Any small business or freelancer who wants to be successful must manage their time well.
Time management is crucial because it enables you to:
Focus on critical tasks to get more done
Take advantage of new opportunities
Maintain long-term growth
Here, you’ll learn why time management is so important.
Time management is the act of maximizing one’s time effectively to increase productivity. One of the best ways to get started is by prioritizing and tracking time for each task.
Planning the best use of your time is a great way to increase productivity. Effective time management allows you to prioritize tasks and control how you spend your time and energy.
Businesses and freelancers that don’t prioritize effective time management skills will likely miss deadlines. Teams will spend less time on less important tasks and more on important ones.
Without strong time management habits, you can also risk going over budget.
With better time management, you and your team can get more done while experiencing less stress. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of time management.
Good time management enables you to do more in less time. At work, you can tackle projects with fewer interruptions and less task switching. This way, you can increase your time with loved ones, travel, or take on new hobbies.
Good time management skills help reduce stress in all aspects of your life. Even something as simple as planning your sleep schedule dramatically affects how well you use your time for decision-making.
When you’re less stressed, you tend to sleep better at night. The better you sleep, the less impulsive your decision-making becomes.
Teaching your team how to manage their time can stop people from making bad decisions when they are tired, stressed, or under pressure.
Effective time management also lets you make decisions quickly and easily because you've already planned for them.
Time management helps you prioritize specific tasks.
Prioritizing saves time and gives you more freedom to dictate how your day progresses.
Time management gives you more time for what's important. The focus of your efforts can shift to where it matters: producing tangible financial outcomes for the business.
To better use everyone's time, you should set daily priorities. Knowing your priorities lets you decide if there's enough time to work on them.
Time management makes everything easier. You're more effective and confident with excellent time management skills.
Effective time management helps you pay more attention to your daily tasks to help you reach your goals. This planning enables you to prioritize the most critical tasks.
Your team will have more time to focus on crucial projects, goals, and customers. With more focus, you can take advantage of these significant opportunities.
Try Hubstaff for free for 14 days. No credit card is required.
Try it nowYou can’t manage projects effectively without healthy time management tools and habits.
Without the pressure of unreasonable deadlines, the team can devote more time and attention to essential tasks. When you have enough time to finish before a deadline, the quality of your work improves.
When it comes to project management, give each task a time limit — but make sure to allow extra time in case something goes wrong.
With more realistic deadlines, the team is less likely to feel rushed. Team members may finish tasks faster and worry less about deadlines.
Pro tip: use a project management app to plan and track deadlines better.
Poor time management can often lead to procrastination. In fact, 89% of employees admit to wasting time on the job daily.
Without a plan, it's easy to get distracted by social media, chatting with coworkers, or staring out the window. Building practical time management skills and keeping track of time will help you prevent putting things off.
One of the best things about good time management tools is that they provide tangible data on your productivity.
While you might feel like a good multitasker, data probably won’t support your claims. In fact, multitasking decreases productivity by up to 40%.
When you're tired, it's far easier to feel overwhelmed and begin multitasking. That’s why good time managers plan their days and take breaks at regular times.
We all strive to spend time on our most important tasks. But how often do we actually back this belief up?
Time management helps you reallocate time spent on lower-priority activities. With it, you can avoid an unhealthy pattern of stalling on less valuable tasks.
Next time you embark on low-priority tasks, take a moment to think about your time before you spend it. Ask yourself these questions:
Is it vital to the business?
Is it one of my highest-value activities?
Is it the most valuable use of my time right now?
People who are good at time management set aside chunks of time to do their most important work. They also set strict time limits for the work they don’t want to do.
For instance, consider the time-blocking method. When you set aside time for your high- and low-priority tasks, your tedious work won’t interfere with the important stuff. You'll have a much clearer picture of what you can complete and how long it should take.
With better time management, you'll have more time to finish tasks and won't have to rush from one to the next as often.
When you have a plan, everyone will spend less time figuring out what to do or putting off important work and more time doing it.
Keeping track of time can help the team stay focused on the most critical tasks and avoid time-wasting activities.
The real essence of time management is achieving your goals with less effort. While it’s helpful to uncover how you use time, the real purpose of time management is to reduce the time spent on each task.
Setting goals is a big part of time management. When you make it a habit to set and reach small goals, you can shorten the time necessary to achieve meaningful progress.
Achieving business goals reduces stress and boosts confidence for the whole team.
With reduced stress levels, your team will perform better, too. Keeping energy levels up helps employees stay more engaged and productive.
Better time management will also allow you to produce higher-quality work. With better outputs, you’ll likely see a positive impact on your business' growth and profitability.
Organizing your time more efficiently can help a team get more done in less time. Do your best work in the shortest possible time by focusing on efficiency rather than extra effort.
As efficient time management becomes second nature, you'll have more time to devote to improving the quality of your work.
This technique allows you to think through the task and ensure its proper completion. Taking care of a job or a project correctly the first time around will save you time and effort in the long run.
