Powerful Time Management Tips to Become More

Productive
hbrascend.org/topics/time-management-101-how-to-be-more-productive

Three long meetings—one a total time waster. At least a dozen phone calls. You’ve prepared for a
working lunch with the boss, only to have her cancel at the last minute. Two reports to write. An
upcoming presentation to senior management. Simmering conflict between two rival employees. And,
it’s already time to plan the next year’s budget. Does this sound like one of your workdays?

Handling these many tasks would not be a problem except for one hard reality: there are only twenty-
four hours in a day. The best thing we can do is to make the most of it. We have surrounded ourselves
with time-saving devices—high-speed computers and blindingly fast assembly lines at workplaces;
fast-cooking microwave ovens, heat-and-serve dinners, and instant messaging at home. However,
finding time to get all the work done is the biggest challenge. Time management is therefore an
attempt to control and allocate finite time resources. The importance of managing time in the
workplace is underscored by the frenetic pace of modern managerial life. This explains, partly, why
many suffer from stress and complain of never having enough time.

Assessing where your time goes

At home, you cannot plan and control future spending unless you understand your current spending
habits. The same logic applies to your time-spending habits. If you get an accurate picture of how
you’re spending your time, you’ll know where you’re wasting it.

Use an Activity Log

First, you need to create a written record—an activity log. Be sure to log every activity, even minor
things such as waiting for the computer to start. Try and label each activity under specific categories
such as “e-mail,” “paperwork,” wherever possible, and assign priorities to each (described later). Then
examine the log to identify patterns of time use and where most of your day is spent or wasted.

Plan for Change

After you’ve identified bad time-use patterns, it’s time to find the causes. Begin by asking and honestly
answering tough personal questions, such as “Why am I spending so much time in low-value
meetings?” Answer: “I’m afraid that people won’t think of me as a team player if I decline meeting
invitations.” This type of inquiry will bring you to the causes of wasted time.

The best way to correct the problem is to develop more desirable habits. Analyze your activity log. If
your e-mail and Internet use are causes of poor time management, spend a week consciously taming
them. Change will happen only by practicing a new, more effective behavior.

Effective Goal Setting

Goals act as a compass, pointing to the things you should be concentrating your time on. Once your
goals are identified, you will know what’s most important for you to accomplish on a daily, weekly, and
monthly basis.

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Goal setting is defining the outcomes that you need to achieve. If you’re managing a company or a
team, you should create a set of cascading goals, beginning with company goals, then team goals, and
finally each employee’s goals. To deploy effective time management strategies, goals should be written
down clearly and communicated well to every individual. They should be time-framed, measurable,
add value to the organization, aligned with organizational strategy, and challenging, yet achievable.

Sort Your Goals

Goals differ in time frames and importance. Some are short-term, and others can be achieved only
over months or years. In terms of importance, there are three types of goals:

Critical goals are end points and essential to your success, and therefore must be accomplished. For
example, completing a two-year project on time and within budget.

Enabling goals create a more desirable business condition or take advantage of a business opportunity
to fill a long-term need, that is, critical goals. For example, getting more physical space to work may not
be critical but will help employees work more efficiently.

Nice-to-have goals make improvements that enhance your business, and usually make activities faster,
easier, or more pleasant—for example, a more appealing cafeteria menu.

Urgent-Versus-Important Dilemma
By definition, something that is urgent calls for immediate attention or action. But not every critical
goal is urgent, and not every urgent matter is critical to your success. Make two lists, one of the urgent
tasks this week and the other of the critical and enabling goals, and compare the two. You will see that
most of the “urgent” issues on your list may have nothing to do with your critical and enabling goals.
For better time management, you must discipline yourself to differentiate between what is urgent and
important and what is simply urgent.

