Essential Time Management Tips to Optimize Your Work Productivity
Most people try to manage everything they have to do through multitasking and squeezing in as much work in one day as possible.
The thing is that too much time allotted to work and especially specific tasks results in the opposite of productivity.
Too many tasks and choices have the same effect.
Time management comes down not to time management per se, but to energy and productivity management and optimization.
The more productive you are, the less time you spend on a given task, and consequently, you manage your time better.
How can you optimize your energy? Follow these 29 steps to optimize your productivity and minimize the time you work.
For optimized learning and information intake, these steps are broken down into units. Read through one unit at the time and during the next several days you’ll have all the knowledge you need.
Forget ‘Work Day’
The normal eight hour work day is a product of the industrial revolution.
By time, it has been accepted as the time period within which an employee should be able to get a day’s worth of work done. Today, it is deeply internalized in our work culture. If someone works more, we cringe. If someone works less, we cringe.
However, to properly manage your time you shouldn’t work according to a set amount of hours.
Instead, you should work in intervals.
Your brain can only focus for 90–120 minutes before it needs a break. Our bodies are programmed to go from a state of alertness to fatigue every 90 minutes, explains performance expert Tony Schwartz.
In a famous study, Professor K. Anders Ericsson noted that the best elite performers start in the morning and practice for three uninterrupted sessions of 90 minutes throughout the day. In other words, they would rarely work for more than four and a half hours a day.
In order to apply this to your work, you should work on a project for no more than four and a half hours a day. You divide tasks into 90-minute intervals and take a pause of 20–30 minutes after each 90-minute interval.
The afternoons can be spent doing less demanding work.
During your pauses, you renew your energy. Use pauses to do something that you find to be restorative, like napping, reading a novel or going for a run.
Get Some Sleep
Sleep is one of the most important factors for how productive you are, and consequently, how well you use your work time.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ formula for the amount of sleep that is needed for optimal productivity and time management.
However, too little sleep, which has been defined as less than six hours per night, will substantially affect your productivity.
Sleep researcher Daniel Kripke says that people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours are most productive.
More important than the amount of sleep you get is the quality of your sleep. To optimize the quality of your sleep follow this infographic:
Take Naps
Do you usually get a dip in the afternoon sometimes after lunch? You’re not the only one. We all are bound by what’s called Circadian rhythm. This is a 24-hour cycle that is determined based on the light and the darkness in our environment that among others affect our sleep-wake cycle. You usually get a dip in the afternoon, depending on your sleep cycle. This is what it looks like:
To avoid these dips, you should follow your own rhythm and take a nap.
Naps are crucial for your productivity. The benefits of daytime naps are many; among others, naps increase alertness, reduce stress and improve perception.
According to Tony Schwartz, a nap of 20–30 minutes is ideal to increase your energy levels. If you can’t take a nap, even a moment with closed eyes is better than no nap.
According to health writer Jane Langille, sleep researcher Dr. Sara C. Mednick found that 60–90 minute naps will do wonders for optimizing memory and focus.
However, the specific, optimal time of your nap depends on your sleep cycle. Use this Take a Nap Wheel by Dr. Mednick to figure it out. The optimal time is when REM and slow-wave sleep cross.
Start in the Morning
People who manage their time and are productive tend to get up early — earlier than the rest of us — and start their day with a set morning routine. This morning routine could be a 15 minute exercise program or planning ahead. It could even be a small symbolic thing, like having a cup of coffee.
You usually have the most energy right after you wake up and your brain is sharpest the first 2.5–4 hours of your day, says performance optimization blogger Eric Barker.
In addition, you have most self-control early in the morning. According to Tony Scwartz this is the time when you should complete your most important and challenging work.
Have a Rest Day
Recharging your batteries is essential for productivity and that’s why you should always allow for a rest day every week.
But how do you rest successfully? It might sound counter-intuitive, but according to productivity expert Laura Vanderkam, the secret to a rest day well spent is actually planning ahead.
If you plan to do ‘nothing’ on a given day, you will subconsciously do something and that something is probably not your favourite thing to do. In the end, you will feel as if you never have the time for those things you like doing most.
Also, a relaxing weekend includes some exercise and not spending a lot of time on doing chores or filling every minute with something to do.
Eat Healthily
Eating unhealthily could have a huge impact on your productivity; a study published in Population Health Management shows that the wrong nutrition is linked to a 66 percent increased risk of loss of productivity.
Let’s break down exactly how food affects your productivity.
