6 Keys to Effective Personal and Business Time Management

1. Prepare in Advance

For the following day, prepare your work list either the evening or night before. By doing this, your subconscious works on your plans and your goals during your sleep. Frequently, when you wake, you will have a number of ideas and insights that are particularly applicable to the day ahead.

A further benefit of preparing your list for the next day on the previous night is that you will sleep better. One key reason for insomnia with respect to many people is lying awake trying not to forget to do something. When you write down what you have to do, your mind becomes clear and you can achieve better rest. And the knock-on effect is that you are more productive the next day.

2. Schedule Your Time

Through scheduling your time, you reduce stress levels and release more energy. By way of organizing your day, week, and perhaps even month in advance, it allows you a greater feeling of control. This in turn permits you to become more productive as you feel you have more control over your life. It increases levels of self-esteem, too. Also see point number 6.

3. Start Early

Start your day off early and you’ll increase productivity. The more time you invest in thinking and planning, the more organized you will be with respect to every aspect of your life.

In various biographies and autobiographies of particularly successful people, the majority of them have something in common: The development of excellent organizational skills, together with the habit of rising early in the morning.

Very many successful individuals have the habit of rising at between 5 and 5.30 a.m. This allows them plenty of time to consider and plan the day ahead. As a result, they are more effective in comparison to those who prefer to sleep late.

4. Organizational Skills

Improve your organizational skills by utilizing a filing system both at work and at home. A lot of time is spent searching for items that have been misplaced. And they are lost simply because they’ve not been correctly filed.

There are few activities that are quite as frustrating as investing valuable time searching for misplaced materials, purely on account that they’ve not been filed correctly.

Arguably, the best and most effective filing system is that of an alphabetical system. In conjunction with this, you should generate a master list of your files. This will provide the title of each file, and will also tell you where the file has been located.

5. Increase Your Productivity Levels by Focusing on Prime Time

Aim to organize your day so that your most creative work is achieved within your internal “prime time.” Prime time refers to that time of day whereby you are most productive and alert, and it depends on your body clock.

For the majority of individuals, this will be sometime in the morning hours. For others, however, it may be in the evening.

It is important as it means you can schedule the most important tasks accordingly, and by doing so, you will increase productivity. The most important work that you do normally requires you to be at your best. That means you must be well rested, creative, and alert. Which time of day is your prime time?

You should also be aware of something known as external prime time. This refers to the time of day that your clients or customers are readily available.

6. Travel Productivity

One area of our lives that we may forget to organize our time effectively is when we travel. For you, that may or may not refer to time in the air.

A few years ago, a regional airline – Hughes AirWest – hired a consulting firm and asked them to compare levels of efficiency when flying first-class to when flying economy-class. A further comparison was made to working in an office setting.

The consulting firm found that a single hour of uninterrupted work was the equivalent to working in a normal office. The keyword here being “uninterrupted.” Thus, if you plan ahead and get your work organized prior to leaving for the airport, there’s no doubt that you will increase productivity through accomplishing far more while you are air bound.

If you’re a business owner or senior manager in a company, organizing employee time effectively will more than likely increase your bottom line. It’s advisable to utilize an online time management system to achieve this.