It’s easy to let your time slip by. You get by doing just the minimum you need to keep your job and maintain your lifestyle, but at the end of each year, you look back and realize you haven’t accomplished much more than maintaining the status quo.Even on a daily basis, you can have all sorts of grand plans about what you want to achieve and all the items you want to cross off your to-do list. But the end of the day comes, and you find that you’ve barely finished the first tasks on your list. The rest of your time was swallowed up by social media, email and aimless web surfing.The trick to overcoming these issues is learning to manage your time.Why is time management important? It might not seem worth the...time, but time management is an incredibly valuable skill to learn, for these six reasons. 1. Producing Quality Work Takes Time You can get a task done to the bare minimum, rushing to finish it at the last minute, but the product you end up with may not be the same quality as what you could have produced if you had given yourself adequate time to complete it.This is where time management can revolutionize your work output. When you estimate how long it will really take for you to complete a task and then build in a buffer of extra time for any unexpected delays, you’ll be able to take the time you need to do the best work, instead of scrambling to get something done because you’ve run out of time. 2. Time Management Helps Lower Stress Levels Sometimes, work is just stressful. Whether it’s a last minute revision request from a client, a coworker that’s difficult to get along with or technology not cooperating, you expect a certain amount of stress no matter what your job. But, often, we make work unnecessarily stressful through poor time management habits.Think about the last time you had to stay late at the office (maybe even all night) to finish a project that was due. How much of that stress came about just because you didn’t plan the project better (if at all), or just because you were procrastinating?When you manage your time effectively, you can dramatically lower your stress levels, approaching your work with composure as you finish at a reasonable time each day. You’ll feel better, and your health will improve as well. 3. Time Is a Limited Resource “Dream as if you will live forever; live as if you will die today.” — James DeanDay to day, it’s easy to feel that our time will go on forever. But each of us just has 24 hours each day — it’s the one thing that equalizes all people no matter how wealthy or successful. The key differentiator, then, is how you use the time you have. The practice of time management allows you to impose order on these 24 hours and maximize them as much as you can.In particular, the key to maximizing this limited resource is to determine the difference between high priority tasks and low priority ones and then act accordingly. Once you’ve identified the high priority tasks, the ones that will advance your career or business or life, you should focus on them at the exclusion of the low priority ones. At the very least, you should complete high priority tasks first, saving the low priority ones for when your energy levels are also lower. 4. Achieve Career Success Good time management skills are essential for career success. No matter what sort of career you want to have, managing your time effectively will allow you to achieve things that your peers never could. People who know how to manage their time consequently become better at goal setting, reaching goals that others could only dream of.Furthermore, whether you’re looking to climb the corporate ladder or start your own business, time management is an essential leadership skill. If you can’t manage your time, then there’s no way you’ll be able to manage a team, let alone an entire company. 5. Find Better Focus If you’re reading this site, you likely have lots of great ideas. But the struggle, as you know, is finding the focus to execute all of them. It’s all too easy to bounce from one idea to another, starting many projects but never finishing any.When you learn to manage your time, you can overcome this focus issue. Organizing your time forces you to focus, both on a daily level and from a broader picture. You can decide, for example, that now is not the right time to start a new business; it would be better to focus on growing your existing one. Without proper time management, you’ll never gain the focus necessary to have these insights. 6. Effective Time Management Builds Self-Discipline How many hours per day do you spend wasting time on social media or mindlessly checking your phone? Whatever the amount, you know that there’s a better use of your time than such unproductive, vaguely anxious activities, even if they’re part of your free time. But still, it can be hard to resist the pull of these quick dopamine hits of novelty and distraction. To resist, you need to change your habits and build self-discipline.Time management, it turns out, is an excellent exercise for building self-discipline. When you give your day a definite structure instead of just “planning to get everything done,” you’ll become more disciplined as you stick to the schedule. With time, this extra structure will translate into other areas of your life, building up the self-discipline to resist even the strongest distractions and make better decisions. Get Help Managing Time We hope this article has given you a better understanding of why time management is so important for success in your career and happiness in your life. Yet, this is just the beginning. If you want more time management tips, then check out our articles on how to work effectively and how to use a productivity planner. And for a powerful time management tool, have a look at the Self Journal.

