10 Time Management Strategies to Boost Your Team’s Efficiency

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Do you often wish you had more time? Feel like you need to be more organized and productive? Despite being busy all day, do you feel you haven’t accomplished much? Effectively managing that time depends on your ability to self-analyze, plan, evaluate, and control your behavior. Both money and time are valuable but limited resources. Therefore, you need to allocate, protect, and budget them properly. Make sure you manage your time effectively using time management strategies.

Many of us struggle with how to organize and spend our time. When we manage it efficiently, we can accomplish more tasks in less time, therefore focusing on those that will have the most impact on our day.  Our team has put together 10 time management strategies to help your team be more productive, take a look: 

Time Management Strategies to Suit Your Needs

When managing your time, it is important to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. If you manage your time efficiently, you can strike the right work-life balance. You can boost your productivity by following time management strategies. But how can you find a good balance? Well, your workload and structure will determine that. Ask yourself questions like “How many hours does my team invest in X task?”, “How much does non-billable time cost me?”, “Is my team being productive enough?”. Answering those questions can help you improve your time management skills for a more efficient outcome.

Check out these 10 strategies to boost your productivity without spending extra time at the office.

1. Identify Your Team’s Productive Time

It is impossible to evaluate every team in the same way. A marketing team’s view of success is likely to differ greatly from a software development team’s. To evaluate your business development and improve outcomes, understanding how well your employees perform is key. 

To identify your team’s productive time, you should use data to back up how well team members are performing, even though there are many subjective ways of analyzing teamwork. Continuously reviewing human capital is a more beneficial tactic in line with agile teams’ strategy than setting up a yearly or quarterly review.  

2. Find out Where They’re Wasting Time

Keeping track of how your team uses its time is a helpful tool. Keep a record of what they do in 15-minute intervals for a week or two. Then assess their progress.

You can identify your team’s inefficiency-inducing time-wasters by taking the following actions:

  1. Tracking what you do at work
  2. Analyzing what you can improve
  3. Take your time tracking info to make significant changes 

3. Set Priorities

Making the most of your time at work, and at home, can be made easier by developing prioritization strategies. These strategies can help you evaluate and set your top priorities, no matter if you are a sole proprietor or an executive at a Fortune 500 company.   

Creating a “to-do” list is an easy way to prioritize. Whether you need a daily, weekly, or monthly list depends on your lifestyle. Creating an agenda, evaluating tasks, and allocating time and effort to deliver the greatest value in a short amount of time are typical elements of thoughtful prioritization. Flexible priority setting is important, since you may have to interrupt low-priority tasks for urgent tasks.   

A good way to get started is to create a list of all the tasks or duties you have in your job. Once you have broken them down into daily, weekly, and monthly goals, you can work on organizing them. Knowing these particulars will be much easier for you to stay focused on your daily tasks and complete them all.

4. Beware of Procrastination

Procrastination is a trap that many of us fall into. The more we procrastinate, the more time we waste and the more important tasks we put off until it is too late for them. As soon as we realize this, panic sets in, and we wish we had started earlier. It’s impossible to be fully relaxed while procrastinating because you always have a reminder that you should be working somewhere in the back of your mind. 

There are many tricks and tactics to help you stop procrastinating, but start from the very beginning,  just force yourself to start. The first step is always the hardest, but believe you can do it, and you will.

5. Set SMART Goals

This is one of the most important time management strategies, a successful time management is one of the most valuable skills a person can possess. It is very unlikely that you will achieve your personal goals if you don’t use your time wisely, that’s why SMART goals can help you to set your goals the right way. 

The process of setting goals can be done right or wrong. By not setting your goals correctly, you’re most likely to miss something, resulting in a rework or otherwise veering off course. 

SMART goals help you to ensure your goal is realistic and achievable. You can define a SMART goal as:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time-Bound

6. Choose the Right Time Management Tools

Time management tools are designed to help you manage your time more effectively. You will be able to become more productive, make better time management decisions, and spend less time on reporting and invoicing when you use time management tools. 

Certainly, using as many tools as possible to support your position is one of the best ways to manage your time more wisely. Downloading a computer program or smartphone app can make your life easier. You can save hours of work each week by adding even one time management tool to your arsenal. 

The choice of the right technology stack for your time management needs is a very critical decision in the vast overflow of time management tools. We recommend experimenting with a few of them. See how they fit your needs after testing them for a short period of time. There are usually free versions or trials available.

