Time is one of your most valuable assets, and how it’s managed can directly impact individual and operational success. Effective time management is increasingly important in today’s always-on, get-more-done-with-less work environment. Time management involves planning, organizing, and prioritizing tasks to make the best use of available time. With competing tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities, it’s essential for professionals to set goals, break them down into manageable steps, and assign time for each activity. This helps increase efficiency and maximize contributions to the team and company.
Benefits of Time Management
Important in both personal and professional settings, time management helps individuals and teams boost productivity, achieve goals, reduce stress, resolve conflicts, and handle pressure with greater ease. When individuals manage time effectively, it leads to improved collaboration, increased output, and better overall business performance. Still need convincing? Here are some of the key benefits of effective time management:
- Increased productivity: Time management helps people focus on high-priority tasks, making the most of their time and achieving more in less time.
- Reduced stress levels: Planning, organizing, and scheduling tasks helps prevent last-minute rushes and decreases stress.
- Enhanced goal achievement: Time management helps break down goals into manageable tasks, ensuring steady progress.
- Increased effectiveness: Time management identifies and eliminates distractions, improving efficiency and accuracy.
- Accountability and discipline: Creating schedules and setting deadlines foster accountability, discipline, and a proactive approach to managing responsibilities.
- Improved decision-making: Freeing up sufficient time for critical thinking ensures informed, well-considered decisions rather than impulsive choices.
- Healthy work-life balance: By scheduling time for both work and personal life, time management supports a balanced lifestyle and prevents burnout.
- Improved quality of life: Time management helps people balance work, hobbies, and relationships, leading to greater satisfaction and overall happiness.
Five Free and Low-Cost Time Management Tools
There’s no shortage of advice about how to become better time managers. Books, blogs, videos, and workshops out the “best time management solutions.” But finding the right tools to support your efficiency and well-being often comes down to personal style. Thankfully, there are budget-friendly options available that can help streamline workflows, reduce distractions, and keep everyone on track without breaking the bank.
Toggl Track
As the adage goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. To do that, you need tools that go beyond tracking and provide deep insights into how it’s used. That is what Toggl Track is for. This tool helps measure and analyze time spent across teams. This offers the visibility necessary to drive informed decisions that boost productivity, enhance collaboration, and ultimately, fuel profitability.
Key features
- Time tracking
- Unlimited clients and tags
- Exportable reports
- Web apps, mobile apps, and desktop apps
- Track time in 100+ popular tools
- Google and Outlook Calendar integration
Pricing
Free for up to 5 users. The paid plan starts at $9 per user/month.
Ratings
- Capterra:7/5 (2362 reviews)
- G2: 6/5 (1570 reviews)
Notion
One of the most effective strategies for boosting productivity is the “Eat that Frog” technique. This method encourages individuals to tackle their most challenging tasks first—the ones that, if completed, will have the most significant impact on their day. Notion can be an excellent tool for implementing this method.
Use Notion to create a daily or weekly task list and categorize your most important goal—the “frog” that you need to eat first. This can be done with Notion’s to-do lists or customizable Kanban boards.
Key features
- All-in-one workspace
- Customizable pages
- Multimedia integration
- Deadline and reminder setting
- Flexible layouts
- Cross-platform sync
Pricing
Up to 10 guests with a free plan. The paid plan starts at $12 per seat/month.
Ratings
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (2274 reviews)
- G2: 4.7/5 (5774 reviews)
Freedom.to
According to a recent Harmony Healthcare IT survey, the average American spends four hours and 37 minutes on their phone every day. When factoring in workplace distractions, the average employee loses 2.1 hours of productivity daily. If screen-time distractions are sabotaging your focus and eating away your productivity, Freedom.to can help you take control of your time.
This tool helps users stay focused by blocking distracting websites and apps across all devices. Users can customize blocklists to limit access to sites that pull them away from what matters most.
Key features
- Block distractions on all devices
- Customizable blocklists
- Scheduled sessions
- Focus music and ambient sounds
- Sync across devices
Pricing
Plan starts at $3.33/month with an annual subscription. Lifetime access is available for a one-time payment of $99.50.
Ratings
- Capterra: n/a
- G2: 4.8/5 (6 reviews)
PomoDone App
In Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro Technique, breaking work into short, focused intervals, followed by brief breaks, improves concentration and reduces mental fatigue. This popular method helps individuals get more done in less time.
PomoDone is a workflow management tool based on the Pomodoro Technique, helping businesses and and individuals streamline tasks, track employee work hours, and measure productivity. By breaking down tasks into 25-minute intervals followed by a short break, users can stay sharp and avoid burnout.
Key features
- Interruption notes to keep track of any distractions
- Browser plugin
- Hotkeys and shortcuts
- Tag customization
- Subtask creation
Pricing
Price starts at $4.96 per month. A free trial is available.
Ratings
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (130 reviews)
- G2: 4.2/5 (10 reviews)
Calendly
How many hours are spent going back and forth to schedule meetings? Calendly automates schedule coordination, helping individuals, teams, and businesses simplify the entire meeting lifecycle. The app integrates seamlessly with existing meeting essentials like Google Calendar, Outlook, and Zoom.
Key features
- Custom booking links
- Personalized availability
- Multiple event types and times
- View contact profiles
- Book on behalf of others
- Analytics and insights
Pricing
Get the basic scheduling plan for free. The paid plan starts at $12 per seat/month.
Ratings
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (3647 reviews)
- G2: 4.7/5 (2220 reviews)
It Starts with Awareness
According to personal and professional development expert Brian Tracy, “Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.” With the average worker productive for 60 percent or less of their day, it’s clear that inefficiency is costing businesses dearly. In B2B businesses, every wasted moment translates to lost revenue and diminished competitiveness.
While tips, tricks, and tools are helpful, the most important skill is awareness. Start by building self-awareness about how you spend your time. Track the time you spend on tasks in an average week. When are you most and least productive? Do projects take longer than you think they should or would? What interruptions are impacting your efficiency? Which tasks take the most time? Did you complete everything you needed to do? Are you spending too much time on projects that don’t have a valuable outcome for you or the business?
Armed with this awareness, you can determine a course of action to manage your time. Experiment with different time management tools and techniques to determine what works best for you and your team. Everyone gets the same 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds each day. It’s how you use it that matters.
