5 Time Management Hacks for Young Professionals

Time Management boils down to 2 things:

• Being organized: Organizing your time, daily tasks, and projects, are all important! There are many tools you can use to help get organized, so this one will be easy.
  
• Being self-aware: It’s important to pay attention to how you spend your time. This one will be a bit more challenging, but not impossible.

Let’s breakdown a few tools and techniques that you can use to reclaim your time! Let’s get started.

5 Ways to Manage Your Time and Daily Tasks

1 | Create Dedicated Calendars

Why this is important: It will help you block your time.

Creating dedicated calendars has been a lifesaver for me, and I believe it’s the first step in reclaiming your time.

For example, if I know that I need to complete certain assignments I’ll create a separate calendar for those assignments. If I know that outside of the office I have errands to run or task to complete that gets its own calendar as well. If I have work meetings, that gets its on calendar too!

In order to make sure all of these events don’t run together, combine the calendars. These calendars should also be color coded to save you an extra headache.

Here are a few tools you can use to help:

• Google Calendar
• Calendly
• myHomework App
• Asana

Google Calendar

Best for: Students and Professionals

By now most people have a Gmail account, so why not make use of that account and attach your personal calendar to it. Once you have your calendar set up download the Google calendar app on your phone for easy access.

I love this Google calendar because you can:

• Create multiple calendars.
• Color code calendars
• Make group calendars and share your calendars with others.
• You can set up a reminder and task directly from the calendar app on your phone or on your desktop.

Calendly

Best for: Students and Professionals

Calendly is a lifesaver. If you have to schedule calls frequently for school or for work this is the calendar extension that you need to use. I love Calendly because:

• It automatically blocks off your chosen days on your personal calendar (I use Google Calendar!).
• It’ll feed directly into your chosen calendar app so that people are never able to double book you or over schedule you again.
• You can create multiple calendars for different types of chats
• You can request payment, include links, and have your inquirers read about you before they schedule chats

myHomework App

Best for: Students

This app is extremely useful if you’re taking classes or you’re in school. When I was in college, I loved this app because:

• You can enter your syllabus, assignments, class schedules, and all your due dates.
• You can set push reminders to let you know when assignments are coming up and
• you can use it like a digital daily planner.
• You can set up quick access link features, that you could set to go anywhere (I chose my school’s website).
• It has a grade calculator that I used non stop, because I needed to keep track of my GPA for my scholarships.
• It also had a lesson timetable so that you could stay up to date in what you were talking about in class.

As you can see, this is kind of a big deal. The feature set was amazing, and it was completely free!

Asana

Best for: Students and Professionals

Asana is a project management tool that’s extremely helpful if you are a working professional no matter what setting you’re in. This isn’t the only project management tool out on the market, but I’ve been working with it since it’s infancy, and I’ve seen it come so far. I still think it’s the best project management tool because:

• You can invite people to your Asana calendar
• You can assign all your team members to specific assignments, which helps you let go and learn to delegate work
• You can also set up your very own to-do list right from the platform.

There are free options but all the best parts of Asana are featured in paid version.

2 | Block Off Your Calendar

Why this is important: It helps you keep track off and manager your time.

Setting boundaries in your life is so important. Doing this on your calendar is just as important. Setting time constraints (aka boundaries) will help you manage your time.

You can start off by blocking off one hour on your main calendar. This hour can be used to work, eat, sleep, run errands, or whatever else you need to do. It will take time to get used to but, you’ll have to be disciplined enough to use this time to stay focused on your intended task.

If you’re having trouble staying focused, you should:

• Cut off your notifications
• Download an app to lock your social media accounts.

There are no fancy tools that you need to get this done. You can simple set up fake events on your calendar. This will show you as “busy.” If using Calendly to set up meetings and chats, no one will be able to schedule time with you because that time will not show up!

Here’s an example of how you can set up the fake event on my Google Calendar:

3 | Keep All Your Assignments in One Place

Why this is important: When all your files are in one place, they’re easily assessable, and this can save time!

