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With these 12 time management tips to boost your productivity, I try to help you get and stay organized. You will find some common and less common suggestions that you might not have read elsewhere.
Since I plan to provide as much detail as possible for every tip, I will split this article into three parts. So let’s get started with part 1!
1. Get organized with one tool – the most important of my time management tips
Whatever you might want to use to get organized, you should make sure that you can first stick to that tool over a more extended period. Second, use one tool only instead of many. I’ve used Evernote for many years, but within the last year, I switched to Notion.
I have not made the final switch yet, to be honest, because Evernote is still beneficial for my daily organization. What makes Notion stand out for me, even if I am still missing some features, is that you can organize, plan, and create the workspace based on your liking. If you like asana or Trello, you can recreate the same look and feel in Notion.
If you only need a place to organize your thoughts, write content, or plan your days, weeks, and months, you can do that in Notion. So this is the most versatile tool that I know of.
It works as an app on mobile or tablet (essential for me), online (if I have only my work laptop), and as software on my local PC or private notebook.
I still distinguish between private stuff and work-related information. For the first one, I do use Evernote. Everything work-related sits inside of Notion. So using only one tool is for me the most important of the 12 time management tips that I provide in that series.
Personal history with daily organization
When I was younger, computers were not sophisticated, and the internet was unavailable 24/7 due to high phone costs. I tried to organize my life in daily planners. So at the end of each year, I had to walk into one of the department stores. In the best case, only select new inlays for my calendar that I already had.
But, to be honest, I was never good at that, even if I love writing, paper, and pens. So why have I never been able to stay organized with a time planner? I assume one of the reasons is that I am a perfectionist. It drives me crazy to have a weekly calendar, and by accident, I am adding one entry to the wrong date.
I’m not too fond of calendars that do look messy after a time. I need it to be clean and tidy and reorganizable. But none of that was possible for me in a classic paper calendar.
Why you should only use one tool
The reason I recommend you to use only one tool is that you avoid getting distracted. Fewer clicks are necessary. You can focus on learning one tool in and out so that you use all capabilities to the fullest. There is no reason for you to switch between apps, especially with Notion.
For example, if you are a content creator, you can even use Notion to publish written articles directly to your WordPress blog without worrying about anything. Isn’t that great?
So to sum it up: Your goal should be to have as few distractions as possible throughout the day to stay organized and be way more productive!
2. Invest in Automation – Time Management Tips
Automation will be crucial for everyone; in some professions, it already is. Your goal should be to learn as much as possible about automating tasks and get the boring stuff done by technology.
Sometimes you need to learn first before you can successfully automate your workflow to an extent. I recommend you read the book “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. Practical Programming for Total Beginners.” by Albert Sweigart.
Even if the book is pretty old and the second edition was published in 2019, I can still recommend reading it. It helps you get started and get a basic idea of what’s possible.
By the way, Python is easy to learn, especially for beginners, as many parts of this coding language are self-explanatory.
Online Task Automation Tools
There are several online task automation tools available that I can also recommend.
IFTTT (or “IF This Than That)
It is a great tool that automates actions based on triggers between your favorite apps. I recommend you give it a try, as it’s one of the first tools in the market that worked like a charm and still does. >> Go to the IFTTT website here. IFTTT will help you with time management and boost your productivity because you can rely entirely on their services.
automate.io
automate.io is more business focused as far as I can tell from my experience with this platform. The platform is excellent for sales, newsletters, blogging, and other automatization.
Zapier
Zapier is another excellent automation tool that helps automize your work. This can automate the cross-publishing of posts you wrote up to sales automation. It’s all based on triggers that you can configure as you like.
3. Get offline
Your brain needs some time off every day for a few hours. And sleep can only be part of that. I believe the more regular you meditate, the better it is, as this crucial off-time reduces significantly.
I want to point you to my article about different types of meditation. Maybe you can find your favorite there and stop your thinking throughout the day for a while.
Social media is a bi*** because it distracts you by showing other people’s “life,” which is no longer real in most cases. I know many that get stuck in any of the most recent social platforms like TikTok for longer. Unfortunately, I am no exception sometimes.
For me, this is alongside Netflix, amazon prime video, and YouTube, one of the most significant challenges of our time. It’s essential to avoid something that gives you a wrong perception of life.
So getting offline instead of spending time doing nothing but binge-watching content is essential for your mental well-being.
Here is one tip for you: I can decide what apps to get rid of on my phone or what websites to block. Using the digital well-being feature incorporated into almost any phone, you can quickly figure out what apps consume most of your time.
4. Use to-do lists and prioritization – Time Management Tips
To-do lists can do a fantastic job for you. They keep you organized, line out your day and give you an incredible feeling as soon as you accomplish one or more tasks on that list.
My approach is pretty straightforward. I jot down a list of things I must do the next day. This gives me peace of mind because it’s on paper and out of my head before I get to sleep.
On the next day, I go through the list, make adjustments and try to prioritize everything based on urgency/importance.
At the end of my work day, I make a simple decision about the tasks I couldn’t finish: Do I have to move them to the next day? Can someone else take care of them? Can I possibly skip them altogether?
That way, I can keep myself organized in an effortless manner. It takes me roughly 10 – 15 minutes to concentrate on that. It also helps me relax at the end of the day.
Since to-do lists are so popular, I will write another article on that and give you some different examples of successful to-do lists in a later article.
I do hope you find those first four time management tips helpful. Please continue reading parts 2 and part 3 for more tips.
