How To Boost Efficiency With The Time Management Matrix?
As a working professional, a student, or an entrepreneur, managing your time is essential to achieve your goals. This is why all successful people abide by a strict time management matrix that dictates the best way they can utilize their time.
Therefore, to become a better professional person and pave your way to becoming a successful entrepreneur as well, read this post. Here, I have explained eight time management concepts that have helped me and many successful entrepreneurs and professionals to be more productive.
How Entrepreneurs Use The Time Management Matrix To Boost Productivity
Professionals and entrepreneurs in all industries follow a time management matrix to boost their productivity and increase their efficacy. Some of its most effective concepts are:
1. Prioritization Of tasks As Per The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix time management is the most effective time management matrix that entrepreneurs follow. According to this time management matrix template, you must categorize tasks according to their priority and importance.
But how do you categorize tasks according to their importance? You do so by dividing them into four quadrants, numbered by their priority of completion. According to the Eisenhower Time Management Matrix, they are:
- Quadrant 1: Tasks that are highly urgent and super important.
- Quadrant 2: Tasks that are not urgent but super important.
- Quadrant 3: Tasks that are highly urgent but not important.
- Quadrant 4: Tasks that are not urgent and not important.
Therefore, as an entrepreneur, prioritize Quadrant 1 tasks first since they will contribute the most to completing your business goals. In addition, you should always negate Quadrant 4 tasks since there’s no point in doing them as they don’t help in business development.
Also, this time management matrix is referred to as the Covey time management matrix as per various models of communication.
2. Break Down Tasks To Make Them More Manageable
When you were in school (or still are), did you study the entire book at once? Or do you study it chapter by chapter, which is designed in a way where the earlier chapters make understanding the later chapters easier?
Why do you think we study things one at a time and not get to the end goal at once?
This is because of breaking down tasks into smaller bits. If we break down one task into smaller bits, completing them becomes more manageable, making it easier. This is also the reason why we eat one spoon at a time and do not gulp down the entire plate.
If we try to do the entire task as it is from the get-go, it’s bound to become overwhelming for you.
3. Time Blocking
Time blocking, in simple terms, means scheduling your entire day into various blocks. When you have multiple tasks in hand, it’s best to break them down to make them more manageable, along with following the Eisenhower matrix as well.
Therefore, to ensure that your time management matrix makes you as efficient as possible, it’s best to do Quadrant 1 tasks in the first block of your day and keep the other less important tasks for later blocks of the day.
In addition, if you divide your time into blocks, you can concentrate on finishing tasks by the end of the block. Therefore, this can help remove distractions and makes you focus better.
4. Use The Pomodoro Technique
When charting your time management matrix for students, incorporating the Pomodoro technique is essential.
According to this technique, whenever you are doing any task, try to give your 100% focus on the work for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, take a short five-minute break. After completing four such 30-minute intervals (basically after 2 hours), take a longer 20-minute break.
This technique is essential to master since psychology states that most humans find it difficult to concentrate 100% for more than 25 minutes straight. If you try to do so, you will find yourself becoming more and more distracted, building up brain fog and lowering productivity. Therefore, taking breaks between work is more necessary than you think.
5. SMART Goal Setting
When it comes to following an efficient time management matrix, it all depends on your tasks and your goals. Therefore, to bring out the productive side in you, you have to set your goals in a way that actually makes it possible and manageable.
This is why great entrepreneurs focus on setting SMART goals. Here’s what each letter of SMART means:
- Specific: You should have goals with specific tasks that lead to specific results.
- Measurable: Your goal should be measurable so that you know how much you have progressed and how much you need to progress to complete it.
- Achievable: Your goal should be achievable. It should be realistic.
- Relevant: Your goals should be relevant in the sense that they should benefit the business. Actions with no beneficial outcomes are best left undone.
- Time-Bound: Your goal must have a deadline. Otherwise, you will never push yourself to complete it by being more productive at work.
6. Task Delegation
One of the most important things that an entrepreneur needs to understand is that they cannot run an organization alone.
In order to achieve organizational goals, it must be broken down into several tasks and smaller goals. When this division happens, it becomes evident that the work needs to be broken down according to employees as well.
This delegation of work is necessary since it helps ease the burden of completing tasks all by yourself. In addition, it also makes tasks more manageable as well.
This is why outdoor team-building activities are a must to improve coordination among employees.
7. Implement The Pareto 80/20 Principle
Your time management matrix should incorporate the essential 80/20 rule, also known as Pareto’s Principle.
According to this concept, 20% of your effort brings forth 80% of your results. But how is this possible?
Here, you must go back to Eisenhower’s Matrix. Completing the most important tasks will always bring forth the most results. Similarly, completing essential tasks (20%) will bring forth 80% of the results.
8. Track Ad Review Tasks Till Completion
One of the final concepts that you must implement in your time management matrix is reviewing yourself and your goals.
To always keep yourself motivated and productive, you have to review your own work daily. This allows you to better understand what you can improve to make yourself more efficient.
In addition, after you complete tasks, you should always see your goal progression. By understanding how much of your goals are still left to be achieved, you should put in that much effort and work harder.
Conclusion
If you follow all of the concepts above and follow your time management matrix, you will definitely become more productive in your work. Therefore, waste no time at all to implement these concepts in your study and work life!
More Resources:
