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Whether your goal is to be more productive, less stressed, or take on a new hobby, there are several free time management tools you can use to make the most of your day.
One of the most challenging parts about working, whether you have a full-time job or work from home, is keeping up with everything. The constant bombardment of new information and tasks can be overwhelming!
This blog post will give you tips for better time management and our top four free time management tools to help keep you on track.
The Impact of Peter Drucker on Time Management
First of all, Peter Drucker is a famous management consultant and author. He created the concept of “management by objectives,” which was later used as a model for many businesses. One of his most popular books is The Effective Executive. Another book he wrote called Managing in Turbulent Times discusses how to handle change and innovation in business.
His impact on time management has been enormous because he helped people understand how to be more productive to accomplish more goals and tasks each day.
It’s challenging to overemphasize Drucker’s impact. He wrote 39 books, and his ongoing research of how organizations work and his concepts about social duty essentially reshaped the company landscape. Moreover, he predicted many of the advancements of the late 20th century, such as the surge of the expertise worker (a term he created) and the emergence of the information culture.
In 1958, the very first book, specifically on time management, was published by James McKay. Of the many concepts of time management advanced since then, the work of Steven R. Covey deserves a unique reference: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is still one of today’s bestselling nonfiction books. His body of work has also done a great deal to promote the concept of personal time management.
Related: How a Manager Can Increase Productivity
Advantages of Time Management
The capacity to manage your time efficiently is necessary. Good time management leads to boosted efficiency and productivity, much less stress and anxiety, and a lot more success. Here are some advantages of managing time effectively:
- Stress relief
Making as well as complying with a task timetable minimize stress and anxiety. As you mark off items on your “to-do” list, you can see that you are making tangible development. This assists you stay clear of the sensation of stressed out with stress over whether you’re obtaining things done.
- More time
Good time management offers you added time to invest in your day-to-day life. Individuals who can time-manage successfully enjoy having more time to spend on pastimes or various other individual pursuits.
- Extra possibilities
Managing time well leads to a lot more possibilities and also much less time wasted on minor tasks. Good time management abilities are vital to the top qualities that employers try to find. The capability to prioritize and also schedule jobs is highly desirable for any company.
- Capacity to realize objectives
Individuals who exercise good time management can achieve goals and goals much better and do so in a shorter time.
A Closer Look at Time Management
When we consider time management, most of us think about personal time management, freely specified as managing our time to waste much less of it on doing the important things we require, so we have even more to do the essential things we plan to do.
Time management is frequently offered as a collection of abilities; the concept is that once we grasp the skills, we’ll be a lot more organized, efficient, and happier.
Whether you believe this or not, any working individual can benefit from sharpening any or all of their time management skills.
After considering the advantages of time management, let’s look at some techniques to manage time properly.
List of Techniques for Effective Time Management
1. Set goals correctly
Set objectives that are attainable and measurable. Use the SMART method when setting objectives. Make sure the goals you set are Specify, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
2. Prioritize wisely
Focus on tasks based on significance and seriousness. As an example, look at your everyday tasks and also establish which are:
- Crucial and also urgent – Do these tasks immediately
- Essential, however not immediate – Choose when to do these tasks.
- Immediate yet trivial – Delegate these tasks preferably
- Not immediate and also trivial – Set these apart to do later
3. Establish a time limit to finish a task
Establishing time constraints for completing tasks helps you to be a lot more focused as well as efficient. Making the little added effort to decide just how much time you require to allocate for each task can also help you acknowledge potential problems before they emerge. By doing this, you can make plans for managing them.
For example, assume you need to write up five reviews in time for a meeting. Nonetheless, you recognize that you’ll only have the ability to get 4 of them made in the time remaining before the meeting. If you become aware of this fact well in advance, you might have the ability to quickly delegate writing up one of the evaluations to someone else.
Nevertheless, if you hadn’t troubled to do a time look at your tasks in advance, you could have ended up not understanding your time problem till just an hour before the conference. Naturally, then, it might be considerably harder to discover somebody to pass on one of the reviews to and harder for them to fit the task right into their day.
4. Relax between tasks
When doing a lot of tasks without a break, it is harder to remain concentrated and determined. Enable some downtime in between tasks to remove your head and rejuvenate yourself. Take into consideration getting a brief walk or meditating.
5. Organize on your own.
Use your calendar for more long-term time management. First, write down the deadlines for jobs or tasks that become part of finishing the overall project. Then, consider which days could be best to commit to specific tasks. As an example, you might require a conference to discuss capital on a day when you recognize the company CFO is readily available.
6. Remove non-essential tasks/activities
It is crucial to get rid of excess responsibilities or tasks. Establish what is substantial as well as what deserves your time. Removing non-essential tasks/activities frees up even more of your time spent on really vital points.
7. Plan ahead
Make sure you start daily with a clear suggestion of what you require to do– what needs doing that DAY. Then, think about making it a practice to go on at the end of each day and write out your “to-do” listing for the following workday. In this way, you can hit the ground running the next day.
Implications of Poor Time Management
Let’s additionally look at the repercussions of inadequate time management.