The number of productivity apps on the market is overwhelming, but the right tools are essential for doing your best work. To help you identify the ones that are most effective for your process, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 productivity tools that will actually help you get more done, without getting in your way. 10 Productivity Tools That Will Help You Do Your Best Work 1. Calendar As an entrepreneur, you have appointments to keep. Whether those are calls with clients, meetings with potential investors or a weekly team meeting, you need some way to keep track of all your time-bound events. A calendar is the clear tool for the job. But this isn’t 1995 — you now have digital calendars available that sync across your devices and can automatically create events based on emails or tasks in other apps. We aren’t recommending just one calendar app because the best one for you depends on the operating system and devices you use. Here are our top three picks: Google Calendar - If you use a lot of Google apps (especially Gmail), then Google Calendar is the best way to go, since it so easily syncs with all the other Google apps. This is also your best choice if you have an Android phone, as Google Calendar is Android’s default calendar anyway. Apple iCal - If you’re a Mac and/or iPhone user, then iCal may be the right choice. Especially if you have a variety of Apple devices, you’ll appreciate the ease with which iCal syncs across iPad, iPhone, Macbook and iMac. Microsoft Outlook Calendar - If you use other tools in the Microsoft Office suite, then Outlook Calendar can be a good option. It works well with the Outlook email client, in particular. Whatever calendar you choose, make sure to review it at least once a day and keep it up to date. The best calendar is ultimately the one you use. 2. Evernote For taking notes, saving content from the web, and even storing screenshots, Evernote is our top pick. The free version of the software comes with enough storage and functionality for most businesses, though premium versions are available if you require more storage, single logins for larger teams or use of Evernote across more than two devices. Evernote functions around the premise of “notes,” which you can think of like pages in a notebook. These notes then fit into “notebooks” that correspond to broader topics. One of the reasons we love Evernote is how flexible it is. You can use it to take notes and brainstorm projects, or to archive and organize large volumes of external information such as screenshots, web pages and physical documents. There’s also a free mobile app for easy capture of notes on the go (one of our favorite uses is to capture screenshots of notes we’ve made in books). 3. Todoist For time-bound events, your calendar is the ideal tool. But for all the tasks you have to complete that aren’t tied to specific times, you need a to-do list app. Our top recommendation is Todoist. It’s flexible and powerful without being overwhelming. The mobile and web apps function seamlessly, and the free version is enough to do all the task management most entrepreneurs will ever need. Todoist lets you sort your tasks into projects, create recurring tasks, categorize tasks by due date and even set tasks to be due at specific times (though we’d recommend you reserve your calendar for anything tied to a specific time). The app also incorporates gamification, giving you “karma” points for completing tasks. While this isn’t the main reason we’d recommend the app, it is a nice bonus that can be motivating and fun, especially when you’ve used the app for a bit. 4. Asana When it comes to project management, we have two recommendations. First, however, we should clarify why you’d need project management software to begin with. After all, isn’t it enough just to use Todoist and a calendar app? If you’re an absolute solopreneur, coordinating with no other team members, then it’s possible to get by without project management software. Once you begin growing a team or dealing with complex, multi-stage client projects, however, the need for project management software becomes evident, if for no other reason than to serve as an archive of the tasks you’ve done and those that remain. Our first recommendation is Asana. Asana is particularly useful if you're coordinating a large number of team members across a variety of projects. For example, if you’re running a content agency that has several freelance writers, a couple of editors, a promotions manager, a graphic designer, and a project manager holding it all together, Asana will be a lifesaver. You can easily assign tasks to individual team members, set due dates and control who can see which projects. Along the way, you can easily keep track of who has done what, who assigned it and when they completed it. This will save your sanity on a project of any scale. You can even invite clients to join the project so they can see progress in real time. Best of all, you can get most of this functionality for free, with teams of up to 15 people (more than enough for most online entrepreneurs). And there’s also a mobile app that allows you to manage your projects on the go. 5. Trello While Asana is an excellent project management app, Trello is also worth considering. Whereas Asana’s interface and functionality relies primarily on lists and tasks, Trello takes more of a visual approach, as you can see below. This layout is based on the concept of kanban, which roughly translates as “billboard” in Japanese. Originally developed to improve manufacturing processes at Toyota, kanban is now the basis for organizational and personal productivity systems, including Trello. Trello separates projects into “Boards,” which