Techniques for better time management

Do you know why many fail to finish what they start or new owners give up proceeding with their businesses? Mainly because they lack planning and continuity. But there is an easy fix to implement.

If you are not employed yet, work from home, do an online job, or work at an office, this article is very useful to manage your life to become productive. The key you are looking for is “Time Management”. To effectively use your time, you should create a plan for the tasks that you want to accomplish that day.

Business owners and aspiring minds, here are some essential techniques and tools useful to manage a productive day, and balance your work and daily life without stress.

The below techniques will help you to

• Reduced stress
• Increased productivity
• Better control of your workflow
• Ability to consistently meet deadlines

Read and find yours.

Pomodoro Technique

This is one of the most successful time management techniques. It can be useful if you are starting a new project, have too many tasks at hand, or have longer tasks to handle. It has six steps.

Step 1 - Decide on the task to be done.

Step 2 - Set the Pomodoro timer (typically for 25 minutes).

Step 3 - Work on the task.

Step 4 - End work when the timer rings and take a short break (typically 5–10 minutes).

Step 5 - If you have finished fewer than three Pomodoros, go back to Step 2 and repeat until you go through all three Pomodoros.

Step 6 - After three Pomodoros are done, take the fourth Pomodoro and then take a long break (typically 20 to 30 minutes). Once the long break is finished, return to step 2.

This technique is the best if you are new to dividing tasks and concentrating on one thing for a certain time period.

RPM (Rapid Planning Method)

If you feel like things are spiraling out of your control, or you don’t understand where to start, this technique is the best. Tony Robbins says “If you’ve got $10 billion but constantly live in stress, anger, frustration, worry or guilt, then your life is stress, anger, frustration, worry or guilt. Where focus goes, energy flows” So he invented RPM as a solution.

What do I really want?

What’s my purpose?

What do I need to do?

If you can answer these three questions for yourself, you can achieve anything you want, but the sequence is critical. You have the control of your life. Not the other way around.

The Eisenhower Matrix

Eliminate stress with the Eisenhower matrix. This method was made by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the US and he was a 5-star General during World War II. It is a way to organize tasks by urgency and importance, so you can effectively prioritize your most important work. When you follow this method, you won't have to be stressed because your urgent work is already done on time and you already have listed out the rest of the work and everything is under your control.

Your tasks should be listed in order of,

• Urgent and Important
• Important but not urgent
• Urgent but not important
• Not important and not urgent

At first, it might be hard but when you keep up with the suitable technique for your style for a time period, it becomes a part of you. Now here are the free online tools helpful to implement any of the techniques. You can always get an upgrade if needed.

Focus Booster

Focus Booster is a time management tool based on the Pomodoro technique. Helps to stay focused on specific tasks at a target amount of time. It limits distractions and evaluates where your time is wasted.

Asana

Asana is a project management tool that you can use with your colleagues or co-workers as well. Asana’s free plans allow for unlimited tasks and projects with collaboration between as many as 15 people. You can plan for the coming days, weeks, and months.

Its features include:

• Project briefing and approval tools
• Customizable project views including Kanban boards
• Task automation
• Built-in forms for data collection
• Free guest seats on paid plans

Everhour

You can adapt Everhour's web and app-based time tracker. It is compatible with several project management programs, including Asana.

• Timesheet approvals
• Manual time entry
• Workload planning
• Change logs
• Team reminders

Forest

Forest assists users in avoiding phone and internet-based distractions. The app always opens with a tree and a programmable timer. When you sit down to finish a task, you can start the timer of Forest. The tree is "planted" in your virtual forest and it will finish growing at the end of the countdown. However, if you do open another app on the phone during Forest time tracking, your forest will have a dead tree.

• A visual representation of time worked vs. when you broke focus
• Usage charts
• Adjustable work and break timers
• Audio tracks
• Website blocklists for Chrome
• iOS and browser-sync

Todoist

Todoist matches well with the Eisenhower matrix. It has the features to

• List out daily tasks
• Give tasks a priority level
• Share projects
• Set up reminders
• Add extensions and widgets on any device or platform
• Link Todoist with your calendar, voice assistant, and 70+ other tools
• Personal productivity recommendations based on your unique traits and strengths