“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Altshuler
Are you having problems keeping track of your activities? Have you started a bunch of tasks and can’t decide which one to finish first? You shouldn’t let your work or your social life suffer just because of the unfinished tasks you need to accomplish. The best solution to this issue is to manage your time well.
Time management is the process of planning and organizing how much time you will spend doing specific activities. Once you learn and maintain good time management skills, you can reduce the amount of stress you have from being behind on tasks and missed deadlines. Here are some web resources which may give you some ideas on how to develop good time management skills.
This website is owned by Craig Jarrow. He aims to help individuals as well as companies to reclaim their time. He usually writes tips about time management, productivity, and goal setting. If you’re looking for productivity advice and tools, try visiting this site.
The Time Doctor is a website by Mike Gardner. He’s a coach, speaker, and trainer who shares tips, strategies, and resources to improve time management skills as well as productivity.
Allyson Lewis, a time management trainer, teaches people through this website about proper time management and lifestyle. It is designed for people who are overwhelmed with a lot of tasks and feel like there’s very little time on their hands.
This site is owned by Robyn Pearce. She blogs about tips on how to achieve a better work-life balance, how to save time, how to reduce stress, and other topics about time management.
Four Essential Time Management Tools
Aside from the time management advice, you can get from some blogs and websites, there are also some tools which can be helpful for you. Here are four essential time management tools you should consider for a more organized and productive work.
- To Do List: This tool is the backbone of any productivity system. It is where you list your tasks. You should keep your to-do list with you anytime and anywhere you go and keep notes so you don’t forget what needs done and mark off what’s completed.
- Calendar: Having a well-kept calendar will help you track, plan, and schedule your activities and tasks.
- Address Book: It is important to keep an address book because it can help you find contacts immediately.
- Notebook: Having a good notebook is essential too because it’s where you can write down key thoughts related to tasks, your calendar, contacts, etc
There are a large number of tools available for each of these and of course, almost all are available for your smartphone.
Time Management Applications
Since most of our daily work and activities involve the use of cellphones and computers, there are some applications that might help manage our time. Most of these applications include the four essential time management tools. What’s good about these is one app can carry all those essential tools. Here are some you might want to try:
This app can be used on PC, Mac, Linux, and Android. It can track the amount of time you spend on certain websites and applications. It sends weekly reports showing how you spent most of your time. It can help you spot the timewasters, and it can even show you how you could’ve been more productive.
This app is helpful in organizing time and managing tasks. It is available for Android, IOS,
Twitter, Gmail, and Google Calendar. It sends reminders about your pending tasks. It is an ideal app for students and for people who need to balance work and family.
This is a to-do list app that can help you access your tasks anytime and anywhere, whether your online or offline. You can use it on your desktop, tablet, smartwatch, and phone.
This one is a time tracking app. Aside from time tracking, it also features invoicing and expense tracking. It is best to use in individual and team projects.
This is a personal time tracker app. You can customize it to be able to organize your day. It also sends reports that show how you’ve spent the day.
Evernote is a free note-making application with a great organization feature. It can synchronize your files from different platforms and store them on the cloud for you to access and edit from anywhere using any device.
Time management is all about balance. It’s a process of trying different methods, and once you find the one that suits you, there’s no need to worry about the number of tasks you need to finish every day. We hope these resources can help get you started on improving your time management skills.