Time can get away from us at the best of times, especially at work. Most employees have an endless list of duties to fulfill on a daily basis, which can make reaching milestones seem impossible.
Never has effective time management been more important, in a business world where staff face increasing demand.
One way to maximize your time is by improving productivity, but how easy is that in reality?
Well, fortunately with the range of technology at our disposal there are various tools you can leverage to make the most of your time.
The main goal is to perform to the best of your ability with the limited time you have, while preferencing quality above all else.
Employee training is a great way to further your team’s aspirations, especially when integrated with technology.
Technology allows us to leverage resources in ways we could have never imagined, so taking advantage of one of many time management tools is a wise move.
In addition to embracing digital innovation, you’d be wise to adopt various time management techniques too, which will work in conjunction with these tools.
A combined approach will help you lead a more organized life, to reclaim a resource you can never get back.
To help on your quest to better managing time, here are a combination of time management tools and techniques which might just change your life.
Time Management Tools
If you feel as if your time isn’t best spent, Rescue Time is an app which will help you allocate it more sensibly. Its advanced algorithms indicate where you’re wasting time, signaling critical areas of improvement.
Identifying problem areas can be difficult for individuals who have become so used to the status quo they’re oblivious to non-productive activities stealing their time.
This app offers an external perspective, giving a breakdown of how things like social media are limiting productivity. You’ll be shocked and amazed when you realize how much time you’re wasting!
This will give you an opportunity to improve your life dramatically.
Procrastination is one of the most common time killers known to mankind.
Instilling a culture that doesn’t accept procrastination begins at the onboarding stage. Teaching your team from early on will encourage them to adopt a positive, productive mindset.
It’s easy to stay ‘just get on with it’, but in reality things aren’t always that clear cut. Sometimes procrastination can derive from a feeling of being overwhelmed.
With so much to do, it can feel like there’s an impossible mountain to climb. This can eat into productivity, where increased pressures and the concept of huge tasks ahead of you can have unintended consequences.
Fortunately, this app will help you through these type of situations. It is based on the Pomodoro Technique, which focuses on alleviating anxiety. Free yourself from time constraints and enhance your focus tenfold.
This is great for tracking the time you spend on each project. It identifies how you’re currently allocating time, pinpointing the projects and tasks which consume significant resources.
Like many time management tools, Toggl gains significance with its ability to analyze information. This allows users to assess areas of importance, working out where and how to manage duties more effectively.
If you’re the type of worker who coordinates multiple devices, you’ll appreciate the difficulty of balancing everything.
To assist with the management of multiple functions, this app will make your life a whole lot easier. This is one of many time management tools which are free. It also has compatibility with various business components.
From Email to Mobile, manage your jobs like a boss! You can receive reminders wherever you are, and free up mental capacity to focus on core competencies.
If you’ve ever tried to track time and measure productivity for yourself or your team, then it’s more than likely that you’re fully aware of how problematic time tracking can be.
Time Doctor makes it pretty straightforward to accurately track time with the click of a button.
It’s a feature-rich time-tracking tool used by a wide variety of companies of different sizes for managing remote teams, digital agencies, software teams, remote support agents, and freelancers. It offers some interesting features such as accurate website and application monitoring, beautiful reporting, privacy controls, and a notably cool feature that gives you a friendly nudge when it detects that you might be distracted by a less productive task.
Time Management Techniques
The Right System
Sometimes the simplest methods are the best.
Properly organizing your daily tasks goes a long way, and this can be achieved with a ‘to do’ list. This is an essential step towards realizing your goals, and can provide clarity amidst an otherwise uncertain work scope.
With this being said, it’s important to plan with flexibility in mind, so you’re prepared to meet the ever-changing nature of your work environment.
Prioritize
You should appreciate which tasks are most important, which can be performed easily, and which are most urgent.
By doing so, you’ll arrange your daily duties accordingly. Sometimes there’ll be a small window of time to complete lower priority tasks, and other times you’ll need to work through pressing issues above everything else.
By getting your priorities in order you’ll be much better off, and you can separate your tasks into categories as follows:
A – Vital
B – Important
C – Need to be done fairly soon
Avoid Distractions
There are many distractions in today’s world, from social media to email.
We have a tendency to regularly glance at our phones, but this eats away at productivity. Every second you look at your phone breaks concentration, and can amount to considerable time wasted.
Avoid urges engaging in non-productive tasks, instead getting straight to the heart of what’s needed. Channel discipline and make a conscious effort to liberate yourself from the shackles of time wasting!
