Time management is defined as the decision-making process that structures, protects, and adjusts a person’s time to changing environmental conditions.
How to Improve Your Time Management Skills
Build accurate self-awareness of your time management skills
You can accomplish this by using objective assessments like a microsimulation. Seeking feedback from others like one’s peers or boss, or establishing a baseline of behaviors against which gauge improvements.
Recognize that preferences matter, but not how you think
Self-awareness of one’s preferences or personality related to time management, such as multitasking or being proactive, can deepen an understanding of where you might struggle as your change efforts go against existing habits.
Identify and prioritize the skill you need to improve
It is best to prioritize your skill development, focusing on the most pressing skill need first and then moving on to the next.
There are several evidence-based tactics for enhancing time management skills. Below are some examples. Again, it is critical to understand that tactics are for developing your underlying skills, which will ultimately improve your time management. Simply implementing these tactics is not the end-goal.
Developing awareness skills
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- Find your peak performance time. Break your typical day into three to four-time slots and, over a week, rank-order these slots from your most to least productive (most productive is peak performance).
- Treat your time like it’s money. Create a time budget that details how you spend your hours during a typical week. Categorize time into fixed time (“must do’s”) and discretionary time (“want to do’s”).
- Try timing-up. Record how long you’ve spent on tasks with very clear deadlines, rather than how much time you have left.
- Evaluate how realistically you assess time. After finishing a project, evaluate how long you thought it would take and how long it took.
- Take a “future time perspective.” Think about how the tasks you are doing right now will help or hurt you in the future (e.g., how to do today’s project tasks impact next week’s tasks?).
- Avoid “sunk cost fallacy.” When you think you might be spending too much time on an activity, step back and evaluate its importance (e.g., how valuable is the outcome, who will be affected if it’s finished or not finished, etc.)