You’ve probably heard it said, “It’s the little things that matter”.
The saying applies to time management, too.
Improving a little bit here and a little bit there can make a drastic difference in your productivity, your success, and your life.
Below we list 50 time management skills that could impact your life.
While it’s a long list of skills, it’s not necessary for you to try to work on them all at once. Just pick one or two, work on it, pick a couple more, and so on.
And, in full discourse, not all of these skills are specifically “time management”. However, all of them are related.
If you improve them, they can improve your time management as well.
Ready?
Let’s go.
1. Prioritization
The ability to prioritize is one of the most important time management skills you can have.
Why?
Because if you aren’t doing what’s important, it doesn’t matter how efficiently you are doing your unimportant task – you are still wasting your time.
Make sure you know what your most important tasks are at your job, what your goals are for your life, career, work, relationships, etc., and what your priorities are in life.
Then, make sure you prioritize your tasks around those.
2. Setting Goals
One reason many people never reach the level of success they desire or accomplish is that they have never defined what success is!
In all areas of your life: career, family, relationships, health, etc., make sure that you have well-defined, clear goals and have them written down. Know your definition of success and where you want to go.
Then, start taking action toward them. If you haven’t defined where you want to go, don’t complain when you don’t get there.
3. Delegation
One of the biggest hindrances people have from being more effective and efficient is that they don’t delegate tasks. They try to do it all themselves.
They may say they can do it better themselves or that it’s faster just to do it.
However, in the long run, when you delegate tasks effectively, you are able to be much more productive. You are able to pass on the tasks that aren’t as important to you (or that you are not as good at) and focus on the tasks that only you can do and/or that are the most important for you to do.
In fact, Brain Tracy says that we should always delegate tasks that are below our pay grade. For example, if you get paid $20/hour and the task can be done by someone who gets paid $10/hour, delegate that task and focus only on tasks that are worth $20/hour or more.
Another reason you may delegate is that someone may do it better and faster than you. They may enjoy it when you don’t.
Delegating can save you a lot of time and frustration.
4. Planning
Planning can help you focus on what’s important versus what’s urgent. It helps you make sure what you do each day aligns with your goals, priorities, and key tasks at work.
At a bare minimum, you should plan for the next day ahead of time, but planning for the week helps you better align your tasks with your priority (even if it’s just knowing the general tasks or themes of what you will do, not necessarily every task set for every day).
Planning for the month can also be helpful in focusing on your priorities.
5. Managing/Scheduling tasks
Managing goes hand in hand with prioritization. You got to know what tasks you have,