How to Manage Your Time More Wisely

Let’s face facts; it’s easy to value material possessions and big-ticket items like cars. These come with a clear market value, while we also live in a society that celebrates material wealth.

We find it much harder to place stock in less tangible concepts like time, despite the fact that this is arguably our most precious commodity.

Understanding this makes it far easier to manage your time, with a view to optimising productivity in all areas of life. But what practical steps can you take to manage your time more effectively on a daily basis? Let’s find out!

Getting Started - Understanding the Value of Time

Time is a finite resource, with a predetermined number of minutes available each day.

The structure of the working day also means that you’ll only have a fixed number of hours in which to complete tasks, so it’s important that you set priorities that help you to make the most of your time.

Time is also one of the only non-renewable resources available to humans, as once this passes it’s impossible to get it back. This reinforces the importance of valuing and respecting your time, whether you’re at work or spending time with loved ones.

But what are the best ways of achieving this goal? Your first step should be to identify your most productive time of day, based on your personal circumstances and how your productivity fluctuates throughout the day.

For example, some people are most productive in the early morning, when they have minimal distractions and their mind is at its most agile. Others may prefer to work in the evening if they have young families, so just remember that there’s no fixed rule when maximising productivity.

We’d also recommend tracking your time for a period to identify when you work best and do the most tasks, before creating a work schedule that uses this to your advantage.

Factoring in Rest and Relaxation Into Productivity Techniques

Besides identifying your most productive times of day, you should try to create a balanced schedule that allows for rest and relaxation.

A balanced day consists of regular sleep and wake times, consistent meals, exercise and breaks away from the screen.

Striking the balance between work and play can be challenging, but you can use various productivity techniques to help achieve this aim. If you look at most productivity techniques, you’ll see that they make provisions for breaks, which can help to optimise your physical and mental wellbeing.

How you use this time is up to you, with activities such as walking and meditating highly recommended. The key is to focus on activities that you find relaxing and help you to offset prolonged periods of work, which will vary from one person to another.

In the case of the Pomodoro Technique, this comprises 25-minute bursts of intensive work punctuated by five-minute breaks. This cycle should be completed throughout the day, creating a balanced work schedule and frequent (albeit short) breaks from the screen.

Another popular (productivity method is ‘time blocking’). This term is used interchangeably with time boxing or day theming, and it refers to a simple but effective way of controlling your daily work schedule.

This method focuses on dividing your working day into individual blocks of time, each of which is dedicated to completing an individual task. This may be responding to emails or completing a client brief, but the main goal is to avoid an open-ended to-do list that leads to chaos.

You can also create dedicated blocks of time for recreational activities, which are scheduled at different points throughout the day.

The key is to find the right productivity method for you, depending on your lifestyle, job role and how you like to spend your free time.