This article is part one of a two-part excerpt from our latest downloadable guide, The Time Management Playbook: Building Success Hour by Hour.
Time is one of our most precious and finite resources. As a busy person, you know that managing your time effectively is imperative to getting everything done and avoiding burning out. Understanding how you spend your time and how to manage it ensures success in all facets of your life, from your personal to your professional life.
As a business owner, executive, busy parent, or lover of side hustles and passion projects, managing your busy lifestyle and still having time to relax and recharge is a luxury. But what if we told you that it is easier to do than you think?
Peachtree VA partnered with time management expert and author Laura Vanderkam to create a comprehensive guide that will equip you with research-backed strategies and actionable tips to reclaim your schedule, boost your productivity, and achieve a healthier work-life balance.
Download the complete guide here.
Assess Your Current Habits
Time Tracking
The first step to optimizing your time management strategy is to assess how you currently spend your time and manage your tasks.
“If you want to spend your time better, it’s important to know where the time goes now, because if you don’t know where the time goes now, how will you know if you’re changing the right thing? People are often surprised by what consumes their time, or consumes less time than they think.”
– Laura Vanderkam, Time Management Expert and Author
Download Laura’s free templates to track and categorize time spent here.
Here are a few tips for effective tracking. First, keep your log somewhere accessible. Second, decide when you’ll check in. For most people, 3-4 times a day should work. You can simply recall and record what you did since the last time you checked in.
While you build the habit, you might set an alarm to remind yourself. If you forget to check in, you can just approximate what you did. It’s better to keep going for the week, and not be sure about a few hours, rather than stop entirely.
A week is the cycle of life as people actually live it. Tuesdays matter, but so do Saturdays. If you want to see where the time goes, a week will give you a representative picture.
After you’ve finished a week, you can add up the major categories if you’d like (e.g. work, sleep, travel time, housework/errands, caring for or interacting with family members, friends, exercise, screen time, etc.).
Ask yourself a few questions:
- What do I like most about my schedule? It’s your life, and hopefully something is working well, which you can celebrate.
- What do I want to spend more time doing?
- What do I want to spend less time doing? (Or stop doing entirely?)
When it comes to tracking your tasks, note what you use for different aspects of your life. For example, most people use a project management tool at work but only have a to-do list for tasks at home. According to TimeWatch, people who report using a time management strategy use a to-do list (38%), a calendar (23%), or do whatever they think is most important (14%). 13% use email, and 5% use time-blocking.
Goal Setting and Prioritization
A survey by the University of Scranton revealed that only 8 percent of adults manage to achieve their goals; that’s a staggering 92 percent failure rate. To avoid joining that 92%, use the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal framework to ensure your goals are specific enough and have a deadline. According to a study published in the Journal of Management, people who set SMART goals are 90% more likely to achieve them than those who set non-specific goals.
When defining your goals, consider:
- What do you hope to achieve in the short-term (1-3 months) and long-term (6-12 months)?
- How will you quantify your progress and success?
- Are your goals aligned with your broader business or personal objectives?
- Do you have the resources and support needed to reach your goals?
Next, make sure you break down bigger goals into smaller, more achievable goals. Then, it’s a matter of figuring out how to prioritize these tasks to meet your goal deadlines. The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful way to categorize your tasks into four quadrants:
- Urgent and Important
- Important but Not Urgent
- Urgent but Not Important
- Not Urgent and Not Important
In general, most long-term goals fall in Quadrant 2, so you want to increase the time spent on that category. To do so, you’ll likely need to reduce the time spent on Quadrants 3 and 4.
Now that you’ve established your goals and prioritized your tasks, it’s time to put some practical, time-saving strategies into action. Download the full guide below or stay tuned for part 2 to learn more!
Get the FREE guide here.
