Time Management Tips | Stop Procrastinating & Get More Done in Less Time

It seems that there is not enough time in a day. But, since we all get the same 24 hours, then how some people achieve so much more in the same time than others? The answer lies in good TIME MANAGEMENT. In short, success is everything that involves time management.

Here’s a situation that gives you jittery feeling…

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

So, what 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 a juggling act of 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.

In this post, I’ll highlight;

• 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 core…

The importance of Time Management:

Whether we assign a dollar value to it or not, time is valuable to us. All work requires 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. So that it can improve your personal 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 cost 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 Time Management is crucial-

• 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 better efficiency and productivity, less stress, less wasted time, and 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 able 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 a small glimpse of good time management. But what if you are going through 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 ahead, it can lead to low productivity.
• Wasted Time– Poor time management results in wasted 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 a period, the accurate reporting of time by the resource helps the project manager to understand the performance on a particular type of activity.

This information will be extremely useful for the estimation for the next projects, especially if the activities are similar in nature. 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 in to 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 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 obtaining more detailed up front or limiting changes.
• Ensures invoices are correct: Many business owners bill by the hour. Track your time so that 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 could manually document your time in a spreadsheet, but that takes more time. Time tracking tools are 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:

Keeping 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 actually 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 actually be spending on their billable hour(s).

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, time tracking software practically solves this problem. It shows team members work details in 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 on a regular basis. 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.

No matter what is preventing you from reporting in 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 proper way. Manage your time effectively and get the best out of it like a pro.

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