What you eat converts into glucose by your body. Glucose, again, provides you with your energy levels. If you’re low on glucose, your attention drifts and you have a hard time staying focused.
Different foods are processed at different rates by your body. Soda, pasta, bread and cereal release glucose quickly. You gain energy fast, but this energy burst is followed by a slump. High fat meals require your body to work harder. As a result, your brain’s oxygen levels are lowered and you feel groggy.
You might know all this, but still, you go for these options. Why? Since you usually make your meal decisions when you are hungry and tired, you automatically go for fast food alternatives.
In order to eat what’s best for our productivity, you should consequently try not to resist your urges when you are tired and hungry.
Rather, you should make healthy eating the easiest choice available.
Decide what to eat for lunch and dinner in the morning. Opt for several small meals or healthy snacks instead of one big meal in the middle of the day. This will keep your blood sugar levels intact throughout the day.
So what food is good food? What snacks should you eat? A study by British Journal of Health found that the more fruits and vegetables people consume, the happier, more creative and more engaged they are. Vegetables and fruits help your body produce dopamine, which is essential for your curiosity, motivation and engagement.
Other food that increases your productivity are fish, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate, avocado, blueberries, raw carrots and wholegrain.
Exercise
President Obama swears by it; exercise makes him more productive.
And he seems to be right — according to a study published in Population Health Management, rare exercise is linked with a 50 percent increased risk of lowered productivity.
In fact, regular exercise improves several productivity areas as Ron Friedman sets out in HBR; improved concentration, sharper memory, faster learning, prolonged mental stamina, enhanced creativity and lower stress. Workout during work time could even increase productivity, a study by Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University shows.
Take a Vacation
Vacations have a huge impact on your productivity, a 2014 Oxford Economics study shows. In 2006, an Ernst & Young study found that for every additional ten hours that an employee vacationed, their performance report increased by 8% the following year.
This shows even on an international level. While Americans are probably the Western world’s most hardworking people, they are not the most productive. On average, Americans work 1,804 hours per year, while Germans work 1,436 hours. Yet, Germans get the same amount done in fewer hours per week.
Studies vary on how much time off is sufficient for successfully recharging batteries. Tony Schwartz recommends you to vacation for at least two consecutive weeks.
It’s important that you really rest during your vacation and don’t think of work while you do so.
Put your laptop aside and disconnect from e-mail and telephone calls.
Disconnect
Are you checking emails while eating breakfast? Checking the news while speaking to someone? You might feel productive, but in fact, you’re not.
You’re just getting the easy, small tasks done, says Michael Harris on Harvard Business Review. You might, in fact, be severely hurting your productivity.
You’re not a machine — your brain needs downtime. Instead of continuously checking emails and your phone, switch them off when you’re not working. If you’re always at work, you risk never really being at work.
Track Your Time
Many successful people think about opportunity costs for their time. In order to optimize their use of time, they figure out exactly what they use their time on.
Enter time tracking. Track your time by writing down what you do for every hour of the day. Besides figuring out your use of time, you will also be able to more realistically estimate how much time repetitive tasks take up. This is needed when planning your time (see n. 13 below).
There are several apps out there to keep track of what you actually spend your time on. Such apps are (in no particular order):
Timesheet (Android)
MyMinutes (iPhone)
Do Less
Our society praises hard work, which translates into working over-time and never taking time off work.
And sure, it’s logical. Our days are crammed with commitments. When we get more to do, we also prolong the time we work. You’d think that you would get more done this way.
As a result, employees are often rewarded for how many hours they spend on doing some task, but their productivity is seldom measured and rewarded in the same way.
Yet, productivity is what determines how much work they get done and the quality of that work.
Controversially, optimized productivity does not in any way correlate with more hours worked or multitasking.
This chart by The Economist shows how hours worked correlate with productivity. While there are other factors to take into account, this chart still gives a good overview of how increased productivity is a result of fewer work hours, not more.
The key to time management is, in fact, to spend more time doing less. This way, you optimize the energy you use for each hour you work, instead of dividing that energy over a number of hours.
But wait a minute! You have all kinds of commitments. How can you manage to ‘do less’? Plan your time and say no (see n. 13 and n. 23 below).
Work Towards Your Goals
To optimize your use of time and your productivity, you need to have goals that you work towards and that motivate you. Motivation drives productivity and to ensure that what you work on aligns with your goals, you should plan ahead.
First, create a master list. Write down everything you want to do or achieve in the future. It doesn’t need to be organized, just write it down.
When you have written down this master list, you should identify the most important and most urgent goals. Save your other life goals for later — after you have completed those most important goals.