Keeping all of your projects and assignments or your physical work in one place will save you a ton of time. If you need to quickly access something you know exactly where to go. So my advice here would be to set up a cloud-based drive, so that you’re able to access it from your computer and your phone. If you need to you can also work on your assignments on the go.

Here are a few tools you can use to help:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Bublup

Google Drive

Best for: Students and Professionals

Who doesn’t love Google Drive! Google Drive is basically the Microsoft Office Suite, but it’s completely free. You’re able to edit documents at the same time as your friends, family, and coworkers. These documents then automatically saves on your drive. This is a great way to store and keep track of all your documents. You can get pretty far with their free option, so if you don’t have a Google Drive, you’re missing out. Create one now.

Dropbox

Best for: Students and Professionals

Dropbox is just a digital filing system. You can upload most file types including images, videos, and more. It’s a great place if you have large files that you need to share or edit. You can also share these files with friends, family, and coworkers. Dropbox can get a little pricey, so check to see if your school or company offers it for free.

Bublup

Best for: Students and Professionals

Bublup is so amazing! It’s a robust cloud-based notepad where you can keep documents, website links, emails, notes, photos, and more. I love it because I always have a ton of tabs open, and an endless list of things that I need to come back to. Now, instead, I create folders in Bublup so that I can go back to read them later. It keeps my stress levels all the way down.

I even use it for recreational things, like a digital bookshelf (see it below). It even suggests more things for you to read and add to your folders depending on the things that you save (As if I needed any more things to read, lol)

The free version is pretty robust, so you should check it out.

4 | Set Frequent Alarms

Why this is important: This helps you stay on track.

If you’re someone who loses track of time then an alarm is your best friend!

After blocking off my time, I normally set alarms to remind to bring me back to the present. This is especially helpful if I have meetings coming up, and I need to switch gears and prepare for that meeting.

Alarmy

Best for: Students and Professionals

You technically don’t need any fancy apps or anything because most cell phones come with an alarm or stop watch. However, I like fancy, so I’ve found an app that has been a life saver. It’s called Alarmy!

I’ve been using alarmy for years, because it takes shutting off your alarm to the next level. For example, in order to stop my alarm from ringing I have to physically touch it and interact with it. On the app I even have the option to solve math problems, shake my phone, and more.

When you have to interact with the alarm you know you have to break whatever you’re currently doing to do that So this serves as a reminder that once it’s time for me to move on from whatever I’m working on, then it’s time to move on.

5 | Pay Attention to How You Use Time

Why this is important: Becoming self aware will help you delegate your task.

It can be hard to track your time when you aren’t accustomed to it. Here’s are a few tips to get you started:

• Start off by timing how long it takes you to do everything in a day.
• Write down these time blocks on a notepad in your phone or on a journal.
• Do this for an entire week.

After you do this for a week, you will start to become more self aware and learn how to structure your days accordingly.

If you need help picturing this, here’s a quick exercise you can try.

Say you have to be at an important meeting at 8A, and you can not be late. You have to be disciplined and account for:

• the amount of time it takes you to get ready in the morning
• the amount of time it takes you to eat breakfast
• the amount of time it takes you to travel to your destination
• the amount of time it takes you to walk to the conference room and sit in your seat

SAVE THIS POST

Extra Credit:

If you want to try organizing your time, I have some homework for you.

Imagine these things are on your to-do list today. How would you structure your day, so that you’re able to cross off all the items of your list?

1. Attend a networking call at 10:30A

2. Submit a work project (due by 3:30P)

3. Revise an assignment for work and resubmit it by End of Day (end of day is normally around 5:30P)

3. Go to the store before it closes at 9:30P to get groceries.

4. Cook dinner

5. Attend an online career development workshop at 8P

Take Notes: Need to think about it a bit more? Take notes in the space below. Hit submit, and I’ll send you a copy of your notes to your email address. 🙂

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BB Resource: Hourly Tracker

If you need help visualizing and tracking your task, hour by hour, you should check out the Breakroom Buddha Hourly Tracker! Remember, when you track your time, you become more aware of how your time is spent!