Fix Poor Time Management Habits Forever

What’s the one thing on earth that equalizes all human beings? No one gets more of it, no one gets less of it, you can’t buy it, and we’re all in a race every day to use what we’ve been given. 

It’s TIME of course!

The art of managing this precious commodity has been the subject of many books, workshops, courses, and discussions as our world gets smaller and our responsibilities increase. 

When Steven Covey wrote “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” in 1989, he was the first to recognize that organizations were under increasing pressure to produce more in a day than they ever had before. His views on productivity are still highly respected by the business leaders of our time. [1]

Since then, “Eat the Frog,” “The 4-day work week,” and “Organize Tomorrow Today” have been on best-seller lists, proving that individuals, teams, and businesses do not have all the answers to managing the world’s most precious resource.

So, if we’re all still trying to figure out how to best use 24 hours, can we really get ahead of this problem?

In this article, we will examine some of the most effective time management strategies by experts and also examine how the evolution of AI technology will benefit us in managing time. 

Peter Drucker famously said, “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.” 

Are you frequently missing deadlines? Are good time management habits as elusive as a rainbow in the night sky? Is your mental well-being suffering because of wasted time?

Find out what you can do to solve these problems next. 

What exactly is the problem?

The phrases poor time management or bad time management habits are often used to express frustrations with teams missing deadlines, their inability to prioritize tasks and the toll it takes on mental health and company profits. 

There isn’t a Human Resources Department on the planet that hasn’t been told, “We need a time management skills course.” Whole teams are duly put through expensive training workshops that promise to fix poor time management skills. However, the result is always the same: a negligible change in behavior. Things improve for 3-4 weeks before important tasks, urgent deadlines and important meetings are missed. 

Experts have suggested that good time management skills result from knowing how to prioritize, plan and implement your goals. They’ve surmised that people with a high internal drive are better at prioritizing tasks, theorized that a good to-do list is the key to success, and speculated that poor work-life balance could be causing poor time management habits. Secretly, they’ve all wondered whether they’ll ever find the one answer that everyone is looking for to fix this problem. 

Image courtesy of Canva/ Jacob Lund

The truth is, everyone is different and there probably won’t be a one-size-fits-all answer to poor time management. Perhaps this is where popular techniques have failed to impress. 

They aren’t customized to the individual needs of people and their existing habits. Change is very difficult, and if we’re going to find an answer for poor productivity, it will be because we help people to improve what’s already deeply ingrained – their own way of achieving results they care about instead of using what works for someone else. 

Later in this article, we plan to discuss an advancement in technology that can achieve this, but first, let’s examine the latest time management strategies suggested by the experts. 

Timewise Calendar is a smart calendar scheduling and project management app for freelancers, small remote teams, and digital marketing agencies. The platform’s sophisticated AI technology will manage your entire schedule, concentrating on better work-life balance and increasing good habits that help you meet important goals. 

TRY TIMEWISE CALENDAR FOR FREE

Time management best practices by the experts

Getting things done by David Allen

David Allen, a productivity specialist, suggests that you need to organize your work according to set criteria, namely:

1. Capture – Collect all tasks, ideas and commitments in one trusted system outside of your mind. This can include a notebook or digital tool that works for you. 
2. Clarify – Decide what you want to do about each item and what the best way to move it forward would be
3. Organize—Put actionable items into relevant categories, such as projects, urgent tasks, personal life, and delegate tasks. This will help you visualize the things that need your attention in the short and medium term. 
4. Reflect – Review your categories regularly and adjust your schedule as often as needed.
5. Engage – Choose your tasks according to time available, energy levels, importance, and context.

A number of techniques recommended by Allen help you get through multiple tasks and meet urgent deadlines. These techniques include:

• Two-minute rule – If a task can be completed in two minutes or less, do that first. 
• Arrange tasks by context – Arrange tasks into groups according to the resources they will require e.g., phone calls, emails, errands. Do all the tasks in one group at the same time. 
• Someday/Maybe lists – Track ideas and tasks you might want to pursue in the future.

Deep work by Carl Newport

Carl Newport’s work is about guiding you to achieve peak productivity and master complex tasks. Newport, a professor, contrasts ‘deep work’ with ‘shallow work’ and emphasizes the former for achieving important objectives.

Deep work involves professional activities that are performed in a state of deep focus and concentration, pushing your cognitive capabilities. This is the kind of work that would harm your professional reputation if you could not complete the tasks. He puts forward the following techniques for achieving deep work. 

• The monastic approach – Set clear boundaries around difficult or complex tasks, including creating a dedicated work space for these tasks. 
• The bimodal approach – Master basic time management strategies, clearing shallow work in a short space of time and freeing up valuable time for work that requires your dedicated focus. Say no to non-essential commitments.
• The rhythmic approach – Establish a regular habit of deep work, such as setting aside specific hours each day.
• Create rituals around deep work – Get your brain used to the idea of concentration and focus by creating rituals such as clearing your desk of all clutter, sitting in a particular place, or putting on specific music. Do this every time you are about to tackle deep work so your brain will associate this activity with concentration. 