Now, write down a list where you plan out how to achieve these fundamental goals. Want to achieve something in particular, like quitting your job? What are your expenses now? How much money would you need to earn monthly in order to keep up with your lifestyle? What should you do to get there?
Third, make a list for this year. What are your goals for this year? How do these goals align with your greater life goals? How will you achieve these yearly goals?
Now that you have all these goals and plans on paper, you should save this list and come back to it every once in a while to keep your motivation on top. When completing your daily tasks, you need to keep your goals fresh in mind — not in the back of your head — to really get your productivity flowing and optimize the use of as many hours a day as possible.
Create Monthly, Weekly and Daily Plans
This scenario might be familiar to you: You arrive at work in the morning, feel productive and ready to kick it. Suddenly, an hour has passed when you were simply going over your tasks for the day — in addition, one of your most productive hours of the day (see n. 4 above).
An essential part of time management is to plan ahead.
Planning ahead on several different levels helps you keep organized, get your tasks done and makes you feel in control. In addition, your progress on a project will be more visible to you when you cross off completed tasks from your task list.
First, you should make up monthly lists: what do you plan to finish this month? How does that align with your yearly goals and your greater life goals? Are you on track with what you want to achieve?
While your monthly plan should not be a detailed list of every day of the month, you should list what you want to achieve that month and divide tasks for each week of the month.
That leads us to weekly plans: you should plan your week to keep your task list in check and make sure that you keep up with your monthly plan.
To create your weekly plan, you need to identify what tasks you should complete by the end of the week and allot time for completing them. Don’t forget planning your weekend or rest day (see n.5 above)!
Now that you have a weekly plan, start planning the day ahead the night before.
According to Brian Tracy, every minute spent planning your day saves you as much as ten minutes in execution. It takes about 10–12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but as a result, you will save up to two hours in wasted time.
If you make your plan the night before, you won’t even use your productive morning time (which should be used for your most important work). In addition, your subconscious mind will work on your list while you sleep and you will be ready first thing in the morning to tackle your to-dos.
You should make your plan as detailed as possible and allot specific times for each task. While a to do list with no specific times is better than no list, it’s better to plan ahead and have at least a rough estimate for when and how you will complete each task.
While you should write up unexpected tasks, you should also apply the Two Minute Rule. James Clear breaks it down: if a task takes less than two minutes, do it instantly. Why? It would take you much more time and energy to actually write down that task and then complete it at a later point.
Start With the Hardest Task First
If you accomplish the hardest task in the early morning, you will have a great start on the day, feeling accomplished and all other tasks will feel so much easier. You will be more productive and spend less time procrastinating on this task.
However, to properly manage your time, you need to distinguish plain “hard tasks” from hard tasks that are actually important.
By accomplishing unimportant, hard tasks, will you get closer to finalizing your project?
No — completing an unimportant, hard task is wasted time. Focus on hard and important tasks.
Prioritize
Getting a lot done is not the same as being productive if you want to achieve a particular goal, such as completing a project.
To break this down, efficient people are not necessarily effective. A person who is efficient, but not effective, spends time on unimportant tasks. A person who is effective prioritizes his or her tasks and produces results.
To be effective, you need to prioritize your tasks.
And how do you prioritize, how do you know which tasks are important?
Distinguish between urgent and important tasks.
It’s natural for us to prioritize urgent tasks. After all, they are urgent, so they feel important.
That’s not the case and this leads us to the Eisenhower method.
Eisenhower was a real productivity genius and realized that urgent tasks are seldom important and vice versa.
There are four kinds of tasks:
Urgent and important. This could be giving first aid to someone or managing a crisis at work (these tasks are of course not comparable as such, but for the sake of the Eisenhower method they are).
Important but not urgent. Sleeping and eating right or being a great parent to your kid.
Not important but urgent. Phone calls or emails.
Not important and not urgent. Watching a YouTube clip or checking Facebook or Instagram.
Break Goals into Tasks and Bigger Tasks into Smaller Tasks
Many of us are experts on getting projects started, but less talented in actually finishing them.
A goal can easily become an unclimbable mountain, because it seems so unattainable.
That’s why you need to break it down into tasks.
But also tasks can become unmanageable if not broken down into smaller tasks.
By breaking down tasks and goals, you make it easy to get started on each subcomponent of your goal or task and this, again, helps you finish it.
Apply the Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle is a familiar term in relation to productivity optimization. As Scott Young writes in Lifehack, eighty percent of the output comes from twenty percent of the input. In other words, eighty percent of your tasks can be managed in twenty percent of the time.
