3 Easy Time Management Tips: How to Create More Hours in a Day

The one natural resource there never seems to be enough of is time. There are only so many hours in a day. You don't need to wish that tomorrow will suddenly be a 35-hour day to get all of your work done. Instead, you need to start using a few small, yet critical, time management tips today to work smarter, not harder, with the hours that you DO have available to you. Here are three tips to get you started.

These days, a significant portion of your work probably isn't taking place within the confines of your office. Whether it's meetings with clients or unexpected personal issues, you likely find yourself stepping away from your desk more and more. The key to time management isn't learning how to keep up with your obligations in spite of these sudden duties. It's learning how to fit in work time around them. 

Even if you don't have a mobile tablet that you carry around with you wherever you go, it's still easier than ever to work remotely. If you're not already using a cloud-based file sharing service like Dropbox or iCloud, you need to start. Changing a document on your work computer makes those adjustments instantly available to every other device you have. Likewise, services like Dropbox for Business allow for real-time collaboration on files, letting people get together to work on a project even when they don't have the time to literally "get together" at all. 

Remember, the smartphone that you likely carry around with you is more powerful than the technology that NASA used to send men to the moon in the 1960s. There are hundreds of thousands of apps that are available in the iTunes and Google Play app stores right now for you to use to customize that device in any way you see fit. Stop thinking about it like a device that you merely use to send and receive calls and start looking at it as your office on-the-go.

Meetings are just a fact of life. But one of the many reasons why people tend to dread that weekly "catch-up" gathering is because they're huge drains of productivity. The answer to this problem isn't to stop holding meetings altogether; it's to start holding better meetings. 

Think long and hard about why you're having a meeting. If it's just to convey information, you could probably save everyone a lot of time and just send a lengthy email or inter-office memo instead. A meeting should always justify its existence. If it doesn't, it needs to drop off the schedule. Likewise, plan out an agenda for your meeting ahead of time and stick with it. Make sure everyone who needs to contribute knows what is expected of them before you all walk into a room, giving everyone a chance to be as prepared as they need to be.

Again, time management isn't about finding more hours in a day; it's about working smarter, not harder with the hours you already have. One study estimates that as much as thirty percent of our working time each day is spent looking for misplaced items. It stands to reason that if you never feel like you have enough time to get things done, the true issue might just be that you need to take a look around and organize your life more effectively.