are further subdivided into “Lists.” Each list contains “Cards,” with each card representing a task. You move the cards from left to right based on their status. At its most basic, you separate cards into “To-Do,” “Doing” and “Done,” but Trello allows you to create as many statuses as you like. The potential uses of this system are nearly endless. The editorial calendar above is one possibility, but you can use Trello to manage any kind of project where you need to track the status of different tasks. Like Asana, you can add multiple people to the same board and assign cards to individual team members, even breaking cards down into sub-tasks if you want (in Trello these are called “Checklists”). As far as whether to use Trello or Asana, it’s up to you. One of the biggest weaknesses of Trello in our view is that you can’t easily create recurring workflows or templates. This makes onboarding new team members difficult. Furthermore, Asana has recently introduced their own kanban-style view for tasks, which weakens the case for Trello even further. That being said, we still think Trello is an excellent piece of productivity software and encourage you to try both it and Asana to decide which you prefer. 6. IFTTT As the very premise of this article shows, a modern business workflow depends on a variety of productivity tools. There’s no one tool that can do it all (and you should be skeptical of any that claims otherwise). When you’re using multiple tools, however, you’ll run into situations where you wish you could make two tools work together more seamlessly. For example, let’s take two of the apps we’ve already discussed: Evernote and Todoist. If you want to create an archive of all your completed Todoist tasks in Evernote (for use in a weekly review, perhaps), you’d have to manually copy the tasks from Todoist into Evernote. This would be so time-consuming that you’d never consider doing it. Cases such as this are where IFTTT comes in. IFTTT stands for “If This, Then That,” and it allows you to connect dozens of unrelated apps to each other. How does it do this? The exact technical details get quite complicated, but all you need to know is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to set it up — it’s all quite straightforward. Taking our example above, all you need to do is select the existing “Recipe” and give IFTTT permission to access the relevant apps (you’ll just need to sign in). It’s pretty magical, and, we won’t deny, can be a bit addictive. 7. Slack If you’re using email to communicate with your team, you should really consider Slack instead. It provides a messaging experience more akin to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or other instant messaging services, but in a centralized dashboard that allows you to communicate one-on-one with other team members or with specific segments of your team. Slack also includes features such as @mentions, easy inclusion of media, emojis, file sharing and integration with other apps. For most teams, the free version of Slack is sufficient, though if you want to have extensive archives of your conversations you can consider the paid version. 8. LastPass To use all the productivity tools in this article, you’ll need a username and password. Managing a variety of passwords is confusing and frustrating. You can simplify things through using the same password for everything, but that leaves you vulnerable to hacks if someone gets ahold of your password. This is where LastPass comes in. LastPass allows will remember each of your passwords for you, automatically filling in your login details for apps across the web. All you need to remember is one master password. LastPass can even generate long, complex passwords for you when you sign up for a new app. To top it off, it’s free. 9. Google Docs We couldn’t write a post on productivity apps without mentioning Google Docs. If you do any kind of document creation, Google Docs is the tool for the job. Its collaboration and sharing features make it easy to review and co-create content for your website, blog or internal SOPs. All of this comes with a clean, seamless writing experience that’s much less cluttered than other word processors. Google Docs also automatically saves your work, ensuring you won’t lose all your valuable content if your browser crashes or you lose your internet connection. As with all of Google’s apps, Google Docs is free. 10. Google Drive We’ll close our list of recommended productivity tools with one final Google app. Google Drive provides free file storage and sharing for anything that you need to backup to the cloud. If you use an Android phone, it’s where your pictures are stored (assuming you have backups enabled). It’s also where the content from other Google apps such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides gets saved. You can even use it to back up content from your website through the use of third-party add-ons. It’s not the only online file storage system out there, of course, but if you’re already using other Google services, it’s a logical choice, since anyone with a Google account has Google Drive by default. By default, you get 15 GB of storage, which is more than enough for most people’s needs. If you need further storage, however, Google also offers paid plans. Start Being More Productive Today We hope this round-up of our favorite productivity tools has helped cut through all the noise surrounding productivity (and its associated apps). Ultimately, what matters is that you do the best work you were meant to do. The tools are secondary to this goal — use the ones that help you, and discard all those that do not. So why are you still reading this article? Go do your most important work!

