Time Management Tools

 

Whether you are the owner of a small business, a high-powered executive in a fortune 500 company, a public service worker, an entrepreneur, or a busy person, the key leading a well-balanced life is time management. Being able to efficiently manage your time will not only allow you to get things done, but will also reduce your stress and increase your quality of life away from the office. The following tips and tools will get you started on the road to happy, healthy, productive days. After all, isn’t that one of our New Year’s resolutions?

The first step to effective time management is to take control of your day and determine how you are really spending your time. Do you realize how long you spend checking your email or how long it takes to put together the minutes from the morning meeting? Without knowing how you are currently spending your time, there is no way to adjust things so that you are more effective.
 

There are several time tracking tools available online, and many of them are FREE. Toggl is a collaborative time tracking tool that can be used via their website, as a browser popup, or embedded into your company intranet. Toggl allows you and your team to track time spent on specific tasks and provides you with comprehensive reports.
 

Another option, RescueTime offers time tracking solutions for individuals, small businesses and large enterprises and claims that on average, utilizing their service will recover 3 hours and 54 minutes worth of productive time per week, per person. Just imagine having nearly 4 extra hours in every week!
 

Once you know and understand how you are currently spending your time – typically an eye-opening experience – you can start to make changes. Being well-organized is a goal for nearly everyone, but in the world of effective time management, it is a must. The only way to be truly organized is to keep a list of your tasks, prioritize them, and keep track of your progress to completion of each.
 

Lists are wonderful. We make them before we go to the grocery store, we make them to let our kids know what is expected of them, and we should be making them for ourselves. Yes, we all like to think that we can mentally manage the hundreds of things we need to accomplish in a day. In reality, though, keeping that mental list keeps us moving and busy but often without direction which can lead to lots of work with few results.
 

The best way to tackle your tasks is to understand which things to do first, then work our way down the list. There are several free online tools to organize and prioritize our tasks that can be used by individuals or teams. Services like Checkvist, HiTask, and Task2Gather allow you to brainstorm, and create, organize, and publish lists so everyone knows what to do and when.
 

If you’re not comfortable managing your life online, then pull out the old DayTimer and start making daily lists. Franklin Covey has lots of great planning tools to keep you on task.
 

Now you are tracking your time and you have your lists of priorities the final step is to take control of your day instead of letting it control you.
 

Take a break from responding to messages: One of the biggest pitfalls is constantly checking voice mail and email. We don’t realize it, but next time you “quickly” check your email, time yourself using one of the time tracking services noted above. You may be surprised how a few clicks can turn into ten minutes. This might not sound like a lot of time, but if you check your email ten times during the day, that’s nearly two hours! Instead, try setting aside a small block of time in the morning and one in the afternoon to check and return messages and utilize your email autoresponder to send automatic replies and manage expectations of those who communicate with you via email.
 

Change your meeting habits:  Although well-managed meetings can be very productive, many meetings can be time wasters. It takes time to gather relevant items, get to the meeting space, wait for the late-comers, and exchange pleasantries, not to mention the time it takes in advance to schedule and plan the meeting  and exchange emails to find a time that works for everyone involved. Try a productivity tool like MeetingWizard to arrange and schedule your meetings, making the planning process easier and more efficient.
 

Write it Down:  As business people we are constantly busy and our minds are usually in overdrive. Some of our most clever ideas come at the most inopportune times – when travelling on the subway, rushing to a meeting, or while driving. Utilize Evernote to capture your thoughts, organize, and retrieve them later. Using your computer or phone, Evernote is always there so you can put your thoughts, things you see, things you want, and things you need into one place. This tool can save you time and save your sanity – no more scrambling to remember that inspiration you had but didn’t have a chance to write down. You can even record voice memos!
 

Simplify your password management: Keeping track of your passwords should be a simple task. However with all the tasks we can now perform online requiring user names and passwords, and with security risks at an all-time high, the number of passwords we need is often times more than our brains can handle. Lastpass, a secure online password manager, automatically fills in saved log-ins and forms with the click of a button. You will never again have to click on the “forgot password” button and wait for the confirmation email!
 

Tomorrow morning when you’re sitting at your desk with that first cup of coffee in hand, think about the 80:20 rule… 80% of your efforts will generate 20% of your results and 20% of your activities will produce the remaining 80% of your results! Then, start utilizing these time management tools and tips to help better manage your time and get more productive time out of your day.