Image by Intersection Consulting via FlickrSometimes is just doesn’t seem like there are enough hours in the day to complete everything you need to accomplish. But is this because you are really so busy, or is it because you aren’t making as efficient use of your time as you could? You can get so stuck in your ways and fall into certain time traps that you don’t even realize you’re time is being sucked away from you. 

In order to get plenty accomplished but give yourself a little time to sit back and relax once in a while, here are a few time management tips to help you be and stay efficient.



Everyone needs rules. Without them, you probably wouldn’t have much sense of purpose or order in your life. To keep yourself on task and make good use of your time, consider gauging yourself and your activities for a while. Even it if takes tracking how you spend your time for a few days or a week, then so be it. Actually seeing on paper how you spend your time can allow you to find areas where you could increase your efficiency and improve your time management.


Setting goals is important to time management, but there can be detractors to goals as well. Sometimes when you meet a goal, you may feel as if you’ve achieved your benchmark and that it is quitting time, but this doesn’t have to be the case and can actually detract from your ability to manage your time. You don’t have to stop when you hit your goal. By pushing yourself, if you have the time, energy, or are in a productive groove, you can put yourself ahead of the game and can provide yourself with a little extra time down the road when you may be able to step back for a moment and smell the roses.


Other people and the needs and wants of these people can be a significant drain upon your time and energy. Letting people bust in upon your productive periods can put a huge strain upon your attempts at effective time management. By barging into your office uninvited, calling you, or hitting you with text messages or nonstop emails, some people just have a way to breaking your concentration and interrupting your work.
By doing things like posting “office hours”, letting your phone go to voicemail when you’re on a productive streak, or only checking your emails or texts during your slow periods, you can make more efficient use of your time.

While you might be able to find ways here and there to up your productivity and improve your time management skills, this doesn’t mean you should become complacent. Continuing to be on the lookout for ways to eliminate time killers can help you increase the effectiveness of your work or day and still have a few extra minutes here and there to take a break and enjoy yourself. As times and technology change, so will the ways you manage your time, as will the things that detract from your ability to best make use of this time.

Alex is a Houston based Enterprise Project Management consultant, or EPM consultant, that spends his times developing actionable strategies to help enterprise level companies make their internal processes more efficient.