Finding ways to enhance your work and processes can add short- and long-term value, even if you already have outstanding employees.
Time management skills in the office are crucial for providing excellent client service.
Customer service is at its best when it’s timely, effective, and comprehensive. If you aren't meeting your clients' needs promptly, you risk losing them permanently.
Many businesses will try to automate internal processes. This way, their employees can spend less time on paperwork and more time making the customer experience personal.
Personalization and human touch are often a big part of what makes customer experiences stand out. Time management helps your team prioritize and meet customer needs.
A healthy work-life balance makes it possible to juggle your professional and personal life. Without it, people on your team who work long hours might get burned out and feel tired.
All the money in the world means nothing if you don’t have time to spend it. It's hard to stay motivated without our families, hobbies, and vacations to look forward to.
Time management may help your team reach a better work-life balance. That balance is mutually beneficial because it helps employees stay productive while giving them time for the things and relationships that matter most.
When your employees know they are making a difference, you’ll likely see them take more pride in their work.
With this new mindset, employees can reach broader performance goals and even move up in the company.
In fact, growth opportunities are one of the best ways to retain employees. Companies with growth opportunities have 34% higher retention rates.
If you need help retaining employees, teaching them time management techniques will help them unlock their potential. It will also help you identify their passions, strengths, and ways they can make a difference.
Time management skills are important for entrepreneurs to hone because they’ve got many competing tasks, projects, and interests vying for their attention.
There is almost never enough time to get everything done when you're an entrepreneur. Proper time management is essential to meeting core goals while setting aside things that can wait.
Entrepreneurs also face different requirements and demands each day. Poor time management skills might mean you always do certain tasks first each day, but that could cause you to ignore crucial new elements.
Some days, you must focus on acquiring new customers, for example, which means you must adjust that day’s schedule.
With good time management, entrepreneurs can allocate sufficient time to critical thinking and decision-making processes. This helps them make more informed and less impulsive decisions crucial for a business's success.
Like with standard teams and employees, improving time management and using tools like time tracking software can help entrepreneurs reduce stress while achieving goals. They can protect a fragile work-life balance even on their most demanding day.
Entrepreneurs mix their personal life and professional life every day. A standard to-do list will include as many chores and home tasks as the company needs. Any disruption or missed deadlines can lead to a poor business outcome.
Startup performance dictates its reputation, so proper time management is a way to project and improve without risking sales.
Timeliness and reliability significantly impact how customers and potential customers view a business. Entrepreneurs who manage their time well are often seen as reliable and professional, qualities that attract and retain clients and partners. This is how small business owners achieve the growth they need to scale and become successful operations.
Time management training can help entrepreneurs stay focused on productive work and client needs, achieving success through steady progress.
Effective time management is essential for leaders because it helps them prioritize tasks, allocate resources efficiently, and maintain important relationships with team members, executives, and clients.
Becoming a leader can be a dream job, but time management strategies prevent it from becoming a nightmare. The top way to do this is to help people prioritize tasks to drive strategic objectives. To meet their goals, leaders must assess initiatives and spend time wisely. Time management practices can help them spot core needs, delegate tasks, and step away from day-to-day operations to focus on big-picture goals.
Not only can time management strategies lead to increased productivity, but leaders can ensure work-related tasks are complete while still giving teams regular breaks and encouraging positive habits that safeguard physical and mental health.
Job satisfaction is always a concern for leaders because their burnout can impact an entire team. Companies need to protect a leader’s daily life. Sometimes, that is empowering them with self-discipline, and other times that may mean taking smaller tasks off their plate to offer a good balance between work and leisure time.
Managing time and training on protecting mental health are core ways for leaders and their subordinates to remove unnecessary distractions.
Proper time management is often viewed by how much work gets done. However, insights from our time tracking software also highlight the importance of taking breaks and removing distractions.
When a leader can give someone space to work on a single task, they achieve greater focus. That’s tied to improved performance and well-being. So, your entire company benefits when a leader helps build positive habits among team members.
A good personal life leads to an improved professional life.
Leaders need essential time management skills and should be able to teach those to others. For the long-term success of a company, each leader should be evaluated based on the overall well-being of their teams, not just productivity levels or what gets checked off of a to-do list.
It's easy to see why time management is essential to succeed. With more information and technology available, time management in the workplace has never been easier.
If you’re unsure how to get started, you could use a tool like Hubstaff to help you keep track of your schedules and better manage your time at the office and when you work from home.
Here are a few of Hubstaff’s primary features that will help you improve your time management:
With a single click, team members may begin tracking their time spent on tasks
Online timesheets that you can refer to in the future
Set time estimates for jobs so you know how long each one will take
Allow your team to set work breaks to prevent burnout
Look at detailed time reports that can help you improve operations
Proof of work ensures that your team is working on the right things
We are here to help you start tracking your time. Get in touch for a demo.