Time Management Tools: Organize and Improve Your Productivity

• It’s just a coffee! It won’t take long.
• Calm down, I’m just liking the picture of my friend’s nephew who went to college ….
• Come on! I can’t concentrate, it seems like I get an email every minute in my inbox!

These are typical phrases from people who don’t know how to use good time management tools and techniques.

Know someone who fits this profile? It’s not you, is it?

Time is a precious resource. It’s not something we can “stock up on,” and when we waste it, we can’t go back and recover it.

Time management without secrets

Feeling overwhelmed or lacking time to accomplish daily tasks is a common reality within organizations. Most of the time, this is because many people have difficulty managing and optimizing their available time.

Knowing how to manage time well contributes directly to an increase in company productivity and efficiency, in turn, improving results.

But first of all: do you know what time management is? Come and tell us!

Also see: The best strategies for managing time – Hint: it doesn’t stop

What is Time Management?

Time management means managing the hours of the day. It’s about planning and organizing how much time you will spend carrying out certain activities, whether it’s professional or personal.

Effective time management enables you to plan and perform daily tasks within set deadlines. In this way, activities don’t accumulate and can be developed with greater dedication.

There are countless time management tools and techniques that help you understand your work routine and develop methodologies that you can use to optimize every minute of the day. Fortunately, it’s now possible to have technology as an ally in the time management process.

Do you know any good time management tools and techniques?

Check out 7 time management tools and techniques

Currently, the market has several time management tools and techniques. 

Some are minimalistic, such as “Remember the Milk,” others are more sophisticated, such as automation resources and HEFLO’s deadlines, but all have one purpose: to help people better organize all day-to-day activities.

As optimization is the watchword for those who want to boost productivity and get relevant results, we have separated the 7 most commonly used tools and techniques in time management.

The first five are recommended for small demands or personal tasks, while the sixth is best when you need to escalate services and time is a precious resource.

1- Getting Things Done (GTD)

Developed by David Allen, this is one of the simplest and most objective time management tools and techniques. With the GTD method, you can increase productivity and achieve an elevated professional performance.

To perform the technique, you must follow five steps:

1. Collect: list all the tasks that need to be done.
2. Processing: analyze the list of demands and identify those that require action or not.
3. Organization: organize the tasks and set a deadline for them to be completed.
4. Execution: perform the intended tasks. No distractions and interruptions.
5. Review: periodically review task execution strategies and make certain adjustments, if necessary.

The Pomodoro Technique

THE Pomodoro Technique was created in 1980 and aims to organize tasks in time cycles with an interval at the end of each cycle. Confused? It’s simpler than it sounds.

To execute the technique, you must assemble a list containing the tasks you need to do. With a timer on the side, you need to focus on doing one of the listed activities for 25 minutes. No interruptions.

After this time, you can take a break and rest for five minutes, then return to work shortly thereafter.

Once you’ve completed all four 25 minute cycles, you’ll be allowed to take a longer break. The author of this technique based it on the idea that frequent pauses stimulate mental agility.

2- Wunderlist

This is one of the simplest and fastest time management tools and techniques.

Wunderlist allows you to create task lists and organize your tasks into folders, as well as a reminder system that lets you know when the deadline is approaching.

Practical and pleasant looking, Wunderlist runs on a computer, tablet or cell phone. The clean layout facilitates the handling of all the features present in this tool.

3- Remember the milk

Among the main time management tools, Remember the Milk stands out.

At no cost, it creates task lists and can be synchronized to your email account and other platforms. That way, you’ll always have all your tasks in your hands.

Remember the Milk is available for iOS and Android and is perfect for managing personal tasks.

4- Rescue Time

It’s common to have the feeling that time is passing very fast and that, therefore, it wasn’t possible to finish all your daily activities.

With the Rescue Time application, you can follow up on your tasks online. It records your development and tells you how much of your time is being wasted through procrastination.

Therefore, your time will be managed efficiently.

5 – Todoist

Available for multiple operating systems, Todoist is an excellent alternative for those who want to organize task lists.

In addition to allowing access to things from anywhere, this application enables the sharing of tasks with other team members. It also keeps you informed regarding delivery times.

The layout is very intuitive, making the functionality more understandable.

6- Management by processes

All the above time management tools and techniques are excellent for personal or business tasks with small demands.

But what do you do when the business grows?

How do you manage team time or bulky processes?

There is a managerial approach called BPM (Business Process Management), or simply “Process Management”. In this technique we map the main processes of a company and then define deadlines for tasks or the entire flow. 

So, in order to allow time management, we added an alert configuration, which will serve as a reference for prioritization. See trigger examples for an airfare booking task:

• When you reach 50% of the task deadline, it sends an email to the person in charge.
• At 70% of the task deadline, it adds a visual indicator in the color red.
• When it reaches 80% of the task deadline, it automatically informs the coordinator responsible.

In addition to standardization, this approach allows a manager to delegate more tasks.

How so?

Responsibilities are previously agreed upon in the process flow and triggers will inform the manager only in exceptional situations.

In the image below, see the final result in a queued demand for a team member.

See how the HEFLO deadlines and alerts feature works

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Get to know the main features of HEFLO to manage business processes and make your team more productive.

Conclusion

So, as you can see, a lack of time is often mistaken for disorganization.

Now that you know some of the key time management tools and techniques, how about putting them into practice? Get organized and improve your productivity!

And, if you already consider yourself an organized person, tell us, in the comments, what techniques you use to manage time!

If you still have difficulty, that’s okay. Let us know your time management problem and we’ll give you some extra tips.

Also see: A dozen incredible business technology tools