Hey, we realise that you’re short on time and we’ve been told not to keep you long, but while we’ve got your attention, can we interest you in an old Scottish proverb?
‘’What may be done at any time will be done at no time’’.
Glad you liked it. Kinda pertinent, don’t you think? Because with work ever busy and personal lives demanding attention, time management can be a tricky task.
Time is a precious and valuable commodity (they do say it’s money, after all) and managing it is a vital life skill that, sadly, they don’t teach in school. It’s a particularly hard thing to manage on a personal level; the pressures of deadlines and the demands of your boss are one surefire way to keep you focused on the clock, for better or for worse.
Anyway, let’s not waste any more of your precious time with this introduction; here’s how to manage your personal time more effectively.
Start Your Day Early & Save Time
You know what they say about the ‘early bird’, right? That they get loads done in the morning.
Well, one of the best ways to manage your personal time more effectively is to make a real effort to get up earlier, ideally at the same time every day. A strict adherence to routine is the key to disciplined time management and subsequently, a day’s successful task completion, and this all begins with waking up right.
That said, it doesn’t help if you wake up at the crack of dawn to “have more time in the day” if you spend said saved time running around like a headless chicken mushing your outfit together.
To make your early start easier, decide on your outfit the day before. From a logistical point of view, picking out your outfit the night before helps to save time in the morning; just grab, wear and go. Moreover, it lowers stress as it’s one less decision you have to make in the morning. When choosing your outfit, be sure to check what the weather will be like the next day and get everything ready – from your knickers, tights, shoes, make-up, jewellery and handbag.
Another way to save time in the morning is to get your breakfast ready the day before. Consider prepping something the night before, like overnight oats. These little pots of joy are the ideal grab-and-go breakfast to start your day the healthy way. Oats are a natural superfood, 100% wholegrain and an excellent source of fibre, protein, vitamins and antioxidants. Result!
Seeing as we’re focusing on time management today, we won’t witter on when the perfect article is elsewhere. Instead, check out these great tips on how to feel more energised in the morning when you’ve got the time.
Use A Physical Or Digital Calendar
A calendar is a great place to start when it comes to managing personal time. Sure, it might sound perverse to schedule in engagements such as meeting your folks for lunch or tidying the house, but documenting your life chronologically like this can really help you manage it better.
Doing so helps to keep your plans in a centralised place and to visually plan out important dates in the year – juggling those with more unassuming but no less vital appointments, like hanging out with your dog or practicing the piano. Or, watching your dog play piano…
Perhaps best is a physical calendar, placed in an easily visible, accessible location where you spend a lot of time – why not hang one opposite the toilet for instance, for you to ponder while you sit? Transposing all entries from your physical calendar into a digital format will help reinforce them in your memory, too.
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix is a useful tool that many top executives swear by. In short, it’s a way of prioritising tasks. The core principle behind the matrix is that tasks of ‘urgency’ and ‘importance’ deserve distinguishing in order to help you manage your time more effectively.
Daily tasks are divided into columns – important and urgent, important but not urgent, not important but urgent, not important and not urgent – and are then prioritised in terms of what you should do yourself and what you should delegate or abandon.
Though this decisions matrix is traditionally intended for workplace task management, it can also be applied to personal time management.
Schedule Important Dates Early
Always try to get the important dates in your calendar locked down well in advance of their happening so you can plan around those commitments. Whether it be boring but important admin jobs like paying your bills and servicing your car, or personal dates to remember like birthdays or anniversaries, schedule these in – physically and digitally – so you can easily plan around them throughout the year.
Set Aside Time For Rest & Relaxation
While it’s important to plan your weekly activities and commitments, it can be as important to set aside time for a bit of R&R too, regardless of whether you use your weekends for a side hustle or your evenings for study.
Schedule this time deliberately so it doesn’t get sidelined by other things. Whether it’s just time to relax, or time spent on a hobby or interest that you love, including this time in your personal calendar can allow you to achieve a better work/life balance and make your downtime feel all the more earned. And that’s what it’s all about, right?
Put An End To Multitasking
Contrary to popular belief, multitasking is the enemy of productivity, whether you’re in the office or at home. Without placing a deserved, diligent focus on each task, you do yourself and the task completion a disservice. In short, everything just takes longer.
Embrace the Japanese productivity focused philosophy of Kaizen; by completing each and every daily task with rigour and to your full potential, you will incrementally – even unknowingly – become the best version of yourself. Harness this, and your time management will become more effective.