7. Organize and Schedule Everything

It might be helpful to organize and schedule your waking hours throughout the day so that you can better plan what you can do during this time. Keeping track of your schedule may allow you to schedule both work-related and leisure tasks during the time available. You may be able to plan better for the unexpected or keep on track if you are organized. You might also feel more prepared, efficient, and productive when you have an organized schedule.

Certainly, our personal and professional lives can benefit from scheduling tools that help us to keep track of what we need to do. Organizing and scheduling may help you achieve a better work/life balance.

8. Plan Your Day Properly

Understanding how to plan your day out is crucial to taking control and getting where you want to go, whether you need to handle an overwhelming workload, build a new habit, or create more time for fun, and help you to improve your time management strategies. 

You can stay focused and productive by planning your day, thereby keeping on top of your daily to-do list. Your day becomes easier to plan when you feel clear and focused.

Keeping a clear schedule allows you to stay organized and avoid getting overwhelmed by a long list of tasks. Planning your daily priorities and increasing your productivity is easier when you plan every day. And organizing your daily routines can be made easier with planning or project management tools. 

9. Delegate Wisely

Having the ability to delegate is important as a leader since you cannot do everything yourself. Your team will be empowered by delegation, and you will build trust, as well as develop professionally. On the other hand, choosing the best person to tackle a task or project is one way that leaders can learn how to do this. 

Certainly, everyone should be able to delegate. Delegating means giving someone else responsibility for a task, which frees your time for tasks that require your expertise. But how can you learn to delegate? Start from the beginning: Determine what other people’s skills are and select a suitable person for the job. Make sure the person you choose is capable, experienced, interested, and has the authority to handle the task. Give details. Finally, make clear expectations and describe the task, so that the person can make it personal.

10. Avoid Multitasking

To avoid forgetting one thing, you may multitask out of the fear that you might otherwise forget it. Alternatively, you might feel that the original task isn’t productive and that switching would lead to greater efficiency. But this is not the case.  In addition to reducing productivity by 40%, multitasking also decreases intelligence levels. If you consider this statistic, you’ll see that when you focus on one thing at a time, you can achieve twice as much. Listening to music or using a virtual assistant doesn’t usually count as multitasking since these activities have productivity benefits when done correctly.

Trying to accomplish too many goals at once is more detrimental than beneficial. Do not multitask when you work. Instead, focus on one task and complete it before moving on to the next.

Time Management Strategies That Suit Your Team

Whatever time management strategies you use, take time to evaluate how they have worked for you. The ability to manage time effectively leads to greater personal happiness, more accomplishments at work and at home, and a more fulfilling future. Certainly, by implementing the right time management strategies, you’ll feel less stressed. Furthermore, you can take a real lunch break, and deadlines don’t seem so daunting. TrackingTime can help you to improve your time management and make a difference in your daily routine.

Time Management Strategies to Boost your Team’s Efficiency

  1. Identify Your Team’s Productive Time

    Understanding how well your employees perform is key. Use data to back up how well team members are performing, and continuously review human capital. 

  2. Find out Where They’re Wasting Time

    Keep track of how your team uses its time by keeping a record of what they do in 15-minute intervals for a week or two. Then assess their progress. 

  3. Set Priorities

    Develop prioritization strategies to evaluate and set your top priorities. Create a list of all your tasks or duties and allocate time and effort to deliver the greatest value in a short amount of time.

  4. Beware of Procrastination

    Start from the very beginning and  just force yourself to start. The first step is always the hardest, but believe you can do it, and you will.

  5. Set SMART Goals

    SMART goals help you to ensure your goal is realistic and achievable. They must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

  6. Choose the Right Time Management Tool

    Use as many tools as possible. Download and experiment with time management computer programs or smartphone apps to find the one that best suits your needs.

  7. Organize and Schedule Everything

    Organize and schedule your hours throughout the day and keep track of your schedule. Organizing and scheduling may help you achieve a better work/life balance.

  8. Plan your Day Properly

    Keep a clear schedule to stay organized and avoid getting overwhelmed by a long list of tasks. Organizing your daily routines can be made easier with planning or project management tools. 

  9. Delegate Wisely

    Determine what other people’s skills are and select a suitable person for the job. Make sure the person you choose is capable, experienced, interested, and has the authority to handle the task. Set clear goals and expectations.

  10. Avoid Multitasking

    Trying to accomplish too many goals at once is more detrimental than beneficial. Do not multitask when you work. Instead, focus on one task and complete it before moving on to the next.