Time-Management Goals
There are four steps to setting goals for better time management:

1. Review each goal and break it into manageable set of tasks.

2. Make a list of all tasks and assign A, B, or C priorities to each. The priorities should reflect the
importance of the goal that each task supports, with A representing the critical goals, B
involving enabling and most valuable nice-to-have goals, and C representing both urgent and
nonurgent tasks with little value and importance.
Do you work late at night or on weekends to meet deadlines

3. Put the tasks in the correct sequential order. Check if some tasks need to be completed in a
sequence. For example, for writing a report, the data need to be gathered first.
4. For A and B priority tasks, estimate how much time each task will require and establish a
deadline. You could also use a time-management technique called timeboxing. Timeboxing
divides your schedule into separate time periods (timeboxes) with deadlines, within which a task
should be completed. For example, one hour to prepare a report. Add some cushion to allow
for unanticipated problems.

For large goals that involve more people, a work breakdown structure (WBS) approach can be used. A
WBS is a time-management planning routine that breaks down large goals or complex tasks into many
smaller tasks. Once you have a list of all the smaller tasks, prepare a time estimate for each task.
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These time estimates can now be used to build your goal or project’s schedule, that is, a written
commitment to accomplish tasks within a specific time period.

How to Schedule Things

There are plenty of time-management tools available to prepare a schedule, such as to-do lists,
appointment calendars, daily and weekly planners, and scheduling software and hardware. Many
organizations also use calendar-scheduling software such as Microsoft Outlook to organize meetings.

Back to Basics: Using a To-Do List

A to-do list is one of the simplest and most commonly used time-management tool that helps break
down your tasks into specific activities on a given day. For example, while your day-planner schedule
might say “return phone calls” between 3 and 4 p.m., your to-do list would identify each person you
need to call.

As you compile your list, be realistic about what you can accomplish. Initially, try including half of the
things you think you can do, and then make adjustments moving forward. Be diligent about keeping
urgent but unimportant and low-priority tasks off the list.

Finally, cross each task off your list as it is completed. This is bound to give you a real sense of
satisfaction. Review the list at the end of the day and check if any high-priority items were left undone.
Find out the reason for this and reschedule them.

Create your to-do list either at the end of the day for the next day or at the very beginning of the day.
Making this a practice will, in itself, help you develop a habit of time management. However, this
practice may not be as useful for senior executives, where duties become less structured and every
day brings unexpected problems and opportunities. What they need is a time-management method
with flexibility, which should include more free time, only the most critical tasks and deadlines, and a
greater willingness to bump scheduled tasks as opportunities present themselves.

How to Build a Schedule

To begin with, always insert your A-priority tasks first in the schedule, then accommodate your
B–priority tasks using the remaining time. Remember that your days have high and low energy
periods. If afternoons are low energy for you, schedule important work in the morning and routine
tasks, such as e-mails, after lunch.

Here are a few tips for completing your schedule:

Schedule only part of your day. Leave some time open for crises, opportunities, the unexpected,
and just walking around.
Schedule your highest-priority work first.
Avoid back-to-back meetings. You need time to process the information from each meeting and
act accordingly.
Consolidate tasks such as e-mail, paperwork, and phone calls. For example, set aside 9:00 to
9:30 a.m. for these tasks. This reduces the total time required to do them by eliminating start-
up and switching costs (the time it takes to get started again after you’re interrupted).
As the week progresses, move uncompleted priority tasks to future open times, or bump lower-
priority tasks.
Determine the time you have and then work backward.
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After you’ve created your schedule, keep it in sight, such as a wall or desk calendar or a computer-
based calendar that should always be open. Using a schedule builder, check your progress throughout
the day and periodically review the effectiveness of your time-management technique.

Time Wasters: What’s Robbing You of Your Time?

Effective time management at work is frustrated by a number of factors, such as unanticipated crises
or sudden illness of a coworker. These factors may be beyond your control, however, many time-
management problems originate in individual behavior and habits – self-imposed time robbers.