– Poor workflow
The incapability to plan and stick to goals indicates poor efficiency. For example, if there are numerous vital tasks to complete, an effective plan would undoubtedly be to complete related tasks together or sequentially. Nonetheless, if you don’t plan, you can end up having to jump back and forth or backtrack in doing your job. That led to reduced efficiency and decreased productivity.
– Wasted time
Poor time management leads to lost time. For example, by speaking with pals on social networks while doing a job, you are sidetracking on your own and losing time.
– Loss of control
By not knowing what the next task is, you experience a loss of control of your life. That can add to higher tension degrees as well as anxiousness.
– Low quality of work
Inadequate time management usually makes the high quality of your work suffer. For example, needing to rush to complete tasks in the nick of time generally compromises quality.
– Poor credibility
If clients or your company can not rely upon you to finish tasks promptly, their expectations and understandings are adversely influenced. In addition, if clients can not depend on you to get something done on time, they will likely take their business elsewhere.
Related: Why Self-Management is the Best Tool for Success
Free Time Management Tools
Let’s take a look at some of the best time management tools that are available for free. They can help you increase productivity and improve your work outcomes in many ways, depending on what tasks need to be completed over different periods.
Free Online To-Do Lists
It’s hard to stay on top of your life when you’re juggling so many responsibilities, but new and helpful tools like these free online to-do lists can help. You may be surprised at how quickly it becomes a habit to use them.
Evernote
Evernote is a powerful tool that can help you organize and manage your ideas, projects, memories—even to-do lists. You can input whatever needs storing into Evernote: notes from brainstorming sessions or articles clipped for future reference; scans of important work documents or images straight off the web. And it’s all accessible on any device with an internet connection!
With Evernote, you can organize and manage all of your life’s thoughts in one place with various clever features. For example, you can clip articles from the web or use voice memos to capture memories and ideas on the go without worrying about forgetting them later.
In addition, the app will store everything for you to be accessible even when offline–perfect if there’s no internet connection available, Evernote has all the bases covered!
Todoist
Todoist is like a personal assistant that helps you stay on top of your work and life. It’s the first step to help make all your goals come true by giving you clarity so each day has less stress. With Todoist, it’s easy to have peace of mind knowing every task will be accounted for at any given time, not having extra tasks pile up until they’re urgently needed or forgotten about entirely!
Plus, with delegating options when necessary (like assigning things other family members can do), this app does put everyone in control while encouraging teamwork too! It has a built-in calendar, and you can sync it to other apps like Google Calendar or Dropbox.
Free Online Time Tracking
It’s challenging and sometimes impossible to estimate your time usage accurately. Fortunately, several apps can help you with this! You’ll be able to see which tasks eat up most of the day for you and what things might not bring as much value.
TimeCamp
Timecamp is an online time tracking system that allows you to track your hours and get a comprehensive overview of where you’re spending most of your day. Not only can it be free for individuals, but small businesses too!
Every business knows that time is money. And TimeCamp helps businesses make the most of their limited investment by ensuring accurate project forecasting and giving individuals a better understanding of how they spend their valuable hours, ultimately leading to improved productivity.
One of the great things about TimeCamp is that it has both time-tracking and management tools. The latter, especially useful for invoicing purposes, allows me to create different reports that I regularly share with my coworkers to make sure we’re all up to speed with what’s going on around here!
You can use this easy-to-use time tracking software on any device and at any time without slowing down your computer. Its features include rates per task, per project, or employee, depending on how you track the hours spent working for different tasks.
RescueTime
RescueTime is the perfect app for those who want to spend less time on their phone or in front of a computer. It records all your activities and shows you where your time has been more productive with its own free time.
You can reclaim hours wasted on social media and Netflix with RescueTime. By logging your time spent, you make it possible to cut out the bad habits that are sucking away precious minutes of productivity to have more free time for yourself or your loved ones.
RescueTime is a time tracker that helps you focus on the things in your life that are most important to you. You can set up goals and alerts, arrange for distraction blocking, view weekly trends and reports, etc.
The basics are free for life, but there are paid plans if you want more detailed analyses!
Template for Time Management – Gantt Chart (Free Download)
What is a Gantt Chart?
Many people have never become aware of a Gantt chart. Basically, a Gantt chart is a bar chart that offers a visual view of tasks scheduled in time. A Gantt chart is used for planning projects of all sizes, as well as it is a useful method of revealing what work is scheduled to be done on a particular day. It can also help you check out the project’s beginning and end dates in one very effective chart to manage your time.
On a Gantt chart, you can conveniently see:
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Conclusion
We hope you’ve found today’s blog post useful and that these time management tips will help make your life a little easier. Also, if there are any other topics you want to see covered in future posts, please let us know!
Keep up with the latest news, tips, and tricks by signing up for our newsletter. In addition, if you have any favorite tools that can help better manage your time, feel free to share them in the comments below; we would love to hear what works best for others as well. Finally, as always, we love hearing from our readers, so don’t be shy about reaching out with feedback or questions.
