Modern Time Management Practices

Productivity is among the most highly prioritized metrics in modern business, as it impacts so many functions and directly influences your success. This makes every moment precious…meant to be spent progressing toward a goal, not simply doing busy work.

Let’s go over some ways you can manage your time using some proven and trusted frameworks.

Framework 1: The Eisenhower Matrix

Time for a quick history lesson: Dwight D. Eisenhower accomplished quite a bit in his life. Before becoming the 34th president of the United States, “Ike” served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe throughout World War II. Clearly, he was a busy guy.

His secret to accomplishing his tasks was a specialized system now known as the Eisenhower Matrix, a simple tool that helped him identify his pressing priorities and make decisions more effectively. The matrix does so by weighing how urgent a task is against how important it is. In doing so, you can determine what to prioritize and what to delegate.

How Does the Eisenhower Matrix Work?

The Eisenhower Matrix breaks up your tasks into a much more manageable assortment of four groups, or quadrants:

• Quadrant 1, where high urgency intersects with high importance, is where the things you need to do live. These are the crises, or the pressing deadlines that need to be handled immediately.
• Quadrant 2, where low urgency and high importance meet, is where strategy and long-term success is encouraged with a focus on opportunity building. These are the meetings, where time is scheduled with intention.
• Quadrant 3, where urgent but relatively unimportant tasks reside, is where things that need to be done (but not necessarily by you) should be found. These are the interruptions that pop up as issues affecting other people arise.
• Quadrant 4, where non-urgent and unimportant tasks are delegated, is where time is wasted. These are things that actively eat up time that should be used elsewhere and thus should be removed from your agenda.

Take a few minutes now to look at your upcoming week or so and see what applying this process can do for your productivity.

Framework 2: Eat the Frog

Samuel Clemens—or, using his more-famous pen name, Mark Twain—once said that:

“If it’s your job to eat the frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

In other words, get the biggest pain out of the way.

How Does Eating the Frog Work?

In the business sense, eating the frog is simply identifying your most important and high-impact tasks… you know, the ones you dread doing and put off as much as possible… and doing it first. As a result, the rest of your agenda breezes by.

Pause for a moment and look at tomorrow’s schedule. Which task meets the description of your frog? Which are you least enthusiastic about doing, despite it having the most significant beneficial impact for your business? That’s the one you need to commit to working on first. 

Framework 3: The Two-Minute Rule

This rule’s genius comes from its simplicity: if a task can be done in less than two minutes, just do it. Whatever it is, just get it done. In this way, it’s similar to eating the frog, but instead focuses on the small, quick tasks as compared to the most intensive ones.

So, get those quick phone calls done, put that document in the right spot, or answer that quick message. Get them out of the way so you can commit the necessary time and attention to the bigger stuff.

How Does the Two-Minute Rule Work?

Take an hour and be ready for any small jobs or tasks that you encounter. Address any that pop up during that time and get them out of the way. Once they’re done, enjoy the feeling that getting these small tasks out of the way brings.

Use These Frameworks to Maximize Your Time!

Remember: time management isn’t about finding more hours, it’s about doing more with the hours you have.

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