Procrastination
Procrastination is the habit of delaying or putting off doing something that should be done now. We
all procrastinate to some extent. The result is that high-priority tasks are postponed or, worse, never
completed, making the procrastinators feel guilty. There are generally three reasons for
procrastination:

1. Unpleasant and Uninteresting Tasks

Sandra knows that she must confront Helen, her subordinate, about Helen’s habit of getting to work
late every day, but she has done nothing to address the problem. In this case, Sandra’s procrastination
is an unconscious way of avoiding an unpleasant task: personal confrontation. The same avoidance
happens with uninteresting tasks. Here are some cures for this form of procrastination:

Tasks that are unpleasant to you might not be unpleasant to someone else, so delegate them if
possible.
If you cannot delegate, look at the situation objectively and admit that you’re procrastinating
because you find the task unpleasant. Think about the relief you’ll feel after you’ve addressed
the unpleasant task.
Schedule the unpleasant task in a way that will make it difficult or impossible to turn back. In
the above example, Sandra can email and schedule a meeting with Helen.

2. Fear of Failure

We all are naturally tempted to avoid a task that may lead to failure. In most cases the best way to
handle fear is to confront it directly. If you fear that you lack the training or resources to successfully
complete an assignment, then get the help you need. If your fear stems from a lack of self-confidence,
defuse that fear through planning all the things required to successfully complete the job.

3. Not Knowing Where to Begin

The lack of clarity in some jobs encourages procrastination. Two remedies for this type of situation
are:

Jump in anywhere. After you’re in the game, it’s likely that you will find a productive way
forward, reducing any inclination to procrastinate.
Break the job into its component parts and tasks necessary to complete each part. Arrange
these in a logical sequence, and begin with the first task as you move forward.

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Overcommitting
Some people make the mistake of overloading their schedules. For example, volunteering to help a
colleague develop a proposal. Similarly, in their eagerness to support, some mangers make
themselves victims of reverse delegation and allow subordinates to delegate problems to them. This
problem of overreaching can negatively impact all areas of your life. You can avoid this by following
these suggestions:

If a task is not one of your responsibilities or goals, don’t volunteer to take it.
Resist the urge to step in and take over because others are not doing their jobs or doing it
incorrectly.
Remember the 80/20 rule: Twenty percent of actions will account for 80 percent of important
outcomes, so concentrate on the 20 percent that matter.
Learn to say no to your peers and to your boss. Saying no is a lot easier when you can articulate
why you’re doing it. The why of saying no becomes clear when you consider the consequence of
saying yes.

Do you feel stressed and overcommitted because of all the things you need to do

Unnecessary Travel
Travel is often a necessary component of business. Because travel consumes so much time, make the
most of it. Here are a few tips:

Take along paperwork to use wasted time in terminals and taxis.

If you’re traveling for a meeting, be totally prepared. This will help ensure theeffectiveness of
the meeting and boost the value of your travel.
Flying provides something that everyone needs desperately: interruption-free time. Use this
time for catching up with the news, or simply brainstorming.
Make the most of your travel days. For example, if you must travel to California for a morning
meeting, schedule more meetings for the rest of the day.

E-mails
Just as Ivan Pavlov used a bell to make dogs salivate in anticipation of a meal, incoming e-mail has
trained us to stop whatever we’re doing and go fetch it. This behavior creates discontinuity in work
and thought processes, making us less efficient. E-mail may be the most valuable communication tool,
but is becoming a major time robber.

One way to break the Pavlovian response is tosimply turn off the e-mail notification, or check for
messages, say, every 90 minutes. In addition, try these tips:

Deal with e-mails at scheduled times during the day.

Maintain a separate e-mail account for personal messages.
Delete all junk and the irrelevant messages. Move all urgent messages to a folder labeled
“Urgent”; deal with these at a specified time in your schedule. Finally, sweep any others that
merit your eventual attention to a folder marked “Later” and deal with them only after you’ve
addressed all the high-priority tasks.
Let people know your information preferences and priorities. Send a reply stating, “Keep
sending information on this” or “Please don’t copy me on this information.”
Encourage people to be explicit in filling the subject line of their messages to give the recipient a
clear idea of the content.
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Distractions
Office settings are full of distractions, such as today’sWall Street Journal, e-mails, conversations over
coffee, and, of course, the Internet. Distractions don’t simply take you away from productive work; they
actually set you back.

