In school, work, and daily life, we may encounter people who seem to have it all together. They are productive, stress-free, high achievers. But chances are, they were not born that way. Managing, organizing, and distributing time are skills that we can learn. Doing so can help you control your time and promote overall satisfaction.

Here are some tips and methods that can help you harness your time for better well-being.

What is time management?

Time management is the process of consciously planning and controlling time spent on specific tasks to increase how efficient you are. You may be familiar with setting deadlines, writing to-do lists, and giving yourself small rewards for accomplishing certain activities.

Motivating ourselves is a core part of time management—and it takes a bit of effort not only to motivate yourself but to cultivate good habits to work and live more efficiently.

To develop good routines and habits, you can start by knowing what strategies and best practices are out there. You can experiment with them in your own life to see what works for you.

Benefits of time management

Good time management can lead to a healthy, balanced lifestyle that may manifest as:

• Reducing stress

• Increasing energy

• Achieving goals more efficiently

• Prioritizing what's important

• Accomplishing more in less time

• Reducing procrastination

• Boosting confidence

• Getting further in your career or education

How we spend our days...

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim,” wrote Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life [1]. 

This quote summarizes how humans conceptualize time and how we can develop skills and schedules to maximize productivity and achieve our goals. 

6 time management strategies

If you’re looking to take control of your time, here are six tips and strategies to get you started:

1. Conduct a time audit.

Start by assessing where you actually spend your time. Create a visual map of the approximate hours you spend on work, school, housework and chores, commuting, social media, and leisure activities. Then, you can drill in on school or work, dividing your previous week into days, then hours. How much time did it take to finish that paper? Did a work project take longer because you were scrolling on your phone?

Set goals based on this outcome. Planning ahead and setting time limits on your tasks and priorities can free up time for what’s most important to you, like spending more time with friends and family.

Start by dedicating a half hour every Sunday to intentionally planning your week ahead and setting daily goals.

Awareness, arrangement, adaptation

At the core of time management methods are the basic skills of awareness, arrangement, and adaptation [2]. This means being mindful of your time, structuring it, and adjusting it as you go, is the secret to effective time management. Executives now point to behavioral skills as the most important for the modern workforce, with “time management skills and the ability to prioritize” ranking second in IBM’s skills gap survey [3].

2. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to set your priorities.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a popular tool that helps you distinguish between tasks that are important, not important, urgent, and not urgent. The quadrant has four boxes in which you can split your tasks to prioritize what you should focus on first. They also correspond with the 4 D’s of execution: do, defer, delegate, and delete.

• Quadrant 1: Important and urgent. Do these tasks first. These are the priorities that are most relevant to your goals.

• Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent. Defer these for later in your schedule.

• Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important. Delegate these to others, if possible, especially if they do not contribute to your long-term goals.

• Quadrant 4: Not important and not urgent. Delete these tasks, or do them when you have free time because they are distractions from your priorities.

For an even simpler approach, create a task list and mark each item as urgent or important. Often, we prioritize urgent tasks instead of important ones—such as tasks that may be creative, important, and fulfilling but do not have a deadline—so identifying and labeling them can be a helpful step toward accomplishing your personal and professional goals.

3. Employ methods to “chunk” your time.

Once you have a better idea of what your priorities are, setting limits can be an excellent time management tool. There are several options for chunking your time into digestible pieces.

Try the Pomodoro method. This technique was developed in the late 1980s by Francesco Cirillo, a university student who was overwhelmed by studying and assignments. The Pomodoro method requires using a timer to break down your work into 25-minute intervals, separated by 5 minutes of break time. After four pomodoros, you may take a longer 15-30 minute break. Pomodoro (“tomato” in Italian) promotes concentration and relieves mental fatigue, which is especially useful for open-ended work like conducting research, studying for an exam, or finishing a consulting project.

By “chunking” time, you make big projects and goals less daunting. Less procrastination, more productivity.

Try an app to help you focus

Download Pomodor on your desktop or the Focus Keeper app for your phone.

4. Focus on one thing at a time. 

For most of us, multitasking is generally less efficient than focusing on one task at a time. In fact, one study found that only 2.5 percent of people are able to multitask effectively [4]. Doing too many things at once can impact your cognitive ability, making you feel unproductive or dissatisfied with your progress. Arranging your time so that you complete one task before starting another can boost your confidence.

Further, it may be helpful to compartmentalize tasks. If you are a writer, for example, you might dedicate Monday to research, Tuesday through Thursday to writing, and Friday to editing. 

5. Give yourself a reward.

Rewards can be a great source of motivation for adopting good time management habits. For each important task you accomplish, you can give yourself a little treat. It doesn't need to be extravagant or expensive. Here are some simple ways to motivate yourself:

• Taking a break to enjoy your favorite snack

• Going for a short walk outside

• Call a friend or family member

• Meditate for five minutes

• Listen to a podcast episode or a chapter of an audiobook

For bigger rewards, you can indulge in activities like reading a book in the bath, planning a night out with friends, or booking a getaway. Exciting rewards can help you push through an especially tough project or work period.

6. Use apps to block out distractions.

Sometimes, rewards and good intentions are not enough to keep us focused. An app or browser extension can help you minimize distractions by blocking you from using social media or touching your phone. Here are some apps and extensions you can try:

• Forest is an app that helps you stay focused and off your phone. The company partners with an organization called Trees for the Future to plant trees when you spend virtual coins earned in Forest.

• StayFocused is a browser extension that prevents you from using time-wasting websites like Reddit, Twitter, Wikipedia, Instagram, and more. It’s highly configurable, so you can customize it to your specific distractions.

• Freedom is a tool that can block both websites and apps on all of your devices, simultaneously. Take advantage of their free trial to know if it’s right for you.