What is Time Management and Why Is it Important in Business?
What is time management?
Time management is the practice of mindfully and effectively managing your time. In other words, it’s planning how much time (and energy) you will invest in specific activities. But it’s more than taming a never-ending to-do list.
Time management can be difficult to define because it means something different to everyone. Our motivations, reasons, and expectations of how we manage time vary from person to person.
In this post, we’ll look at what time management means for companies and individuals and how organizations can get clarity on helping their employees prioritize what’s most important.
But before we dive in, let’s look at some of the benefits of time management.
Benefits of Time Management
A Timewatch study of 300 employees found that a whopping 88% of respondents did not use a proper system to manage their time. When asked to rank the key benefits of time management, they said:
Reduce Stress
“Can time management reduce stress?” is a question we often hear leaders, managers, and employers ask. And short answer is “Yes, and…” especially when the company and team have clarity around their goals. In other words, unclear goals lead to stress and misalignment because your team might be unsure about what to do with their time.
If you want to reduce stress, be as clear as possible about what you're trying to achieve as a company, a team, and a leader, and then how your team can contribute.
Increase Productivity
Goals are the organizing principle behind the formation of teams.
But vague goals typically lead to vague results. Without clear goals and associated priorities, team members will default to their own way of prioritizing. From our experience, there are two main reasons people prioritize the way they do if they don’t have clarity around goals:
The threat of being disciplined (e.g. if I don’t do it, I’ll get in trouble). So the level of shame or failure is so great in their minds that they cannot avoid it.
Personal preference (e.g. I’ll do this first because it’s what I want / prefer to do).
Leaders must inspire people to stay motivated and work toward impact even when a task or a series of tasks toward a milestone isn't appealing.
How time management improves productivity: When you help your team see beyond themselves and explain the impact of their goals, especially to their team and the organization, they are more likely to become engaged and invested.
Showing how a person's or team's work impacts others motivates people to perform because they feel like their efforts are contributing to the success of the organization.
Improve Focus on Tasks
Leaders and companies typically look for results that are measured in outputs. Often, they look at metrics about outputs relative to time. Since we all have a finite number of hours in a day, time management asks us to think about:
What do I do with these finite hours?
What did I produce? What were the outputs?
How did I help move my team move forward?
How have I invested my time?
Asking these questions can help you analyze where you’re spending your time. But more on how to do that later.
Increased Confidence
It's common to hear phrases in the workplace such as, "I want to make sure I am doing the right work at the right time."
While this is clearly difficult to define, we want to ensure that we invest our time in initiatives that will have a meaningful impact on our teams our companies, and also our personal lives.
Auditing and mapping out your time can help you be more intentional about your impact. For example, let’s say your goal is to spend more time with your family and friends. You will hit that goal if you use your time intentionally at work and set clear boundaries to achieve that goal.
This is why understanding yourself and your habits is the key to time management. Your increased confidence comes from making meaningful progress and also improving your competency. It comes from learning how you spend your time, knowing where you want to spend it, and then managing your time and workload accordingly.
Better Workplace Relationships
Can time management be learned? Yes, like anything else it’s a practice that you get better at over time.
Time management begins with awareness and a better understanding of why people do what they do and the impact of their choices.
Great leaders know how to broaden their impact on other people and inspire them to go beyond themselves. For example, if marketing understands how the work they are doing impacts sales or customer service, then they are more likely to be compassionate and want to help.
So ongoing communication about impact can spur organic collaboration and investment in each other’s success.
Why time management is essential for goal setting
Time management and knowing how you spend your time can help you set goals. For an organization, knowing how people are spending their time can help you refocus efforts, identify skill gaps, and concentrate on your team’s strengths.
A vivid description of the vision and impact you are ultimately trying to achieve helps you set goals and ensures you manage your time intelligently as priorities shift.
Expert tip: How can you improve the way you describe impact?
Explain what needs to be done, as well as your goals using a “because statement.” Doing this will help you get closer to the impact.
Time management tips
Here are three time management techniques to help you balance your effort, energy, and impact.
1) Audit your time.
It's easier to adjust if you're aware of how you spend time. So, start with a time audit.
What hours are you working? Break those hours into 15 or 30-minute increments and record your activities in each block. Whether it's a meeting, Slack conversation, email check, or impromptu conversation, note it, so you know where you choose to invest your time.
In addition to noting the activity, an enhanced audit will also include how you feel when you engage in that activity you’ve noted (e.g. excited, happy, relaxed, stressed, anxious, drained).
Example: 4:00-4:30PM - Checked and responded to email - Stressed, drained, relieved.
2) CREATE OR Use a framework.
If you need to know what to prioritize, some frameworks can help. One of those frameworks is the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the primary battle wheel). It helps you capture urgency and importance and has four quadrants.
Eisenhower Matrix
Whatever is urgent and important should be your focus. Using the matrix, you can prioritize existing tasks to get a clearer picture of what you need to do.
3) Practice preparation.
Each night, write down the three most important things you have to get done the next day.
Look at them in the morning and ensure you have the space and time to do them. Doing this can prime you for the next day and help you focus on essential tasks.
And to set you in the right mind frame each day, answer (and write down) the following prompts in addition to your priorities:
What is 1 thing I will let go of today…
What is 1 thing I am grateful for today...
What is 1 thing I will focus on today...
Making this a daily practice will help dull the anxiety and overwhelming feeling of having to get things done.
Final thoughts on Time Management
Individuals and organizations can sharpen their time management skills over time. Frameworks and strategies can help them become more aware of where and how they spend their time.
Time Management Lesson: A common tale
At the heart of the time management challenge is You - the individual. The whole person. The human.
We all have unique storylines that make us more (or less) effective with time management.
For example, high achievers are relentless in trying to "get stuff done" and take pride in crossing items off a list. In addition, some take pride in helping others get things done. As a result, high achievers take on a lot and often get overwhelmed.
When they become overwhelmed, they look for silver bullet solutions to help them feel less overwhelmed. But the root cause isn't a lack of time management skills. Instead, they desire to achieve and over-commit, which leads to procrastination, all-nighters, and burning the candle at both ends.
A typical reason for taking on more they can handle is often rooted in fear and insecurity — a fear of failure and/or disappointing others. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At the NextGen Foundation for Effective Leadership, we do more than treat symptoms like time management issues. Instead, we look at the root causes and each participant's strengths and weaknesses to tailor a program that helps them become the best versions of themselves.
Learn more about the Foundation for Effective Leadership
From awareness building to effective communication to time management and confidence-building, our program helps you understand who you are, what’s important to you, and how you work to transform yourself into the leader you've dreamed of becoming.
Time management Ted Talk recommendations
Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED
How to gain control of your free time | Laura Vanderkam
The Philosophy of Time Management | Brad Aeon | TEDxConcordia