Do you often get to the end of a day and feel like you didn’t really accomplish very much? Do you find yourself suddenly distracted, in the middle of doing something that is neither necessary nor on your to-do list? Is your list of things you need to do growing much faster than the list of things that you have gotten done? If so, it might be time to start employing some more effective time management tips. Whether you are already trying to manage your time or you are not actively helping yourself stay on top of the tasks you need to do, these tips will make you a master of your own schedule:

Make a To-do List

Really, seriously, just do it. If you are trying to keep all of the things you need to do organized in your head, things are going to fall through the cracks. It might only be small things at first, but you will eventually start to lose track of very important things, too. Not only does writing something on a to-do list make you much less likely to forget to do it, seeing it in physical form, on that list makes you much more likely to actually sit down and do that task. Your list does not have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a post-it note or as technological as an app on your phone.

Learn to Set Your Priorities Correctly

Simply making the list is not enough. Once you have gotten yourself into the habit of writing down what you need to do, it is time to start learning how to prioritize those tasks so that you get the most important things done first. There are essentially four criteria for prioritization: importance, non-importance, urgency or non-urgency. If something is both important and urgent, then it is high priority. If it is important but non-urgent, still high priority, but not quite as high as other tasks. If something is not important and urgent, this is something that should either be delegated to someone else or rejected. If something is both not urgent and not important, then it is a time-wasting activity and should but cut from the list.

Do One Thing At a Time

Multitasking is a myth. Your brain cannot do two things at a time. If it is appears that it can, it is because it is switching from one task to the other rapidly, giving neither the full attention that it deserves. If you want to get things done faster, do not multitask. Instead, do one thing at a time, so that you can give it your full attention.
For example, you cannot both answer emails and be on a conference call with a client. You cannot be working on a large project and also watching a presentation. Do not let yourself be distracted, especially by low-priority tasks like email or phone calls, both of which should be done in batches, not interspersed into your other tasks.

Learn to Delegate Tasks to Other People

Many leaders are very bad at this task. Worse than that, many people think they are great delegators, when they actually just keep shouldering the entire burden of their to-do list themselves, even when there are people ready and waiting to take on a task. If you do not have anyone on your staff that you can trust with tasks, you probably do not have the right staff. If you do have people that you can trust and rely on, make sure that you are actually relying on those people. Do you know what their skills are? Do you know what they can take on and what they usually try to avoid? Do you know how to reach out to those people and ask them for help? Anything that meets the standards of being not important but also urgent, should be handled by someone else—someone you likely hired to do that task.

Take Breaks

If you are always running on all cylinders, pushing through your lunch, through your dinner, and into your evenings, you are going to burn out. You are not going to be successful, and even if you are, you are not going to be the kind of person that other people want to be around. Taking breaks has actually been shown to improve your productivity, so do not simply push them aside. You need to back off of the gas and take a breather from time to time. It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity of managing your own time.