And how does this translate into your daily life?
A small portion of your efforts is producing most results, so pick 20% of tasks that create most results and focus on them.
This isn’t to say that you should see your whole life as one cake and cut out 80% of that cake. Rather, you should cut the cake into smaller pieces and focus on 20% of a particular piece, which you identify to produce the most results.
To find those 20%, ask yourself questions like: when are you most productive? When do you have the most qualitative interactions with friends? How and when do you work out best?
Find Intrinsic Motivation
Researcher Keisuke Fukuda asserts that task completion is optimized by adding your own deadline together with a reward for completing the task.
However, according to author Dan Pink, rewards don’t seem to be as effective in terms of general productivity. Here, the rewards seem to work only for work that has a simple set of rules and a clear destination.
For work that requires creativity, cognitive skills and problem solving, rewards lead to no different or poorer performance. For such work, people are in general motivated by things that matter to them and because the work is a part of something that is important to them. Here, we are directed by a) the desire to direct our own lives, b) to be able to continuously improve something that matters and c) being a part of something that is bigger than ourselves.
In other words, a carrot-stick approach seems to be viable for the completion of repetitive tasks, but for general productivity, you need to find intrinsic motivation.
Don’t Multitask
Juggling a lot of tasks at the same time seems like a great idea — after all, the more you do, the more you get done.
Well, no.
Your brain can get overwhelmed when faced with multiple tasks, as one study shows. Instead of simultaneously focusing on all tasks, your brain moves its attention from one task to the other and doesn’t focus on any of them.
Especially smartphones make us multitask and are really bad for our productivity. Our constant connectivity makes us bad at communicating. Ironic!
High-tech jugglers (people who keep up several messaging and email threads or jump from one website to the other while working) are taking a big mental hit. A Stanford study shows that they are worse at switching from one task to the other, focusing and memorizing than people who don’t multitask. A University of London study from 2005 shows that your IQ suffers a fall more than twice compared to marijuana smokers.
Multitasking clearly has at least some negative effect on your overall performance. The next time you feel the urge to check your phone while talking to a friend or while you are at a meeting, resist it.
To really optimize your productivity and time management, you might even consider batching together similar work. Your brain has to adjust each time you switch to a completely new task, so by batching together similar tasks, like tasks that require writing or reading, you help your brain in transitioning from one task to the other.
Be Decisive
Do you know that feeling of analysis paralysis? When you want to live healthier, you soon realize that there is a lot of advice out there on how to best exercise and eat healthy.
The fact that we live in a world of information overload is not helpful. You get confused and end up not choosing any of the options. This leaves you feeling unfocused, running from one thing to another and never really properly completing anything at all.
However, you actually don’t have a problem with focusing, just making a decision, says James Clear on Buffer. Too many options make you unfocused, and this, in turn, leads to your inability to be decisive.
Clear emphasizes the importance of picking one of the options, focusing on one task and getting started. Practice this rigorously and get rid of your indecisiveness.
Cut the Distractions
The average worker is interrupted 11 times an hour, which leads to a productivity loss of 90 minutes, every day. To avoid distractions, Dale Bell at Under30ceo recommends that you put away everything that is not essential for the task at hand, such as your phone, and log off Facebook and your email account.
While you can’t do anything about noisy co-workers or a micromanaging boss, you can appear distracted to them. The next time your co-worker starts rambling, ask: “Can you make it quick? I have a phone call coming up.”.
And those never ending emails? There’s an easy remedy for those, too.
Instead of checking them once in a while, you should check them only a couple of times a day at a specific time. Depending on the nature of your work, check them two-three times a day at certain times, so for example at 11am and again at 3pm.
Avoid Procrastination
Procrastination, “doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time”, is something we all are guilty of once in a while.
While procrastination is a bad habit, it can definitely be unlearned; for example by using Seinfeld’s productivity secret, which works for repetitive tasks that you complete for longer or shorter periods.
This method is simple: you have a goal and you have tasks to get to that goal. To get those tasks done, get yourself a big wall calendar and a red marker. Then, for each day that you complete the task, you get to mark that day with a big, red X. After a few days, you have a chain that just grows longer. Now, you can’t break the chain. That’s your job — not to break the chain.
Another method, to get started with a specific task, is the 5 minute rule. Simply, commit to doing a task for five minutes. Often, you’ll continue beyond these 5 minutes and soon, you’ll enter into a flow state.
