Credit: Shutterstock photoNo matter what your industry, passion or trade, your success largely will be determined by your time management skills. Time management always has been an ingredient for success in life and work, but today's mobile and constantly connected world of never-ending updates, alerts and messages puts an even bigger premium on the skill — and it is a skill.
In fact, the world's most successful people often list time management tips as the most crucial building blocks of prosperity and happiness. Read on to see the success strategies used by some of the world's best task managers.
Eliminate the Waste
In a resource titled "The Ultimate Guide to Time Management," life and business strategist and best-selling author Tony Robbins advised his legions of loyal followers to treat their time the same way they treat their money: as a critical and finite resource that must be conserved by eliminating waste.
He suggested converting wasted time into productive time by repurposing time management dead zones. If you value reading but don't have the time, listen to audiobooks during your daily commute or by reading on the train to work. Have a million podcasts you'd like to explore but not the time to explore them? Listen while you shower.
Focus on the Big Five
Successful people tend to be experts at isolating the tasks that are truly critical to success — five tasks, specifically, is a commonly cited number. According to a 2016 article in Investment News, Berkshire Hathaway investing guru Warren Buffett was asked by his pilot for advice on career success. Buffett told the pilot to make a list of 25 goals he wanted to achieve in the coming year. Then he told him to circle the top five goals, erase the other 20 and never think of them again.
For Marcus Lemonis, entrepreneur and star of CNBC's "The Profit," the concept is the same — but it works on a much shorter timeline. He relies on a daily five-task "knockout list" that outlines the five things he absolutely must do every single day.
Schedule Dead Space
Your calendar should be filled with plenty of blank space — or so say two of the richest people in the world. In a 2017 interview with Charlie Rose, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett shared their secrets of success and time management.
Gates — who admitted to being over-scheduled — said he now believes that it's crucial to schedule dead space into your daily planner. By controlling your time and resisting the urge to pack every open slot with a task, you'll have the flexibility to adapt throughout the day and week as things come up and circumstances evolve. Perhaps more importantly, you'll be able to use those gaps to spend a little time each day focusing on your passions, which tend to get pushed to the side for people with packed schedules.
As summarized by Buffett, "I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can't buy more time."
Take Vacations
Time off might seem counterintuitive to go-getters who are shooting for the stars, but significant scientific research — as well as the insistence of some of the world's most successful people — suggests that periodic vacations make people more productive.
A recent study by Project: Time Off revealed that more than half of all American workers leave some vacation days on the books every year. The study showed that states where employees vacation the most have lower work stress, increased productivity and better overall economic output.
Many of the world's greatest success stories validate the study's findings and insist that vacations — time physically away and truly unplugged from their work — helps them focus, manage their time and be more productive. According to CNBC, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and former eBay CEO John Donahoe all consider vacations to be a time management hack.
Divide Your Day Into Slots
Successful people tend to think in the long term, yet they manage their time by the minute — not by hours, days or weeks. Elon Musk is no different. Between his SpaceX and Tesla companies, the visionary entrepreneur is known to put in 100-hour weeks — 85 hours is a short week. That's a whole heap of time to manage, and Musk does it by carving his time up into five-minute slots.
By breaking his day into tiny segments, Musk can focus on the task at hand — and only the task at hand. Even meals are confined to his 300-second blocks. This allows Musk to avoid being overwhelmed by the big picture and instead develop tunnel vision on the moment's must-do tasks.
Get Up Early
Of all the self-help-hacks-from-successful-people articles ever written, it's hard to find a mover or shaker who advises people to sleep in. A 2017 article by USA Today reiterated what many Apple-watchers already know — Tim Cook, the company's CEO, gets up at 3:45 a.m.
While that hour is probably considered outrageous even to many morning people, the article points out that so many successful people are early risers because not all time is created equal. Getting started while the rest of the world snoozes gives early risers rare and precious uninterrupted time — and it gives it to them when their minds haven't yet been riled by the cascade of interactions and occurrences that will come down the pipe when the loafers crawl out of bed.
Get Visual
Juggling multiple devices that bombard you all day with messages, emails, calls and alerts can give a fractured, scattered, haphazard feel to your workflow and priorities — none of which helps with time management. Fitness entrepreneur and trainer to the stars Tracy Anderson corrals the frantic pace of her busy life with a unified, visual representation of her obstacles, goals, challenges and plans.
For her, it's a simple notebook that she referred to in an article with CNBC as her "brain dump." Former Google career coach and job strategist Jenny Blake said she visually centralizes the fragments of her work and life with mind maps. Others might use a dry-erase board or even a regular calendar, but giving yourself the opportunity to see a snapshot of your day, year or decade can have a powerful centering effect on your workflow.
Compartmentalize and Carry Over
As the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi manages one of the most hectic schedules in the world. One strategy that contributes to her successrequires making a strict partition of life/work goals, responsibilities and tasks. According to a 2017 interview in Fortune, Nooyi draws up a list — in her case a list of 50 to 60 tasks — split into two columns, one for work and one for personal. No matter how big or small the task, if she doesn't complete it, it carries over to the appropriate column on the next day's list.
Manage Your Email Instead of Reacting to Your Inbox
In 2015, author Kevin Kruse interviewed 200 of the world's most successful people for his book "15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management." A consistent pattern soon emerged. All of them, according to a piece Kruse wrote in Forbes, meticulously managed their email instead of "reacting" to incoming messages like most people do.
Although they all follow their own nuanced approach, many successful people treat emails like any other task: something that must be scheduled, managed and completed as quickly as possible. The author reported that many high achievers relentlessly unsubscribe from any unnecessary lists and newsletters.
Next, they go for brevity. Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, for example, writes brief emails no longer than three sentences. Finally, many industry leaders schedule a handful of times — often three — per day to check and respond to emails. This way, their days aren't bled dry by the steady drip, drip, drip of incoming messages.
Develop a Consistent Morning Routine
Looking at the everyday habits of successful people can offer helpful insight into their time management skills. Successful people across all industries and walks of life have different morning routines, but there is one unifier — they all seem to have one.
According to Forbes, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong reads and works out. Arianna Huffington and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey meditate as part of their morning rituals. Virgin Money CEO Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk spend time with their families.
Some read, others pray. Others browse the news, check their email or hang out with their pets. What they do is less important, however, than the fact that they regularly, consistently and ritualistically do the same thing every morning when they wake up. What does this have to do with time management? All of them report that their morning routine sets the pace of the day and helps them visualize and tackle the day's priorities.
This article was originally published on GOBankingRates.com.
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
