How To Effectively Manage Your Time

He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.

- Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

This post came as a response to a question from a friend and fellow writer, on Twitter who is having trouble staying on top of her email and other tasks.

Good news Sara, you’re not alone. Time management is something I am constantly struggling with. Indeed it’s almost comical to think that I personally am writing a post on how to manage time! Anyway, there are tips and tricks that I have picked up along the way that hopefully others will also find effective.

Honesty, Discipline and Automation

Before you try to implement any time management strategy there are two traits you must employ, honesty and discipline. A lot of the tasks you want to do are not going to be tasks you need to do. It’s very important therefore that you are honest with yourself about the task at hand.

You’re also going to have to discipline yourself to stick with whatever strategy you opt for. It’s no good coming up with a plan and then not sticking to it.

The most effective time management strategy is to cut down on the amount of tasks that need doing. The best way to accomplish this is to automate as much of a task as possible, be it a part of the task or (preferably) the entire task itself. Who wouldn’t love a one-touch button to fix whatever problem they have?

Take emails as an example. You may find yourself writing the same or similar response to several email enquiries every day. If you use GMail then you need to use canned responses (under Settings > Labs).

Examples of automation exist all around you, you just need to look. Writers use templates for all sorts of things as do web designers. Programmers keep libraries of code for use on multiple projects. The list goes on.

For every task you have to do ask yourself, “is there a way I can make this task easier?”

The Leftovers

Unfortunately we cannot automate everything. For what’s left try one or more of the following.

• Break down tasks into groups: the “absolutely must be done right now this minute or else the universe will come to an almighty climatic and thunderous end the likes of which no Star Trek episode has ever seen”, and “meh, it can wait”.
  The number of levels is entirely up to you; e.g. stuff that needs to be done today, stuff that needs to be done this week and stuff that needs to be done this month. Be honest about the urgency. A good place to start would be, is this task going to bring in money – emailing your friend probably isn’t.
• Produce a timetable. Split your day into one hour blocks and plan your tasks. Don’t forget to set blocks aside for you. Reward yourself with an hour or two to do whatever it is you do to relax. As with all your daily tasks use that time for that purpose. It’s important that you don’t even eat into your reward time whenever possible.
• Good is good enough. Don’t get caught up in the details or fall into the trap of perfectionism. As General George S. Patton once said, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”.
• Write a to-do list. My friend and former manager Tracy had a great system for her to-do list. She’d list tasks that had to be done in descending order of priority that day. At the end of the day she’d write tomorrow’s to-do list starting with any tasks that weren’t done today.
• Turn off distractions. These are anything and everything that take away from the time you’ve set aside to complete a task; Twitter, e-mail, Instant Messenger, mobile phone. It helps if you set time aside for these tasks separately.

The Other Resource: Money

Finally of course there’s the other resource we all have, money.  Consider spending money to save you time; hire an assistant to help you,  hire a professional to handle other business tasks – Accountants, Solicitors and so on. You may also want to consider outsourcing as another effective time management strategy.

So there you have it, my list of effective time management tips. Remember whatever you decide to do, stick to it.

Now I’m going to hand the reigns over to you. What do you do to manage your time? Do you do something I haven’t mentioned? Maybe you can expand on one of my points above. Please comment and share with us your tips and tricks for effective time management.

As always thanks for reading.

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