With more options comes more stress, but you can cut down on distractions with time blocking. We rarely interact with single-functionality technology anymore. Every piece of technology has a number of uses. When we open our laptops to write a report, it’s not like using a typewriter. We’re not limited by our laptops to just write. Instead, we can also check our email, pull together that presentation and make plans for dinner — all while “writing that report.” Learning the practice of time blocking will ensure that your to-do list doesn't get lost in an endless stream of distractions. “The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing.” – Barry Schwartz With so many options, we often turn to multi-tasking. And it’s not limited to what we can do on a single device. Instead, we’re working on our laptops while checking our phones and getting notifications from our smartwatch. It’s no wonder we’re trying to cram all our tasks in at once. But is that really an ideal way to go about completing work? And, the better question, is there a better alternative? Get More Done Without Multi-Tasking Could it be true? Despite the millions of people who seem to thrive on the hamster wheel of multi-tasking, can you really accomplish more goals without doing so? The thing is, people aren’t getting work done because of multi-tasking. They’re getting work done despite it. Multi-tasking is, by definition, doing multiple tasks simultaneously. Your brain can’t be in two different places at once, so you switch between multiple activities quickly. Neuroscientists call this activity switching, which means quickly moving between several tasks. By doing this, you’re unknowingly jeopardizing the quality of your work. Switching can lower productivity by a whopping 40 percent. So, What Can You Do Instead? Multi-tasking may be tempting, but it’s important to remove all distractions before working. Distractions aren’t always video games or social media, or even your phone. It’s anything that isn’t directly essential to the work you’re doing. So if your goal is to finish writing a report, you don’t need to have your spreadsheets open. They might be work-related, but they’re a distraction if they’re not related to the work you’re doing right now. Work in Time Blocks Once you’ve removed your distractions, it’s time to schedule work. Create a to-do list and block time for a certain task or project. At BestSelf Co., we call this time blocking. Time blocks are productive and ensure you knock out your daily goals because they keep you focused when you need it most. To begin time blocking, you’ll first need to write down your high-priority tasks for the day. Then think about the length of the time block you can commit to realistically. Some choose to have multiple hours of deep work dedicated to long tasks, whereas others prefer 30-minute blocks. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, it’s completely dependent on your own work habits. During your allotted time, make sure you’re in a distraction-free zone where you can completely focus on your work. Once you sit down to work on your project, that’s the only thing you can work on. You can’t switch tasks, no matter how urgent they may seem. No checking your phone and definitely no opening Facebook. You must focus on finishing as much of your task as you can. But once your time is up, take a break and enjoy your free time. Put that task or project out of your mind because you’ve put in the hours for the day. Time blocking doesn’t only work well for big tasks or projects either. We use it for every single moment in our work day by completing small tasks during a specific time period. When we get down to work, we know the one task we’re supposed to be focused on at that moment and that’s the only thing we work on. It does wonders for our productivity. Benefits of Time Blocking Blocking time off in your calendar works because it prevents you from multi-tasking by giving you a single task to focus on. Time blocking makes sure you spend time on your most important work each day. It also provides a clear record of what you have spent time on in the past so you know how you might need to reallocate your time. Aside from being aware of the areas to focus on, time blocking also frees up more mental space. You won’t be worried that you didn’t finish your most important task of the day because you were scrolling through Facebook. When you time block, you know that you’ll get everything done by the end of the day as long as you stick to your schedule. You don’t need to think about any of your other projects. You won’t end the day wondering where all your time went. You’ll know each day that you’ve spent your time well. Sitting down and making a list of priority projects and making a time block for each one can significantly reduce your stress. You’ll be able to get more done with less worry. While putting together your time blocks, it’s important to keep in mind the length of the task. Some tasks may take twenty minutes while others need multiple time blocks over several weeks to complete. If you’re looking to get things done efficiently and create a bullet-proof time management strategy, try time blocking and experience the massive benefits for yourself.

