How to Structure Your Time Better

Time management is an effective strategy for increasing productivity, enhancing wellness, and reducing stress. (More on that here.)

We know it works, but what does it take to manage your time, attention, and energy? Research shows three components to time management: structuring, protecting, and adapting how you use your day, week, or month. In this post, I’ll share some strategies and techniques for structuring and organizing your time. In the following posts, we’ll get into protecting and adapting strategies.

Understanding How You Use Your Time

Before investing in some new-fangled system for organizing your time, it’s best to get a sense of how you’re using it now. (We’re creatures of habit. Ignoring your existing practices might make you more likely to slide back into them.) Do a bit of an audit so that you’re aware of the current state before you start tweaking your approach.

There are a variety of time-tracking apps available to make this easier. I’ve been trying out Toggl Track and finding it simple to use. I particularly like how it is linked to my phone, iPad, and desktop, so I can seamlessly track work and personal activities from whichever device I’m tethered to. Here’s a list of some other options.

Using these apps helps you create what Erich Dierdorff calls a “time budget.” I love the idea that you can make difficult trade-offs in how you use your time, just as you do with your money. When you realize you’re spending $325 monthly on Uber, you’re more likely to take public transit. Similarly, only when you know you’re spending 7.5 hours a week doing email will you be motivated to streamline your system.

When you know how you’ve been investing your time, you can set new targets and change the pie chart of your week. (I realized that I am spending more time than I want reading newspapers and doing puzzles in the morning; I’m going to scale that back.) Set targets for the biggest blocks of time, such as meetings, deep work, email, managing, administration, etc. Do the same for your personal time if you’d like to be more deliberate about how much time you spend exercising, sleeping, being with friends, or calling your mom.

Building a Framework to Structure Your Time

Once you know how you want to invest your time, create a base structure for your week.

Start with the non-negotiables; put them in first. That might include the days you do drop-off or pick-up at the daycare, your team’s standing meeting, or an exercise class you always want to attend. The non-negotiables are the immovable pillars you need to work around.

Then, move to the negotiable activities. That’s where you can optimize how you use your time. Slot your activities in based on the following criteria.

Group Similar Tasks

One of the first lenses through which to view your calendar is to try to group similar tasks in what productivity experts refer to as task batching. Grouping like activities reduces the context switching you need to do. That’s important because each time you toggle from one type of activity to another, you pay what Dr. Sahar Yousef calls a “switching tax.” That tax comes in the form of reduced efficiency and increased errors.

If you’re leaving your email and Slack open while trying to write an important document, you’ll be paying hefty switching taxes. Instead, pick two or three times a day when you’ll respond to emails in bulk. The same applies to batching invoicing, writing performance reviews, or making customer calls. You get on a roll when you do several similar tasks in succession.

Match Your Energy Levels

Take note of your natural ebbs and energy flows during the day (and the week). Are there times when you’re more creative? If so, block that time for anything you need to build from scratch. Are you more social at certain times of the day? Fill that time with check-ins, client calls, and coaching.

Be just as deliberate about putting the right tasks in your natural downtime. If you need to do administrative duties, review reams of documents, or run errands, how can you slot those chores in where you wouldn’t have been very productive anyway?

And don’t just think about your daily rhythms; consider your weekly, monthly, and quarterly phases, too. Do you like to have protected time on Friday afternoons to close one week and prepare for the next, or do you do that on Monday mornings (or Sunday nights)? Are there opportunities to distribute developmental activities throughout the quarter when things might be less rushed than toward the quarter’s end? Build yourself a calendar that matches your energy to the task at hand.

Set Limits for Completion

Another effective technique is to time-box your work by setting a period during which you must complete a given activity. For example, you could allocate 45 minutes in the morning to triage and respond to your most important emails; you stop when the time is up. Timeboxing increases your motivation to work efficiently and reduces the likelihood that you’ll over-invest in an activity.

While time-boxing is valuable for defining what you will do in a given period, it’s equally effective in specifying what you won’t do. When you’re in a time box, turn off any distractions and focus exclusively on the task you need to accomplish.

One study demonstrated that participants who time-boxed without distractions were 43% more productive.

Switch Gears for Relief

If you’re tempted to build a 4-hour time box hoping you’ll get four times more work done than in a one-hour box, you’re probably dreaming. There are different estimates for the optimal length of time to work before taking a break.

The Pomodoro technique uses 25 minutes of focus with five-minute breaks repeated four times, followed by a 20-minute break.A study by employee productivity tracker DeskTime concluded that the most productive people work for 52 minutes, followed by 17 minutes of complete breaks (walking, eating, chatting, watching funny videos).Andrew Huberman recommends matching with your ultradian cycles to do work in 90-minute blocks followed by 10-30 minutes of what he calls “idling,” where you deliberately defocus or do tasks you can do without much effort.

Choose a length of time block that works for you, and then use the time in between to give your brain a break. Ideally, get up, move around, refuel, and give your body and your butt a break too.

Invest Time to Save Time

One other strategy worth noting. Sometimes, it takes time to save time. Prioritize tasks with time ROI (return on investment). I spent an entire Sunday working through my emails to unsubscribe to many of the messages that had stealthily crept into my inbox and build filters for other messages I wanted to receive but not be distracted by. That day was a great investment because it has made me much more efficient ever since.

Now that you’ve built new structures to use your time more efficiently and effectively, fire up that time-tracking app and see the difference it’s made. And take a moment to reflect on whether you’re feeling more motivated, creative, or effective. Ask yourself whether you’re feeling greater satisfaction about your work or your life. Check-in with your stress levels; are you feeling less anxious? You will likely feel the benefit of bringing better structure to your time.

Next time, we’ll explore approaches that help you protect your time when demands impinge on your carefully crafted structure.

Additional Resources

1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

Practical Advice About How to Prioritize Your Workload

How To Tell Your Boss You’re Overwhelmed

I was impressed by Asana’s resources on time management. Start with this article by Julia Martins and follow the trail (but definitely timebox this, or you could be down the rabbit hole for ages!)

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