, this is the right podcast for you. I’ve put together a step-by-step process to help you figure out how to manage time wisely along with 5 key strategies to help you stay on track.

As you rise up the ladder of success, it feels like your time shrinks. The more successful you get, the less time you have. The information that I am going to share with you today will equip you to better manage your time so that you can be more effective and achieve your goals faster.

Let’s begin with the benefits of Time Management.

Time management is often referred to as productivity. You may be asking, “How can I make myself be more productive?” It helps to have a solid motivation – to understand why it’s worth the effort to pursue time management practices.

Why take the time to get good at time management? Good time management is essential to success. And it’s not limited to success in the workplace. Success as a friend, parent, spouse, fitness, anything… requires good time management skills.

Achieving success in any endeavor requires giving it the proper amount of time at the right time. Time is one of the most valuable commodities that you have. Taking the time to learn how to manage your time is a very good use of your time.

Time management is a particular challenge for young adults just launching out on their own. According to a survey about half of the college kids felt like they were underperforming due to poor organizational skills and 88 percent of the college students said they want to improve their ability to manage their time.

As Peter F. Drucker, one of the most widely-known and influential thinkers on management,

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”

For most young adults, their schedules and priorities have been managed for them. Independence means unprecedented freedom and responsibility. Not knowing how to manage their time leads to missed deadlines, increased stress, and poorer performance at school or in the workplace. This is a particular struggle for youth today.

“Time is money,” they say. But maybe time is more valuable than money.

As founder and CEO of Life Hack, Leon Ho put it

“If you lose money, you might get a chance to make it back; but a wasted hour is irreplaceable.”

Being busy doesn’t mean you’re being productive. You can be very busy, without living out your priorities or moving closer to your goals. It’s a frustrating and disappointing place to be and not a good use of your time. You must learn what your most important tasks are and how to prioritize them.

As you probably know we are living in an age of unprecedented speed and volume of information. This has led many of us to feel like we are dealing with an information overload. But according to David Allen, creator of the “GTD” (get things done) method, when we get stuck, it’s not due to an issue of information overload, but a decision-making overload.

It’s the unplanned, in-the-moment decision-making that most often kills productivity.

​Now Let me introduce you to Five Steps To Manage Time Better

Sometimes it’s really hard to know where to begin, when getting anything organized. Time is no different – maybe even more challenging to organize, being intangible. So these five steps can help you figure out where to begin and keep going forward as you learn how to manage time wisely.

Step 1. Define Your Goals.

If you aren’t clear about your goals, values, and priorities, it’s hard to make a plan and hard to make a good decision on the fly. Get specific, write them down. Maybe get a planner.

​When your friends invite you out to a party the night before a big test, and you haven’t established that you want to get an A in chemistry, then you probably aren’t going to prioritize staying home and studying.

Step 2. Download A Complete List Of Your Activities

Make a list of everything you need to do and add anything else you usually do. While this may sound burdensome, it’s more important than it appears because it:

• Lightens your mental load
• Reveals non-productive activity
• Helps you get a picture of your current workload
• Clarifies which tasks you may need to work into your schedule

​​It’s important to write down your to-do list because your brain can’t operate at its best when you try to keep track of all your to-do’s in your head.

Rather than solving problems, it’s repeating your to-do list.

Let me give you another example.

Let’s say your brain is a smartphone. You’ve been taking pictures and your phone storage is full. It’s operating slow and refusing to take more photos. What do you do?

You get those photos off of your phone so that your phone can continue operating as a phone, not a photo warehouse.

An efficient mind works the same. At some point, you can become overloaded with things to do. In order to clear some working space, you need to upload so that your brain has space to think and create, not just store repeated meaningless information.

Step 3. Prioritize Your Activities with a Time Management Matrix

The Eisenhower matrix is one of the most popular time management tools, especially for setting priorities.

And yes, it’s named after 34th US President Dwight D. Eisenhower!
Advice from the two-term President, 5 Star General, and the first Supreme Commander of NATO is worth listening to!

Oh, and did you know this guy squeezed in over 800 rounds of golf during his Presidency?

In short, this tool works by having you sort your task list into four categories.

1. Do First – This is where you put your most urgent and important tasks

2. Schedule – These tasks are important enough to get on your calendar, but not urgent and can be done later.

3. Assign – These are tasks that are urgent, but not important enough to take from your limited time. These can be delegated or automated.

4. Diminish – Neither urgent nor important, these are tasks to remove, reduce, or do only for fun in your after-hours.

Step 4. Plan Your Schedule.

You now should have all the information that you need to make a solid plan. Set up a blank calendar. It can be a spreadsheet, paper, or application.

1. Schedule your time inflexible, high priority activities first

2. Schedule your deep or hard work around your highest energy levels.

3. Fill in your schedule with your lower priority activities

4. Remove the lowest priority items altogether or set them aside as “schedule treats” .

Step 5. Develop Strategies To Keep You On Plan.

Remember, it’s the unplanned in-the-moment decision-making that most often kills productivity.

The purpose of the plan is to have the decisions made so that you can confidently focus your energy on actions that are worth your time at the right time.

This doesn’t mean your schedule won’t require some tweaking and flexibility, especially as you get started; but as a default, stick to the schedule.

So these were the 5 steps to manage your time. But how to keep yourself on track. I Shall also give you 5 Time Management Strategies that will keep you motivated to stick to your plan.

1. Set artificial deadlines to create space and structure.

Do you need to be there at 3 pm?
Aim for 2:45 pm.

Do you need to get through your emails?
Set a deadline to empty your in-box by Friday noon.

Blog post taking too long to write?
Set a timer to finish the first draft.

2. Give yourself “schedule treats.”

Schedule treats are low value, but fun or relaxing indulgences
– this might be something like scrolling through social media, listening to music, meditating, reading, etc

Did you get there early?
Spend your waiting time catching up on Instagram.

Did you empty your email inbox early?
Spend your extra time reading a favorite book.

3. Pick your top 3 activities for each day.

You can either choose the night before or the morning of.
Maybe you make the list the night before and re-evaluate in the morning. Whatever the case, start your day by being clear on your priorities.

In addition, I find it helpful to have a list of the most important tasks written out 1-3 months in advance. I pick one thing each day as my most important task – that one thing that is the priority over all else for that day. This bird’s eye view helps me see & plot out movement forward towards my goals more effectively.

4. Do similar little tasks together.

Batch task the little things 2–5-minute tasks
For example, do all your tasks that require driving together.

Or tack them on to your routine for 2 minutes or less:
Wipe your bathroom sink when you finish getting ready in the morning
Take out the trash as you head out the door

5. Multitask judiciously.

Honestly, most experts recommend ditching multi-tasking all together.
They say multi-tasking often only feels more productive. Some studies indicate it does more damage than good.

According to an article in Forbes, it “kills your performance and even damages your brain.” Others, myself included, find that combining low-importance tasks works well.

Conclusion

Maybe you already know some of this and just haven’t taken the steps to get more productive. You may wonder, “Why is it so hard for me to be productive?”

Perhaps you don’t feel like you have time to manage your time. You think working faster in your current pattern will pay off. Remember, being busy doesn’t mean you’re being productive. In fact, busyness can be a barrier to true productivity.

Always Remember!!! Making time for time management is like using a wish to ask for more wishes. It pays off in spades.

I hope you find this blog useful. Don’t forget to share your learnings in the comments below. There is a gift for you. When you share your learnings in the comments, also share your email as part of the comments. You can get a 1-2-1 Free 30 minutes consultation. So Go For it.