Before we dive into these 5 easy hacks to save time, I ought to give you a reminder here: productivity is worthless if you’re not working on the right things. So make sure that you have your priorities straight before you try to save time!.

Once you’re sure your priorities are clear and aligned with your life goals, you can start to get organized and better manage your time to stop wasting too much of it.

 

How to save time:
1. Turn your smartphone into an ally

99% of the time, our smartphones are keeping us from being productive: every time we receive a notification, we get distracted from what we were doing… And we catch ourselves scrolling down Instagram or wandering on Youtube.

But in my opinion, 99% of the notifications we get don’t require our immediate attention. If it requires it at all. So instead on letting our phones distract us from our priorities and work, one strategy can be to turn them into productivity allies:

  • turn off notifications for all social medias and apps that are not vital
  • use a productivity app to stay focused (I personally use a Pomodoro technique + Forest app combo here)
  • time block your tasks in your calendar
  • or just turn off your phone to make sure no notification will come in and distract you

How to save time:
2. Set an “end of the day countdown” alarm

Remember what I said about priorities earlier?

Well, one thing I’ve been doing lately is to set an alarm not to wake up and start the day but rather to end it. It’s one of the best strategies I’ve been implementing lately to take back control over my time: I set an alarm everyday 1 hour before the scheduled end of my working day. The time of this alarm varies from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.

When this alarm rings, knowing that I have 1 hour of work left ahead of me gives me a sense of urge that encourages me to:

  • review my priorities for the day & tackle the remaining high priorities tasks first
  • stay super focused for this last hour of work to get the more done in that one hour of time

Since I have this end of the day countdown, I noticed that I always end the day with a blast of energy. Most of the time, I end up having all the most important tasks of the day done, which leaves me with a great feeling of accomplishment, which fuels me with more energy for the next day.

 

How to save time:
3. Track your task time

That’s basically the diagnosis part of time management.

We usually tend to underestimate or overestimate the time needed to get a task done.

One thing you can do to overcome this challenge is to time track your recurring tasks to get an accurate picture of where your time goes.

At the beginning of 2019, I tracked the time I spend on creating content for the blog and various social medias. Between blog posts, Instagram, Pinterest and the blog’s newsletter, I evaluated to 8 days a month the time spent on these writing and photo shoot tasks. Which is basically ⅓ of my working time. And that was actually way too much considering all the other projects I wanted (and needed) to work on.

So I started to think of strategies to cut down this time and free some of it to work on other projects. And that’s how I started to batch my tasks (which is the next time management strategy I want to share with you).

Track the time you spedn in your planner or with digital tools: reverse time-block your tasks, or use a time tracking dedicated tool like Toggl for instance.

 

How to save time:
4. Batch tasks

That’s a super effective strategy to adopt for all the recurring tasks you have to manage.

Batching tasks will allow you to save time in the long run. Batching similar tasks is one application of the Carlson law.

The typical way to do that is to start by sorting recurring out tasks with the most relevant criteria(s):

👉🏻 what you need to do (the nature of the task)
👉🏻 how demanding the task is (energy level needed)
👉🏻 where you need to go to get the task done (location specific tasks such as errands for instance)

My recurring tasks are sorted out by nature: writing, photo shoot, video shoot, admin tasks… Since I started to batch my tasks, I’ve been able to cut the time spent on recurring task by ⅓ which is pretty cool. For instance, I try to make one photo shoot session per week, batch edit the pictures so that I don’t spend more than half a day per week to make pictures for my Instagram account and the upcoming blog posts.

And I can now use the spare time I have to work on more creative and demanding projects.

 

How to save time:
5. Give yourself some structure

This one is pretty obvious, but it’s definitely a game changer: set deadlines for your tasks and projects.

Have you ever noticed how much we can procrastinate on something if we don’t have any time pressure to get it done? Well, that’s exactly what deadlines are made for.

Of course, the deadlines can come from the outside: your boss asking for something to be done before the 15th of this month, or the movers coming at your place to pick up all your stuff are typical deadlines on which you have little control. But you can also decide to set your own deadlines to make sure you make progress on your passion projects or adulting stuff you tend to procrastinate about.

 

The PROJO planner is designed to encourage you to structure your projects and stay focused on achieving them.

 

I’m really relying on the PROJO planner get the structure I need to keep going on the projects I’m running for myself. This planner is designed to give you the light structure that any project requires: it encourages you to master plan your projects, and to set monthly goals to keep yourself accountable on the progress made on your projects.

Having the PROJO planner structure to guide my planning sessions have been a game changer. It really allowed me to stay focused on my goals and make progress on a daily basis.

 

Ok, time to wrap it up!
If you’re willing to better manage your time, here are the 5 strategies to try:

✔️ Turn your phone into an ally using productivity app & time blocking
✔️ Set an “end of the day” alarm
✔️ Track your time task to see where your time goes
✔️ Batch your recurring tasks
✔️ Give yourself some structure to get a slight time pressure feeling that will make you more productive. And the PROJO planner can definitely help you with that last point!

 

Have you any other killer time management strategy to share?