Here at MaryRuth's, we believe time management is a rewarding skill that can take you personally and professionally far in your life.

There are endless ways to prioritize your time. These are just a few tips, tools, and tricks we use to feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness. We hope that this will be helpful for you to feel empowered to take control of your time to help reach your goals and dreams, helping to find your happiness!

What is time management?

Time management is coordinating tasks and activities to maximize the effectiveness of your day/time. Time management empowers people to get more and better work done in less time.

Why is time management important?

Learning the art of time management could positively impact your life — where most of us suck at giving due time to each task. Let's take a look at the benefits time management offers:

• Organization
• High productivity
• Less stress
• A work-life balance

6 Time Management Tips

Wake up early

All of us get 24 hours a day, and waking up early allows us to make the most of it. We understand that not everyone is an early riser, but you can even begin with setting your alarm 15 minutes earlier than the day before and increase the time frame over a few days/weeks. You can use this additional time to work out, clean, prioritize, meditate, etc. 

Minimize distractions

Emails, phone calls, and social media are common distractions during our work days. Put that phone in silent mode whenever you are working on high-priority tasks! You'll end up saving lots of time.

Time block

Time blocking is a time management method that divides time — typically by day or by week — into smaller increments to complete specific tasks. MaryRuth likes to time block her day by dividing it into one-hour chunks.

Download our free time blocking sheet to print, use our Time Blocking Journal with tearable sheets, or keep a notebook with a list of certain things to do. This list includes things that you may need and want to get done, including everything from important work meetings, and new projects, all the way to wanting to make time to pamper yourself with a luxurious face mask.

Fill in the rest of the hour time blocks with other things you want and need to do, like a workout, eat lunch, go to Zoom calls, and so on. This way, every step of your day is planned, and you hit everything on your list.

GET THE TIME BLOCKING JOURNAL

Use the compound effect

The compound effect is a strategy of accomplishing bigger goals or tasks through continuous, more minor actions over time. An easy way to utilize this is to do five minutes of something every day to help you achieve a larger goal.

If you think that putting five minutes toward something daily isn't worth it, think about it this way. 5 minutes x 365 days = 1,825 minutes. That's almost 30 ½ hours you spent towards doing something that can benefit you in the long run.

Take breaks

Managing your time isn't always about structure and being punctual for all hours of the day. It may sound counterintuitive, but allowing yourself time for a break is a crucial and effective time management strategy. It also emphasizes that little breaks after an hour can improve your productivity.

Get plenty of sleep

Sleep affects so many things! When you get a sound sleep for seven to nine hours, you feel fresh and rejuvenated and are able to strive towards a healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, when you don't sleep enough, you often feel lazy, fatigued, anxious, and so on. Sleep allows you to be the best version of yourself throughout your day where you can feel energized to head into the day with confidence and ready to handle whatever is on your plate.

If you're also a time management lover like MaryRuth, stay tuned! We'll be sharing our custom time-blocking notebook on our site very soon!

For additional tips on time management, check out our other blog posts.