There are several ways to avoid distractions. For example, have your voice-mail system pick up calls
when you’re busy, turn off your e-mail notifications, clear your desk of newspapers, or put a “Busy”
sign on your office door. Try using a solution or a time-management chart. Make different columns on
a sheet and list out all the time robbers, identify their causes, and write your solutions for handling
each. Then in another column, write how your solution worked under the following categories: Not
Effective, Effective, and Very Effective. Simply going through this time-management exercise will make
you more aware of things that steal your time.

The Time-Wasting Boss

Many bosses unknowingly create time-wasting impediments for their subordinates. This happens
when there are no clear goals, ambiguous directions, and subordinates are involved in unnecessary
meetings. Following are some time management tips for such cases.

1. Confusion About Goals

If your boss does not articulate the details of a goal, then you should take the initiative. Ask for a
meeting to discuss your future goals, which should be aligned with your company’s strategy. Be sure
that you will be rewarded—and not penalized—for this work. Once the two of you are in agreement,
get the goals in writing and meet your boss at regular intervals to discuss your progress.

2. Inadequate Directions

Senior managers sometimes articulate a goal without spelling out the details; this is toavoid micro-
management. Employees are told what the result should look like and are given responsibility for
producing it, thus giving them opportunities to create their own solutions. The managers can instead
concentrate on providing the resources, training, and motivation that people need to produce the
desired results.

This “results-mode” approach is a good time management strategy for time-strapped bosses. During
his tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, John Young practiced this approach. Every few years he would
articulate a demanding and clear goal and leave it to the employees to find ways of achieving it. One
year, for example, he called for a 90 percent reduction in the number of HP product failures within
two years. The employees successfully accomplished the goal without any micro-management.

If your boss has a habit of not giving directions, here is a suggestion: When you get your orders, draft a
preliminary plan for approaching the task. Then share your plan with your boss and take his
suggestions. Incorporate the boss’s comments and criticisms into a revised plan, and get him to
eventually accept your plan. If you do this often, your boss will realize that he can save time by simply
giving specific instructions.

3. Pointless Meetings

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Scott Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon series, has made a fortune by rendering meeting-from-
hell stories sent to him by white-collar workers. Here is a story from the CEO of a design firm: A boss I
had early in my career required every one of us to attend a daily staff meeting where he would open
the department’s mail, read each letter aloud, and then ask us what we thought should be done in
response to each item. This often took the entire morning.

Perhaps the worst type of wasteful meeting is the one where the boss has already determined the
desired outcome but forces his direct reports to go through the motions of reaching consensus. Some
call this “faux collaboration.”

4. The Bottleneck Boss

“I have a boss who wants everything to come through her,” complained one midlevel manager. “The
trouble is that she doesn’t have the time to respond in a timely fashion. Consequently, most initiatives
must wait to proceed.” This is a bottleneck boss. Here are a few ways to open the bottleneck:

Do your homework. Assess the productivity losses caused by the bottleneck.

Meet with your boss to discuss your findings and to seek remedies.
Find suitable remedies, for example, identify tasks that can proceed without passing through
the bottleneck; or urge the boss to delegate approval authority to you or someone else for less
critical tasks.

The important thing here is to communicate the problem. The boss may deal with the problem once
he or she is aware of it. If the problem is not addressed, consider a job change.

Your Role in the Problem

Are you requesting your boss’s intervention too often, when you or your subordinates could
accomplish the same thing without his help? Do you delegate upward, putting your problems on your
boss’s back? If you do, you’re wasting that person’s time. Try and see how you might be a source of
wasted time.

Another way to avoid wasting time is to understand and accommodate your boss’ work style. Some
managers insist on getting lots of information and detailed analysis from their subordinates, while
others require a minimum of data. By understanding how your boss processes information, handles
meetings, and makes decisions, you can help save lots of time for both of you.

Time Management for Managers

Although time management is ultimately a personal responsibility, as a manager it’s not only
important for you to manage your own time efficiently, but also your team’s. There are several things
you can do to help yourself and your team manage time better. Here are some tips.

