Learn to manage your time
Time management is a critical part of being organized. If you aren’t in control of your time, you can’t be in control of your tasks.
Luckily time management, like organization, is a learnable skill. There are a variety of techniques and strategies you can implement in order to get better at managing your time.
Don’t be afraid to try a few different techniques until you find the one that works for you. Check out:
- Time blocking: Time blocking is when you schedule out every moment of your day. This includes your meetings, tasks, and everything in between—from scrolling on Instagram to lunch breaks. Creating a detailed schedule gives you control over your calendar. You’ll become aware of exactly how you’re spending your time and any opportunities to improve.
- Timeboxing: For each task, create a goal to finish it by a specific time. If left alone, tasks might fall into the trap of Parkinson’s Law—where work expands to fill the available time. Timeboxing prevents this, ensuring that tasks take only as long as they need to.
- The Pomodoro technique: The Pomodoro technique can help you get hyper-focused work done. It’s a simple structure: Each Pomodoro consists of 25-minute work blocks bookended by 5-minute breaks. When you’re in a Pomodoro, limit distractions and turn off notifications. The goal is to focus solely on the task at hand.
- Eat the frog: It might sound like a weird time management technique, but the eat the frog method comes from a famous Mark Twain quote: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning.” Essentially, this translates to tackling your most difficult tasks first. Start each day by identifying and completing your hardest tasks, going down the line until you’re left with easier items to end the day. This helps you take advantage of your most productive working hours–often when you first start work—to begin with a success.
By implementing time management, you can take control over your schedule and have more time for… well, whatever you’d like.