“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing” – Miles Davis.

In a fast-paced world that is fuelled by instant messages and social media, time is of the utmost importance and every minute counts. For this reason, an effective time management can result in better efficiency and productivity and enhance your workplace performance.

It helps you accomplish more in a shorter period of time. The additional time can be spent on valuable experiences, which opens up the horizons of learning opportunities and reduces stress.

Here are 4 time management tips that can help you save time and boost your productivity!

1. Establish a 15 Minutes Rule

The 15-minute rule calls for dividing your working hours into 15-minute sprints and allocating specific tasks within those time slots.

If you have six hours of work each day, you end up with 24 slots of  15-minutes each, and so on. A 15-minute time slot is taken because it’s long enough to get things done and short enough to easily fit it in your routine.

For example, when scheduling a meeting that would typically take an hour or more, start it about 15 minutes past an hour and end it when the hour ends. This theory was created by Workplace Performance expert Jason Womack. He states that people can accomplish in 45 minutes what they think they need 60 minutes for.

It compels you to be focused on the important things, and the extra 15 minutes can be utilized to complete other tasks!

2. Eliminate Distractions

Distractions creep into your day without you even noticing. The best way to deal with them is to identify them first, and then strategically avoid them.

Assess how you spend your time. You might notice how minor distractions – such as a chatty coworker – can eat hours of our valuable time every week!  

Distractions can also be very basic and unnoticeable, such as a cluttered desk or a phone that buzzes too loud whenever there’s a new text. Distracting, right?

Hence, identifying your distractions and minimizing them is a great way to get the most out of your time.

3. Sort your priorities

Raking your tasks in the order of their priority is a great way to reduce the amount of time that is wasted when you mix up tasks of varying importance.

Go through your to-do list and sort tasks that are urgent or heavy in terms of workload. This helps you to take your time away from non-important tasks that you might have considered important otherwise.

This will slowly reduce your urgent priorities in number, and will also reduce the amount of stress and tension that you might face due to the same 🙂

4. Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!

Scheduling is, perhaps, the most effective way of time management.

You need to schedule your time, record that schedule (so that it can be followed) and actually stick to it! Determine the time of day when you are most productive and do the most important tasks at that time. This is a great way to improve your performance.

Scheduling gives you a clear direction and a certain amount of confidence because you know what you are doing and when you are doing it.

Don’t forget to keep some buffer time in your schedule for unexpected emergencies and add breaks at regular intervals. This will help you avoid mental and physical exhaustion.

Time Management isn’t merely an impressive skill that you can present in your resume.

It has a wide applicability that spans even outside of your workplace and improves other aspects of your life! But like almost everything in life, you can only develop this skill with practice and discipline. The best way to learn is always with a hands-on experience.

If this blog helped you in any way or you know any more time management tips, let us know. We would love to hear from you 🙂

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