Scale Up Your Time Management Skill by Putting These 4 Techniques Together
Time is the most valuable asset anyone in this world can have. In fact, we all have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 5.040 hours in a month and 60.480 hours in a year.
It is not “how I can earn more than 24 hours in a day” but “how I can spend those 24 hours in a day”. How we spend our time really matters.
On the other hand, you find all your listed goals are just still goals with no execution because you always think that you don’t have time?.
I think you don’t need more time. You need time management skills to leverage your productivity. Like all successful people do, they all are the master of time management.
I often faced this problem too. Therefore, I decided to study different methods and here are the 4 time management techniques that have helped me to increase my productivity.
#1. Ivy Lee time management
I used to have problems spending more time throughout the day deciding what things I should work on.
Thinking about whether I must first work on this or that stuff ?.
This tendency sometimes led me to a boring situation and as a result, I was still doing nothing with no progress. Then when the nights come, I would always blame myself and regret the things I couldn’t finish on that day.
“Why didn’t I do this ?
Why didn’t I work on that ?”
Finally, I found out that the Ivy Lee time management technique is useful to tackle the issue. The method was invented in 1918 and still works until today.
Suggestions on how to use this method, you are required to list down six important tasks which need to be accomplished in the following day.
The next day, then you just right away go through the list from the most important to the less important tasks until all the tasks are done.
Don’t worry if you have remaining tasks unfinished, because you can still move them to the following day again.
Let’s say you are working in a company and right now you are preparing to go back home. At the same time, you have to list down the next six important tasks on your notes that you are going to accomplish when you return to the office tomorrow. The next day, you just work on them one by one.
I like this method since it can also be adopted on a daily basis. The Ivy Lee technique absolutely helped me to stay focused and avoid spending much time deciding what to be done. I could save much time and prepare myself mentally before working on certain duties.
#2. Pomodoro technique
I want to tell you that multitasking is one of the big struggles I ever faced during the pandemic situation.
Are you the same ?.
It was always hard for me to maintain my focus due to social media distractions. Regularly checking my phone even if I was still working on an important task. This was not good and so bad. Until I studied and applied the Pomodoro technique.
The Pomodoro is simple and would be a good fit especially for you who are struggling with distractions like me. This method was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s which you can simply adapt into your daily activities as professionals or students.
You will be required to pick up one single task at a time and then set a timer for 25 minutes to work on it with no distractions. Just focus on that single task and try to hit as much progress as you can within that 25 minutes. After reaching those 25 minutes, you can take a 5-minute break. Repeat and follow this interval at least for 4 times in a row and then take a longer break for 30 minutes.
Follow the example as shown in the picture below.
I tried this when I worked on tasks such as writing and researching. It helped me minimize distractions and stay focused on completing things I needed to achieve. Sometimes I varied the time intervals. I put my focus on a certain 30 or 45 minutes and then take a 10-minute break. I found out that this is also working.
It depends on the situation and the task you do. The point is how you can commit to yourself to work on a single task during a certain amount of time.
#3. Time blocking technique
This time management technique is a method that suggests you put specific tasks in a certain range of time.
This technique was first introduced to me when joining the XL Axiata Future Leaders program and it is still working until today. There are some apps suggested but I prefer to use Google Calendar on my device.
For those of you who are new to this app, you can just click this link to watch this video I made for you.
It allows you to start blocking your time slots ahead in your Calendar. For example, I am going to make an appointment with you from 2–3 PM next week on the same day you are reading this article. Now, what I can do is to mark this agenda on my calendar so that my device is going to remind me when the time is close to the appointment. As simple as that.
#4. Eisenhower matrix
This technique is basically about categorizing your tasks based on the four quadrants that have been developed based on the level of importance and urgency. I learnt this from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ‘’ book by Steven Covey and it seems quite simple.
Steven Covey argued that many of us tend to respond and put higher priorities on executing high level urgency tasks without considering the level of importance of the activities. That’s why a lot of us are sometimes being trapped in quadrant 3 and 4 activities which give us no much contribution. Too much focus on these are leading to distract our main tasks.
On the contrary, we do also fail to manage our activities in quadrant 2 until they fall into quadrant one which becomes the major cause of stress and burn out.
Steven Covey suggested that If you want to become highly effective people, then quadrant 2 is the most ideal one. What we can do is to schedule our activities for a long period of time like setting a weekly or a monthly plan.
Set a certain time to schedule your weekly plans so that you will have more chances to do a lot more work on quadrant 2 activities.
Now think about your next moves.
What are the things that you want to achieve ? and then put them using the Eisenhower matrix.
This is I will show you how to put them together
First things first, choose your goals you want to accomplish. They can be a month, 3 months, 6 months or yearly goals. It depends on you. Then use the Ivy Lee to list down all the important activities that can potentially bring you closer to attain the goals. You are welcome to list more than six tasks. Okay ?
After having your lists, go to the Eisenhower matrix to split them based on those 4 quadrants. You will see if you have a lot of activities on quadrant two here.
Next, coming to the Time Blocking technique which requires you to schedule when you want to execute those activities. Now you are ready to go with lots of activities being organized.
The last one is that when the time arrives to execute each task, don’t forget to strategize using the Pomodoro technique. So you can keep on track.
The good news is that I already applied those strategies the way I explained in this article which is really beneficial. Now I can manage my activities such as interning, researching, writing, reading books and articles, creating YouTube content, cooking, and exercising.
I hope you can also take some more benefits from reading this article to scale up your time management skills. Because I believe that the future belongs to those who not only have goals, but also those who have goals and manage their time to make them happen.
Thank you so much for reading !
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