Whether you’re a busy professional, a student, or an entrepreneur, time management is a crucial skill for anyone looking to increase their productivity.
Effective time management involves an ongoing and regular process of organising your schedule so that time is allocated to all of the important aspects of your life. This includes not only your professional life, but also your spiritual, physical, friendship, and family life. For example, if you are a management consultant, you would obviously allocate time for project work, meetings, and professional development. However, you should also set aside time for exercise, such as going to the gym; time for spiritual practices, such as meditation; as well as time for maintaining friendships and spending time with family. By taking a balanced approach to time management, you can ensure that your professional success complements rather than compensates for the other areas of your life.
Time management is essential if you want to achieve your goals. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, identified 13 virtues that a person should cultivate in order to develop their character. One of these virtues is “order”, the idea that everything should be put in its proper place, and each part of your life should be allotted some time. Franklin believed that spending time to get organised was a good investment because “for every minute spent organising, an hour is earned”.
In this article, we’ll explore three key strategies for mastering your time, drawing on insights from three of the most influential thinkers in the field: Tim Ferriss, Frederick Taylor, and Cal Newport.
Tim Ferriss: Follow the 80/20 rule
One crucial strategy for getting organised is to prioritise your time. You can do this by understanding the 80/20 rule, the idea that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Tim Ferriss, best-selling author of The 4-Hour Work Week, recommends applying this rule to achieve more in less time by focusing exclusively on the 20% of your tasks that produce 80% of your results.
In order to prioritise, you need to rank your goals and tasks so that you can focus on what is most important. To get started, you should identify and rank your goals. You should only be working on your most important goals. From this short list of goals, draw up a list of tasks that you will need to complete in order to achieve these goals, and group them based on urgency and importance. At the start of each day, you should identify your top three most important tasks, and focus almost exclusively on them. By following this approach, you can maximise the value of your efforts.
Frederick Taylor: Chunk similar tasks together
Another key strategy for effective time management is to bundle similar tasks together so that you can tackle them more efficiently. This method is sometimes called “chunking” or “batching”. Frederick Taylor, the father of scientific management, believed that productivity could be maximised in this way by breaking tasks down into specific steps and then figuring out the most efficient way to perform each step.
Although Taylor proposed chunking as a way to help executives increase the productivity of large organisations, such as Western Electric, the strategy is broadly applicable. You can use chunking to increase your own productivity by breaking down large tasks into smaller, more manageable batches. This can make it easier to focus by reducing the procrastination that often results from becoming overwhelmed or from switching between unrelated tasks.
Cal Newport: Eliminate distractions
Eliminating distractions is an essential part of mastering your time and increasing productivity. The more distractions you have around you, the more your attention will be divided, and the more difficult it will become to focus on a single task for an extended period of time.
One way to eliminate distractions is by creating a physical work environment that is clean and uncluttered. This means keeping your work area free of unnecessary items, such as papers, books, and other doodads. This will help you to focus on your work without being distracted by your surroundings.
Another way to eliminate distractions is by turning off notifications on your phone and computer. For example, you can turn off email, text message, and social media notifications during specific hours when you are working on an important project. You can also use browser extensions that block access to distracting websites.
Additionally, you can eliminate distractions by setting aside dedicated time in your schedule to focus exclusively on one important project or task. Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, refers to these as “Deep Work Sessions”. Newport highlights that the ability to do work that involves intense concentration on cognitively demanding tasks is becoming increasingly rare and valuable in our economy, and eliminating distractions is crucial for making this type of work possible.
The bottom line
If you are looking to increase your productivity and achieve your personal and professional goals, then effective time management is a crucial skill. By prioritising effectively, breaking tasks down into smaller chunks, and carefully eliminating distractions, you can take control of your time and achieve more in less time than you ever thought possible.
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