Delegate What Can be Delegated

Effective delegation can reduce your workload and stress level by removing tasks from yourto-do list
that others are qualified to handle, giving you more time to focus on tasks that require your unique
skills and authority. Effective delegators spend less time “doing” and more time planning, organizing,
and coaching.

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As you prepare to delegate, first determine which tasks can be delegated. Then consider the skills and
capabilities required to complete the assignment successfully. Finally, match the assignment with the
most appropriate staff member. After the right person has been selected, in a face-to-face meeting,
preferably, communicate the guidelines and your expectations clearly and deliver sufficient authority
to do the job. Once the task has been delegated, maintain an adequate level of control by regularly
monitoring progress. When the assignment is complete, use it as opportunities for learning, for both
you and your subordinate.

Delegating is probably the most effective of all time management tools available to everyone. Done
well, it can clear your calendar of jobs that others can and should be handling.

Reduce Travel
Videoconferencing and Web conferencing technologies have vastly improved our ability to conduct
business without travel. Many large employers with continuous training programs—among them Dell,
Ernst & Young, and the U.S. Navy—are using these tools for online training. Among other benefits,
online training makes learning available 24/7 and the employees get more time at home.

However, technology is not perfectly equivalent to in-person, face-to-face communication. It is not a

complete substitute for physical travel and should be used judiciously.

Facilitate Work–Life Balance

Stewart Friedman, Perry Christensen, and Jessica DeGroot explained in aHarvard Business Review
article, work–life balance does not have to be a zero-sum game. They offer three principles that can
help managers break through this:

Make sure that employees understand business priorities, and encourage them to be equally
clear about their personal priorities. Then, schedules and assignments can be arranged in ways
that satisfy both sides.
Recognize and support employees as “whole people” who haveimportant roles outside the
workplace. Managers can help if they understand and show some interest in the nonworking
lives of their employees.
Smart managers periodically rethink and redesign work processes for greater efficiency and
effectiveness. Work–life balance provides opportunities to experiment with these processes with
the goal of making them better.

The following sections point to several things that managers do for their employees to achieve a
satisfactory balance between the two sides of their lives.

Telework
Telework, or work done by employees in locations other than their regular offices, is facilitated by
telecommunications and Internet. Proponents of telework point to measurable savings, including
lower real estate costs, greater employee productivity, greater employee loyalty and job satisfaction,
and less personnel turnover. Moreover, teleworkers themselves report that it helps them balance work
and personal responsibilities, cutting one of the big-time drains: commuting time.

Telework requires adaptation on the part of managers and supervisors. After all, if the employees are
not under their watchful eyes, how can a manager know whether they are working or watching
Seinfeld reruns? According to most experts, managers should focus on results instead of activities. That

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means setting clear goals for teleworkers, making sure the goals are understood, and setting up a
system for monitoring progress.

Even though they save more time, teleworkers also face issues that cut into their time. They are
repeatedly asked to handle chores or household issues by family members, who simply don’t think of
home-based work as real work. Here are a few antidotes for teleworkers:

Keep regular home-office hours, and insist that others respect them.
Include some flexibility. Indicate times during the day when you’re available for chores—for
example, during your lunch break.
Install a separate office phone. Allow the answering machine to pick up calls to your home
phone.
Have a separate area for doing home-based work—preferably a separate room with a door.

Flexible Work Schedules

Flexible scheduling creates opportunities for people to work even as they accommodate the needs of
their families. Here are some examples of such arrangements:

Reduced-time schedules. An employee works from 10 to 6 to drive children to school in the

morning.
Seasonal schedules. A tax specialist works sixty-hour weeks from January through April to
accommodate the tax-filing deadline and then works thirty-hour weeks for the balance of the
year.
Compressed schedules. To accommodate his weekend acting vocation, a computer technician
puts in forty hours Monday through Thursday, leaving Fridays free for rehearsals.

Time-Saving Perks
Some companies have instituted perks that helps employees handle personal chores at work that
would otherwise absorb personal time. These include:

On-site day care for employees with preschool children. This is popular among employees and
an excellent recruiting and retention tool.
On-site medical care; for example, SAS is one of several companies that have established small
health clinics right on their business premises.
Concierge services, such as shoe repairing, post office, dry cleaning and laundry, besides food
outlets are being provided by some large employers.