Use Calendar Reminders
If you don’t have your physical calendar or diary with you at all times, it’s a good idea to set reminders on your phone or another device to ensure you never forget about events or engagements.
You will find that most digital calendars or diaries will do this automatically, making it easy and convenient to remind yourself, but it’s often best to back this up with a manual input.
Though we’re still a little suspicious of smart home hubs like the Amazon Echo Dot or the Samsung SmartThings Hub, they are superbly efficient for setting reminders, as the prompts are aural as well as visual.
Just instruct Alexa to ‘remind me to check IDEAL Magazine at 8am every morning’ and she’ll do just that, with a courteous tone and a jolly little tune.
The Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle (sometimes referred to as the 80/20 rule) is a theory of time management that posits that the relationship between effort and result rarely correlates perfectly. As in, 20% or your activities may well account for 80% of your outcomes.
When considering the principle in terms of personal time management, a to-do list of ten items will likely involve two tasks that account for as much importance as the other eight.
This can help you write better to-do lists. Start by listing your day’s tasks from one to ten in order of the amount of effort required (1 being the least effort and 10 being the most). Next, think about the potential for positive results from these tasks; 10 having the greatest positive impact on your life all the way to 1 not even being worth getting out of bed for.
Finally, divide each task’s effort score by its results number, giving you a new priority ranking, with the tasks requiring the least effort and granting the largest reward prioritised first. The tasks that require a large amount of effort for minimum payoff can be delegated or removed entirely.
Group Things Together To Save Time
Another key concept of effective time management is sometimes referred to as ‘grouping’. In terms of your personal life, grouping outings like shopping, going to the bank and getting petrol into one single journey can help you to avoid having to go out more than once during the day to run errands, thus saving you time to attack other tasks head on.
If you are cleaning the house in increments, it simply takes longer; instead, do everything you planned grouped together into a single session until it’s complete. If you can, avoid taking too many breaks and procrastinating, freeing you up time later in the day for another task. And so on…
Visualise Your Time For Better Insights
One of the most effective ways to improve time management is to actually see how you’re spending your hours. Just as large organisations use data visualisation tools like Power BI process mining to understand their operational workflows, you can apply similar principles to track your personal time.
Start by logging your daily activities for a week – what you do, when you do it and for how long. You might be surprised at where your time actually goes. Those “quick” social media checks might add up to hours, whilst that project you’ve been meaning to finish may only get minutes of attention.
Tools as simple as a spreadsheet or as sophisticated as time-tracking apps can help you visualise these patterns. Look for the gaps between how you think you spend your time versus the reality. Much like how businesses discover inefficiencies through process analysis, you’ll likely spot several opportunities to reclaim lost hours.
Once you’ve identified these patterns, you can make more informed decisions about restructuring your day. Perhaps you’re most productive in the morning but have been wasting that energy on low-priority tasks. Or maybe you’ve discovered that certain activities always take longer than you allocate for them, causing a domino effect of delays.
Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. A visual representation of your time gives you the objective data needed to make meaningful improvements.
The Connect-Then-Direct Principle
A powerful leadership principle that can be brilliantly applied to personal time management is the “Connect, Then Direct” approach, championed by successful business leaders worldwide.
At its core, this principle suggests spending time connecting with people and understanding situations before attempting to direct or manage them. In this approach, listening comes before instructing, and understanding precedes action.
When applied to personal time management, this principle encourages you to spend a bit of time connecting with yourself and your goals before directing your schedule. Start each week with a brief reflection on what truly matters to you right now. What are your current priorities? What would make this a fulfilling and productive week?
This approach prevents the common trap of being merely busy rather than productive. By connecting with your authentic goals first, you direct your time towards what genuinely matters rather than what merely demands attention.
Many executives who follow this philosophy use notebooks to jot down ideas and reflections, creating a tangible connection with their thoughts before taking action. You might try something similar – a quick journaling session on Sunday evening or Monday morning to connect with your intentions before directing your week’s schedule.
As the saying goes, “Listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak.” Similarly, you won’t learn how to best manage your time without first listening to what your mind, body and goals are telling you they need.
The Bottom Line
This thing’s all about developing better habits and training yourself through repetition to stick to them. Though better time management won’t happen overnight, you will learn to manage your personal life more effectively if you automate it with calendars, reminders and most importantly, repetition.
Good luck, and now you’ve freed up a few hours, shall we meet up for a coffee?
