Does your day lack enough hours to take care of your projects, habits, commitments, and more?
Do you have an inner war with Time Management?
When half past 5 rolls around, do you take a look at your to-do-list and sense you failed to accomplish a great deal of anything?
Technology has become a double-edged sword. While it allows us to connect, improve, perform, and leverage resources better than ever, it is often responsible for our decrease in productivity. The good news is that, with the right APPS and TOOLS, you can use technology to your advantage and increase your productivity.
Here a few Time Management Tools that can help to improve your productivity:
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Rescue Time
One of the biggest reasons we lack productivity is because we aren’t able to accurately keep track of the time our tasks take. Only 10% of people say they feel “in control” of how they spend their time. RescueTime is the world’s most powerful time management software. If you have doubts that you’re using time wisely, this APP will provide you with a weekly report that shows you what things are stealing your time.
Remember The Milk
Remember The Milk is the popular to-do list that’s everywhere you are: from your phone, to the web, to your Google apps, and more. If you find that you struggle with managing everything your massive to-do-list, Remember the Milk is just the APP for you. It’s a free tool that is compatible with your computer, mobile device, Gmail, Outlook, and others. It helps you to manage all your tasks efficiently and reminds you of them no matter where you’re at.
Focus Booster
Focus Booster is a step above your average pomodoro timer, it also allows you to record all your sessions and track your productivity. Based on the Pomodoro Technique, this APP is aimed at those who procrastinate and feel overwhelmed by their tasks. The APP is designed to enhance your focus and helps to remove any anxiety you have with time pressures.
Toggl
The Toggl Track Desktop App will allow you to track time from your desktop, with features such as tracking reminders, Pomodoro timer and offline mode. With Toggl, you can also keep better track of the time you spend working on projects and tasks and is an excellent alternative to time-sheets. Effective time management starts with being clear on how much time you are actually spending on your projects and tasks, and then through careful analysis, working out how you can better manage them.
Evernote
Capture ideas when inspiration strikes. Find information fast. Share notes with anyone. From meetings and projects to web pages and to-do lists. Evernote is a free productivity tool that lets you capture your thoughts, ideas, and speeches, interviews, create lists, add text and voice attachments, and share files with your friends. To really optimize your time, you can also sync Remember The Milk with Evernote.
If you find your productivity is lacking, try installing any of the above-mentioned APPS to your daily routine. Stop letting technology kill your productivity, instead use it to your advantage.
Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resource and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals
Dan S. Kennedy
If you are still struggling to take control of your day, using a popular productiveness approach called the 4Ds of powerful time management will help you get getter focus on your thoughts, while you gain clarity on what you need to get done.
You may ask, what are the 4Ds of time management? Simply put, they are DO, DELETE, DEFER and DELETE.
Do
Before deciding to do a task, I like the use of the two-minute rule from David Allen.
Rate what you could accomplish in only 120 seconds: example: write an email, make a brief call, or pull a file.
In his book, Getting Things Done, Allen explained, “The rationale for the two-minute rule is that, it’s more or less the point where it starts taking longer to store and track an item than to deal with it the first time it’s in our hands – in other words, it’s the efficiency cutoff.”
If your task takes longer than 120 seconds and you still need to do it, work on this task alone for 30 minutes or until you complete it.
REMEMBER, multitasking is the enemy of powerful time management.
Defer
Decisions are difficult.
This can be a brand-new task you want to start in a week or two or it may be a request from a colleage that you want to take care of at the end of the day. It could be an idea you need to do more research on or thought on before taking movement.
For instance, once I get an email that takes more than two minutes to address, I drag it to a folder, referred to as Action. Seize and defer those new requests so you can refocus on what is in the front of you.
If you observe this technique, do not forget to check your list of deferred responsibilities at the end of the day or week. At that time, determine if you need to do or delete.
After all, there’s a line among deferring and procrastinating indefinitely.
Delegate
If you’re new to delegation, you might find it disconcerting when the results are somewhat different than when you complete the work yourself.
That does not imply you need to stop delegating! Delegation is a wonderful manner to better leverage your day.
In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Guwande wrote, “Checklists not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance.”
That stated, smaller obligations you need to delegate do not always need a checklist.
Instead, consider if your time is spent more effectively by delegating or doing. For example, you might want to delegate paying a supplier and prioritize phoning an unhappy customer as customer service is the backbone of your business.
“Not managing your time and making excuses are two bad habits. Don’t put them both together by claiming you don’t have time”.
Robert Foster Bennet
Delete
Delete is the easiest of the four Ds to put into effect because you do not have to do much of anything beyond creating an easy choice to do or to delete.
Wan Ho has written about this productiveness strategy and stated, “I can generally delete half of my emails without opening them. I am more brutal after I return from vacation and have to undergo a backlog of emails”.
So, ask yourself: Will this activity help me get the lengthy-time period result I need?
Depending on the task marked for deletion, you would possibly want to go back to the requester and provide an explanation for why you’re now not doing it.
If the deleted item is a simple activity, get rid of it out of your to do listing and flow on with your day. The second most alluring element after finishing a to do list is eliminating an object from it.
If you’re nonetheless unsure, the subsequent D can assist or Use A Calendar To Increase Your Productivity
Related Topic: https://www.calendar.com/blog/using-the-4ds-of-time-management-to-your-advantage
In Summary
Apply the 4Ds of Effective Time Management today. There’s no big secret to effective time management. It involves making selections about what to act on now, later or maybe never. If you struggle with these decisions during the hours of your working day, use the 4Ds of effective time management and then review what worked and didn’t work.