Say No
Warren Buffett is undeniably a time management guru. In 1991, he told Bill Gates to keep his schedule as empty as possible by saying no. Otherwise, other people set the agenda in your life.
As Kevin Ashton writes, “no” is the key to creativity. Without time, you can’t get your work done and create. It’s as simple as that, but since most of us are taught to say “yes” and not “no”, it’s easier said than done. As Ashton puts it: “’No’ makes us aloof, boring, impolite, unfriendly, selfish, anti-social, uncaring, lonely and an arsenal of other insults. But ‘no’ is the button that keeps us on.”.
Your Willpower is Limited
Willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to reach long-term goals.
According to willpower researcher Roy Baumeister, there are three things you need to do to achieve your goals: (1) establish the motivation for change, (2) monitor your behavior towards your goal and (3) use willpower to reach your goal.
Every day, you use a certain amount of willpower.
You work on a report, instead of checking Instagram or Facebook.
You go to the gym, instead of watching TV.
You know the drill.
According to American Psychological Association, studies show that willpower is like a muscle that gets tired of overuse. The reason for this is not clear, but a study by University of Toronto shows that the brain functions differently after willpower has been tested. It’s also been shown that brains that work hard to resist urges are low in glucose and that your brain in this way gets tired faster than if you don’t exercise willpower.
However, the good news is that the results vary if based on beliefs and attitudes. A study by the University of Albany shows that people who used willpower to please others (and felt compelled to do so), got tired much faster than those who used willpower for their own goals and desires.
Also mental beliefs matter. A Stanford University study shows that people who believe that willpower is restricted are more easily depleted compared to those who think willpower is not easily exhaustible.
In short, be conscious about how you use your willpower, but at the same time, have confidence in your ability to muster willpower.
Create Deadlines
Having your own mini deadlines for different parts of a task, project or goal helps you keep on track with your work and time management.
To keep your deadlines, writer Jenna Avery recommends you to trick your mind into believing your deadline is of importance or actually making yourself accountable to the deadline through social accountability.
Another trick Avery recommends is to keep your future self in mind. Especially for your goals, your future self will kick him/herself if you don’t move forward with your work today.
Get an Accountability Partner
An accountability partner, a person to whom you willingly give an account for your actions or motives, is an effective way to keep your productivity and time management in check.
The best would be to find a friend or acquaintance with a project of their own, so that you can be accountable to each other.
It’s essential that your accountability partner is trustworthy, so that he or she actually keeps you accountable for your work.
Also, your accountability partner should not be condemning, but challenge you to keep on working on your goal.
Manage Your Work Environment
Small tweaks in your existing work environment can have a big impact on your productivity.
Noise level. Although the best noise for you depends on your own preferences, ambient noises (such as coffee shop noises) have been shown to be optimal for creative work. Silence is better suited for work that requires deep focus.
Light. There seems to be a big difference in whether you are exposed to daylight versus artificial light; according to a study, artificial light makes you sleepier and more stressed.
Temperature. A Cornell University study shows that cold environments are bad for your productivity. The reason is simple; you use energy to keep warm, which means that your energy level drops faster and leaves less room for being productive.
Be organized. Another way to be productive is to make sure your work desk is organized at all times. Not only will this help you find what you need much faster, it will also help you keep a balanced mind.
In addition to making sure that your work environment is optimized, changing your work environment every once in a while can help you regain productivity. For example, you can go to a coffee shop in the afternoon, when you usually experience a small dip due to your circadian rhythm.
Avoid Decision Fatigue
Making decisions degrades your ability to make further decisions and you can experience decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is a real productivity killer and the more decisions you have to take at work each day, the more important it is to limit your overall decisions.
Something Obama do and Steve Jobs did is to wear the same uniform every day. In addition, you can limit the decisions you take about when and what you eat and when you work out by having a set schedule.
By starting your morning with a 15 minute exercise routine, you build a habit and get your morning started in the most productive way possible.
Have Time for Yourself
To both boost your creativity and let your mind get some well-deserved rest, you should have at least one hour per day for yourself. Exercise, read, take a walk or eat lunch by yourself.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner schedules between 90 minutes and two hours of “empty time” every day, broken down into 30- to 90-minute blocks, to have the time to think and take in what goes on around him.
Conclusion
These 29 time management tips are crucial for your productivity. However, remember that not every tip might suit your individual situation. Choose the ones that do and get your productivity to soar!
I’d love to know: how are you going to optimize your own productivity and mange your time?
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Originally published at 99 Smart Ideas.
