The one resource we all have the same amount of is time – how you spend it defines so much about your life. We’ve assembled a few tips to help you make the most of the time you have in your workday.
Managing your time needs to become a ritual, an ongoing process you follow to keep you focused on your priorities throughout the day.
- Do all of your invoicing and paperwork in set groups, so that you can pull things out all at once, and put them away more efficiently.
- Have 2-3 attainable goals for the day. No one is productive w/ endless to do lists.
- Learn to say no to projects where the time investment outweighs the return.
- Find the perfect GTD system out there: there are no magic answers, it’s simply the one you trust and use so your mind is free.
Know the strongest times of your work day. If you can match your best times for work with the most intense tasks, and your least productive times with more routine tasks, you’ll get more out of your day.
- Read emails before leaving for work, mentally process while commuting, then answer on arrival at the office.
- End your day by making a list of things you want to accomplish the following day.
Budget your time.
- If you find that emails are taking up a lot of time, set yourself a time limit.
- Hit unsubscribe once instead of delete 100 times.
- If a task is taking too long, leave it and come back to it refreshed (leaving for lunch can boost your productivity!)
Many thanks to the Twitter community for sharing your own tips for this article. We’ll announce the winners of our Time Savings Tuesdays contest next Tuesday (along with the new contest theme), and feel free to share your own tips in the comments!