Five Time Management Tips to Put into Practice in 2021

1. Live by a (Paper) Planner Using a planner to write out your tasks for the week is age-old advice, but with good reason! The act of writing something down truly does help you to remember and process the tasks you have ahead of you. The main reason I recommend a paper planner over a digital one is because it is so easy for those of us who may not be planners by nature to get distracted while dealing with a calendar app. You are in the middle of scheduling a lunch appointment for the week on your calendar app and then you wonder what you will eat for lunch that day and the next thing you know your calendar app is closed because you are googling menus for three potential restaurant choices. The act of pulling out a physical paper planner is intentional and simple. You only have one purpose in pulling it out: time management. The intentional act of putting your phone down and picking up a pen to write something down makes it harder for you to get distracted by another app or notification vying for your attention. Another benefit of all kinds of planners (paper or digital) is that they can help you to see spatially when you have free time and when you are busy during any given day or week. I often find myself picturing the visual impression my planner has given me when answering questions about when I may or may not be available. If you are looking for a way to have better time management skills in 2021, this is a great place to start!

Paper Planner 2021

2. Schedule a Time to Schedule your Time This is the second step after getting a planner for a reason! So many people believe if they just buy a planner they will magically start writing things down that they need to do. Writing in a planner is a habit! It is not something that you will be perfect at when you first start if you are not used to it. That is why it is important to set aside time to write in your planner and spend time understanding what your week looks like with the tasks you need to accomplish. My recommendation is to set aside a larger portion of time (15 minutes or so) every Sunday or Monday to write down all of your appointments, tasks, and other plans for the whole week. This sets a good baseline for you to know that maybe you have a particularly busy day on Wednesday or a relatively free day on Friday. It also helps you to see what days or times of the day that you have free to accomplish certain tasks: for example, if laundry must be done before Wednesday, or a certain work project must be completed by Friday, and you have an especially free day on Tuesday, maybe you can set aside time on Tuesday to work on the project in the morning and do a load of laundry that evening. It is amazing how starting out the week with a plan will help you to be more successful and accomplish more every week! In addition to time at the beginning of the week, I also recommend taking time every day to look at your planner at least once in the morning. This could just be a 2-minute cursory glance at the day while you are making coffee or when you first sit down at your work station, but this short glimpse helps to ensure that you are set up for success and offers confidence are not forgetting or neglecting anything important.

3. Rank your Priorities and Relationships You cannot be amazing at everything! Seriously, you really can't. Even the most productive personality types and individuals know this to be true. I cannot be a good family member and quality friend, be an above-and-beyond employee, work out five days a week, home-cook all of my meals, become an expert sculptor, master a home improvement project, learn to play guitar, take an online class, and be up to date on politics, sports, and the stock market all in the same week. It's just not possible. So many people at the start of the year make commitments to improving their health, bettering their friendships, or excelling in their online classes but do not rearrange their current lives to make room for these improvements. If you want to be successful at anything, it will come at the expense of something else. There is always an opportunity cost. That said, in 2021 if you want to manage your time better, you need to think about and rank what is most important to you this year. I recommend making a physical list of these priorities. The more in depth your list is, the better. The beginning of your 2021 priorities list may go something like this: 1. Set aside date night with my partner at least twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. 2. Call my mom and dad every Sunday. 3. Go to the gym after work every Monday and Wednesday. 4. Listen to one podcast every morning about successful money habits or current events during breakfast. 5. Spend more time with Sarah from work, who I am trying to build a closer relationship with, by setting aside time for coffee twice a week. 6. Set aside two hours on the weekend to meal prep healthy foods for the week. This list does not include any work related goals, but these should be included as well! These goals are specific and in order of importance. They include an approximate time commitment as well as what days this time commitment will take place. You cannot expect to do everything well, but if you rank your priorities and relationships, then you will know when you are prioritizing lesser things over the things you want to accomplish. I recommend writing this list out and putting it somewhere you will see it frequently to remind you throughout the year of what you truly want out of 2021.

4. Learn to SAY NO! If you want to truly stick to your list above and accomplish the things that are really important to you, this is CRUCIAL. Saying no can be easy for some personality types but extremely hard for others, particularly those who lean towards people-pleasing. This is another reason that knowing your priorities and your schedule are so important: If attending yoga twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays is a top priority for you this year, then if someone asks you to volunteer on a Monday, you need to be firm about saying no. Volunteering, joining groups, and serving on the PTA board at school are all fantastic on their own, but if they are going to hinder you from reaching your goals in 2021 by pushing out other activities that are important to you, you have to learn to say no. And not just say no, say no and don't feel badly about it! Your priorities are important to you, and that's okay! If taking on something else is going to get in the way of you meeting your goals and keeping your current commitments, then in saying "no" what you are really doing is staying true to yourself and to the other commitments you already have. Think of it like saying no to Tinder in because of your current relationship, or not spending money you know you don't have. You always choose to save one thing by saying no to another!

5 .Put your phone away! While this advice is less related to the others above, and I know some readers will probably roll their eyes, this is seriously a major step in managing your time better this year! I don't need to site all the statistics about how much time we spend staring at our phones, or how many minutes of potential productivity are spent mindlessly scrolling one of our 2-5 social media accounts. It is entirely out of hand, and I personally admit that I'd like to be better at managing my phone time this year. The great thing is that there are many apps that are made to tell us how much time we spend online or with our phones open so that we can manage our time better if we truly want to. Personally I like AppDetox, but there are plenty of other great ones you can look into. One easy way to potentially cut down on time spent on your phone or social media is to prioritize the apps you want to visit and what times you want to be on them. If you have Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and two other social media apps, consider downgrading to only 2-3 of these. I have cut down at this time to only Facebook and LinkedIn personal accounts, and I still feel that I spent too much time between the two of these. I have also tried to limit the hours I spend on these sites to being after 9:00am and before 11:00pm on work days/nights (again, I use AppDetox for this!) This prevents me from immediately turning social media on first thing in the morning and also from wasting valuable time at night when I should be winding down or getting in the hours of sleep it takes to power me through the next day.

While these are my five top tips for time management in 2021, I want to emphasize that NONE of these are any good if you aren't willing to take the time to DO them! You can spend hours setting up your planner for the week and have every hour dedicated to something productive but if the time for doing laundry or hitting the gym or meal prepping comes and you choose to watch Netflix instead, then there is no point writing the planner out and you are actually WASTING time in doing so. That is partly why point #3 is so important and why displaying your priorities where you can see them is vital to sustaining your goals. Maybe add to your list of priorities: Write in my planner every day and stick to it! AGAIN, writing in a planner, scheduling time to do so, and saying "no" when others ask you to add to your plate are HABITS. They aren't formed overnight.

Best of luck to you and happy time managing!