Secret To Time Management & Productivity | How To Avoid Procrastination

It seems that there is not enough time in a day. But since we all get the same 24 hours, how do some people achieve so much more at the same time than others? The answer lies in good TIME MANAGEMENT.  The secret lies in time management. Know the secret to time management & productivity

Here’s a situation that gives you a jittery feeling…

The project deadline is nearby. You only have a few hours left until you need to submit the final version of the project. Your heart beats fast, your knees bounce . . . What to do then? My friend, you need to learn better time management.

So, what the heck is Time Management?

Wikipedia says- “Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves juggling various demands upon a person relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests, and commitments with the finiteness of time. Using time effectively gives the person “choice” on spending/managing activities at their own time and utility”.

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In this post, I’ll discuss;

• The importance of Time Management
• Common problems with current Time Tracking Solutions
• How to fix these problems and grow your business with Orangescrum

So without wasting much time, let’s get into the facts straight…

The importance of Time Management:

Whether we agree or not, time is valuable to us. All projects, big or small, require time.

There are lots of ways to tackle the issue of time management – you can download apps, create lists, use different tools, etc. But if you don’t know why it’s important for you to better manage your time, then these apps or tools aren’t going to help you anymore.

First of all, you need to take a moment to think about your time before you spend it. It will help improve your time management and productivity immediately.

I used to think that time management is only a business tool, just like a calculator or a cell phone. It is something that helps you increase productivity and eventually costs you more money.

Then I learned, time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in personal and professional life depends.

“Look upon Time Management as a vehicle that can take you from wherever you are today, to wherever you want to be in the future.” – Brian Tracy

5 Reasons Why you Need to be Better at Time Management –

• Time is limited no matter how you slice it. If you want to rise through the ranks, you have to acknowledge the importance of finding a way to manage this limited resource
• You can accomplish more with less effort
• Improved decision-making can be achieved
• To become more successful in your career
• To reduce stress- You’re better able to estimate how long a given task will take you to complete, and you know you can meet the deadline.

Benefits of Time Management:

The ability to manage your time effectively is important. Good time management leads to more efficiency and productivity, less stress, less wasted time, and far more successful life. Here are some benefits of managing time effectively:

• Stress Relief– Making and following a task strategy makes a person feel less stressed and reduces anxiety.
• More Time– Proper time management gives you extra time to spend in your daily life. People who can manage their time effectively, spend fun times on hobbies or other personal pursuits.
• Ability to Realize Goal– Individuals who practice good time management are the ones to achieve their goals and objectives in a better way.

Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.

So this was just a trailer of good time management. But what if you are suffering from poor time management?

Consequences of Poor Time Management:

• Poor Workflow– The inability to work ahead and stick to the goals means poor efficiency. If there are several important tasks to complete, an effective plan is required to complete the tasks first. If you don’t plan before, it can lead to low productivity.
• Time Wastage– Poor time management results in wastage of time. For example- by juggling social media while doing an assignment, you are distracting yourself and wasting time.
• Poor Quality of Work– Bad time management makes the quality of your work suffer. Trying to complete the work at the last moment compromises quality.
• Poor Reputation: If clients can’t rely on you to manage your time to complete tasks, their expectations get affected.

When it comes to a project manager, it is important to know the hours the resource is putting on different activities. Over time, accurate reporting of time by the resource helps the project manager to understand the performance of a particular type of activity.

This information will be extremely useful for the estimation for the next projects, especially if the activities are similar. Furthermore, the proper time entry enables the project manager to check whether or not the spent hour(s) is exceeding the estimated hour(s) and mitigating the risks.

And to get the same, Time Tracking comes into play.

Role of Time Tracking-

Time tracking offers several benefits for you and your business such as improved productivity and the ability to make more money for your business by billing for the exact hours you work.

While you can log time on paper or a spreadsheet, there is a better way: Time Tracking Software. The software stores your information centrally, you don’t have to enter data manually.

Benefits of Time Tracking for Your Business:

• Improves your productivity: Do you ever wonder where your day is spent? By tracking your time, you can get how you spent it and what the time killers are. Hence, you can easily improve productivity.
• Identifies areas that need improvement: Beyond identifying time wasters, time tracking lets you pinpoint tasks that are taking too long. You may benefit from gathering more details easily or limiting changes.
• Ensures invoices are correct: Many business owners bill by the hour. Track your time so that the final invoices are correct and your client is paying you for all working hours.
• Proper future project planning: Fortunately, with the help of time tracking, you can see how long similar projects took to create an accurate invoice and how much time a project took to complete. So, it helps to identify how much the project will cost and what more time it will take to finish.

Time Tracking Problems and Their Solutions:

You can manually document your time in a spreadsheet, but that takes more time. The time tracking tool is a better option for this. They automatically track your resources’ working hour(s), billable/non-billable hour(s), and estimated hour(s). However, there is yet another problem: many time tracking tools have shortcomings:

Keep Track of Non-Project Work:

Most project managers are primarily interested in the time their team members spend on productive work. In most organizations, resource utilization is determined by comparing the number of available hours to the number of estimated hours.

However, it’s also vital to understand what employees are doing with their non-project time. Creating specific tasks for different categories of non-project time such as paid time off, travel time and time spent on administrative tasks can put insight into how much extra time employees could be spending on their billable hours.

Applying Time to The Correct Project or Task:

Projects can be complicated with hundreds of tasks and sub-tasks assigned to different team members. When team members search for their tasks, they suffer more and spend more time searching for their tasks.

Orangescrum is time tracking software that practically solves this problem. It shows team members’ work details on a single platform. That means, being a project manager, you can check which team member spent more time doing his/her task, who spent less, how much billable and non-billable, etc.

Getting Up-to-Date Time Tracking Information:

As a project manager, you are expected to provide up-to-date information on your projects regularly. Mostly, employees don’t prefer micromanagement in their workplace. That is also a disadvantage for time tracking. If you are using older time tracking software, you may not be able to access the most recent time entry records.

With the help of Orangescrum, resources can view their entered time in daily, weekly, and monthly formats. At the end of the month, they can submit the time reports to the managers. Once the time report is submitted, the entered time will be locked so further changes are prevented.

Conclusion:

Managers and administrators can go through various reports and monitor the time for various purposes. The combination of effective project planning, resource allocation to activities, and tracking of time add a lot of value for organizations that are managing multiple projects and resources.

Regardless of what is preventing you from reporting on an accurate and timely basis, Orangescrum can help. With a simple user interface, automatic time tracking features, and real-time reporting capabilities, Orangescrum takes the frustration and confusion out of project management time tracking.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst…

Think about this limited resource and utilize it in a better way. Manage your time effectively and get the best out of it like a pro.

Thank you for reading this post. Hopefully, you guys will like this. If you find it helpful, then please share it with your friends and colleagues and let them know the secret that is out now. Subscribe and get more related blogs.

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