Making Time Management a Habit

Many companies have time-management training for their employees, which is often delivered by
outside vendors through online learning or traditional seminars. People walk out of the training room
with every intention of practicing effective time management, but few change their behavior in the
absence of periodic reinforcement and practice. The same is true of people who read time-
management articles and books.

If you’ve just finished a company-sponsored time-management workshop or seminar, you and your
colleagues need to turn what you’ve learned into improved habits, by talking about the concepts of
time-management learned, keeping an activity log, discussing goals, developing a schedule, identifying
time-wasters, and applying what you’ve learned at both office and home.

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The final thing you must do is evaluate your personal time-management performance and seek
continuous improvement. If you are a manager, help your subordinates make the most of their time.
You’ll be helping them and yourself in equal measure.

Creating a Work–Life Balance

In her book The Overworked American, published in late 1990s, economist Juliet Schor documents that
the average U.S. work year has grown nine hours per year over the past several decades. Now, with
laptops and phones around us all the time, you can add to her calculation the many hours that people
spend working at home and answering e-mails. Ironic, isn’t it? People in the world’s wealthiest nation
are among the most impoverished in personal time. This section offers ideas for making the personal
side of your life more effective and fulfilling by applying the concepts of time management.

Personal Goals
What are your highest personal goals? This might take you more time to answer than to answer the
same question about your workplace goals. Unlike workplace goals, personal goals have many more
dimensions to consider and there are other people involved whose goals and preferences must be
accommodated. Consequently, instead of allocating time to specific personal goals, most people
respond as problems and opportunities unfold.

First, do these three things:

1. Clarify your personal goals. Succinctly describe each goal in a written statement.
2. Prioritize your goals under critical, enabling and nice-to-have and plan accordingly.
3. Determine what you must do (enabling goals) to achieve your highest priorities.

After you’ve clarified your personal goals, make time for them in your schedule. A review of your log
may indicate that you are wasting a lot of time on unimportant activities. As at the office, leave space
on your calendar for unanticipated events and opportunities.

Declutter Your Personal Life

Whether you realize it or not, material possessions absorb time. Think for a moment about the
amount of time you spend cleaning and maintaining your home, your car, and your household
appliances. Similarly, personal commitments and relationships also absorb time. But some of us agree
to commitments too readily without thinking of the impact they have on our time, such as
volunteering to mow the neighbor’s garden.

To keep personal commitments and relationships in line with time availability, periodically review
them, with the goal of determining which should be strengthened, which should be diminished, and
which should be ended. After you’ve freed yourself of unsatisfactory commitments and relationships,
you will have more time for healthy and satisfying relationships.

Build Your Energy

Some people, particularly older people, have plenty of time on their hands, and yet they accomplish
very little because they lack the energy to do things they would like to do. Even some younger people
have grown inactive because of obesity or other health problems. The antidote may be a long-term
program to improve your physical fitness, which should include a healthy diet, along with a balance of
strength and endurance training. It’s never too late to bring back that energy.
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Eliminating Time-Wasters in Your Personal Life
Here are a few ideas for eliminating time-wasters:

Do more things at one time. Are you running to the supermarket three times each week? Smart
meal planning could eliminate two of those three trips.
Combine trips. If your activity log shows that you or other household members are making
separate trips to the supermarket, the dry cleaner, the post office, and so forth, consolidate
those chores into one or two trips.
Reduce television viewing and Internet usage – both can be very addicting.
Shop by catalog or the Internet, instead of spending an entire afternoon in a shopping mall
trying to find it.
Outsource. A faucet needs fixing or house needs painting? Hire someone who has the skills to
do the job better and faster.

To sum up, this article attempts to provide suggestions to manage your time better and develop time-
saving habits. Time management is eventually a personal responsibility, but companies and managers
can help. Companies whose people use effective planning and time management are bound to
outpace rivals whose employees allow time to slip through their fingers.

Adapted from Time Management, Harvard Business Review Press.

HBR Ascend Staff

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