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy’s work is a practical guide for overcoming procrastination and enhancing productivity. We all know that sinking feeling of defeat when we have too many commitments. Instead of feeling encouraged to tackle our to-do list, we end up doing nothing. Tracy theorized that if we tackle the frog, i.e., the most challenging task of the day, then we would easily move on to smaller tasks. 

His approach to solving productivity woes and eliminating heightened stress levels is summarised in the following steps.

• Set the table – Clarify your goals and objectives before you begin. Make a list of everything you need to accomplish and prioritize it.
• Plan every single day in advance (without fail) – Spend time each evening planning your next day’s activities. This habit clears the mental clutter and gives you a head start each morning. 
• Apply the 80/20 rule: Identify 20% of the tasks from which you get 80% of the results and prioritize those. 
• Consider the consequences – Evaluate the long-term impact of each task to determine their importance. 
• Practice the ABCDE method:

A: Must do, very important

B: Should do, important

C: Nice to do, but not important

D: Delegate

E: Eliminate

• Apply the law of three – Determine the three most important tasks you need to complete to achieve your goals.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

James Clear, known as a habit formation expert, provides practical strategies for forming good habits, breaking bad ones, and mastering the tiny behaviors (atomic changes) that lead to remarkable results. 

His theory around improved productivity begins with making small, incremental changes that involve four key steps, cue, craving, response, and reward.

Atomic habits

1. Make it obvious – Design your environment to make cues for good habits obvious and visible.
2. Make it attractive – Use temptation bundling (pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do) and focus on the positive aspects of a habit to make it more appealing (craving).
3. Make it easy – Reduce the friction of cultivating good habits by breaking them down into smaller steps (response).
4. Make it satisfying – Use immediate rewards to reinforce positive behaviors. Track your habits to visually see your progress and create a sense of achievement.

James Clear further suggests that you plan when and where you will perform the desired action by making a clear statement of intent. I will [behavior] at [time] in [location].

The way forward

Great stuff! We’ve heard from the world’s leading experts on productivity, but if you’re anything like me, you’re wondering whether there’s a way to take what works best from each of these strategies and use technology to help you manage it. 

You’ll be glad to know that someone was ten steps of the rest in their innovative ideas and did exactly that. With the help of sophisticated AI technology, Timewise Calendar has developed a calendar scheduling and project management tool, for the people that need it the most.

Let me tell you how it works. Freelancers, small remote teams and agencies should pay particular attention to this because what follows is the answer to many of their productivity challenges and time management mistakes.

Timewise Calendar – Combining the best time management strategies with sophisticated technology

timewisecalendar.com

Using the best productivity techniques as the foundation for their product design, Timewise Calendar allows you to import popular calendars such as Google and MS Outlook and integrate them into one app. Remember the first step in David Allen’s productivity steps? Collect all tasks, ideas and commitments in one trusted system, outside of your mind. Timewise allows you to get all those personal and work tasks into one trusted system. 

Next, the AI technology will learn from you as you set up your profile and preferences. The more you use the platform, the more the AI will understand your habits and patterns and then anticipate what you want. 

You or your team will receive recommendations on the best times to have meetings, when to reschedule meeting conflicts, and when you should set time aside for ‘focus work.’ Does this sound familiar? Well, think back to Carl Newport’s ‘deep work’ theory and Brian Tracy’s recommendation that you plan each day in advance. 

What else will Timewise Calendar do for you?

It will help you build your best self by helping you cultivate good habits and stick with them. With habits, consistency is the foundation of success. The app helps you cultivate daily routines that transform your ambitions into reality, automating your achievements for optimal growth. 

Every day counts, and with Timewise, you can seamlessly integrate life-enhancing habits into your daily planner. Achieve mastery over your routines with features designed for effortless consistency and improved personal productivity. The ‘atomic habits’ taught about by James Clear will become more than just theory to you with the help of Timewise Calendar. 

This is just a snapshot of the most critical productivity habits that Timewise Calendar will help you fix forever. If we didn’t make it clear, then let’s do that now. With the app just about all mental fatigue and stress associated with planning your schedule, managing team projects and achieving work life balance will be removed. The only decisions you’ll have to make is whether to accept the recommendations of the AI personal productivity coach, or decline them.

Work smarter, not harder, with Timewise Calendar.

Image courtesy of Canva/peopleimages.com

I bet you didn’t even realize how much the development of calendar scheduling and project management apps depends on the sound strategies of productivity experts. 

But now that you do, don’t procrastinate. If you want to fix your poor time management habits forever, then take the first step now. Digital tools are the perfect way to boost productivity, eliminate poor performance, remove unnecessary stress and make time for important projects.

Try all of Timewise Calendar’s features today, and say, “Bye, Bye,” “Cheerio,” and “Get Lost” to bad time management habits. 

References:

1. Entrepreneur Online Magazine