As an entrepreneur, does the following scenario sound familiar? You start the day bright and early, coffee in hand and a list of tasks spread out before you. You’re feeling unstoppable, ready to crush your to-do list. But then, the phone rings. It’s a client, asking if they can add a few new things to the project you agreed upon. That call runs for an hour, and by then it’s already 10 am, practically lunch, so there’s no harm in taking a few minutes to read your favorite productivity blog (because, hey, if you’re reading about productivity it’s not procrastinating, right?). Lunch comes and goes, and then you decide to check your email just to make sure you haven’t missed any important messages. You then look up a couple hours later, realize it’s already 4 pm, and you haven’t even started work on the client project you promised you’d deliver tomorrow. You spend the next few hours hammering that out, and by then it’s already time for bed. You glance at your to-do list, realize you barely accomplished your most important tasks --, and hope that tomorrow will be better. If this sounds like you, then you need to take control of your days. You need a tool that will help you not just stay on top of your current tasks, but also help you make the strategic changes necessary to propel your business forward. You need a productivity planner. What Is a Productivity Planner? For our purposes, a productivity planner is a physical notebook that you use to set, track, and review your goals and habits. Productivity planners often exist to help you implement a particular productivity system, but they can also be a simple as a notebook with a blank calendar. Usually, however, they aim to provide a bit more direction, and they’re also designed to help you with goal setting and habit change (as opposed to a normal daily calendar, which helps you keep track of events, meetings, and other commitments). Why Use a Productivity Planner? Why should you bother using a productivity planner at all? Can’t you accomplish the same goals with just a digital calendar and to-do list software? You can get the same results without a productivity planner, in theory. But in practice, a calendar and a to-do program alone may lead you to focus only on keeping up with your current commitments and maintaining the status quo, while missing the bigger picture. You may be surviving, but you’re not progressing. A productivity planner, in contrast, exists to help you make progress by breaking down ambitious goals into smaller, more manageable steps, as well as building new habits that push you out of your comfort zone. A productivity planner combines a calendar with daily pages, checklists, and other aspects of time management tools to help you reach a place of unprecedented momentum and productivity that you never thought possible. If you want to be productive, move forward in your business, and make big things happen, then you need a tool that does more than just help keep you in the same spot. You need a planner that will help you perform the time management necessary to reach new heights. But how do you use a productivity planner? How do you prevent it from becoming just another dusty book on your shelf that you bought and never opened? How to Use a Productivity Planner Successful people understand that the best productivity planner (or system) is the one you use. So don’t obsess over the choice; here is no “best” productivity planner. There are many good options, some of which will work better for you than others. It’s a mistake to think that the right productivity problem will solve all your problems without any effort on your part. The planner exists to guide you and keep you accountable, but it can’t replace the time you need to spend doing the work. The best productivity planners give you just enough help to get more done without getting in your way or becoming a chore to use. If using your productivity planner becomes just another difficult, unpleasant task on your to-do list, then you’re not going to use it, defeating the point of getting one to begin with. Here are our tips for getting the most out of whatever productivity planner you choose: 1. Commit to the System Once you’ve picked a productivity planner, stick with it. It’s easy to give up on a system after a couple days because you’re not seeing immediate results, but you need to give it time. Productivity is a habit, and habits aren’t something you can build overnight (or even in a couple weeks). If you spend time transitioning to a new productivity planner every time you run into trouble with your current one, then you’re distracting yourself from the ultimate productivity goals. We suggest that you stick with a productivity planner for at least a month before considering a new one, and ideally even longer. This will ensure that you’re judging the quality of the system objectively, instead of just letting frustration or boredom direct your decisions. 2. Use It Daily Committing to the system is a high-level goal that won’t succeed unless you use the productivity planner every day. How much you’re required to do each day will depend on the productivity planner you choose (some let you do less on the weekends, for example). But you should accomplish something in your planner each day, even if it’s just making some notes or sketches of ideas. This is how you get into the habit of using your planner, ensuring that it will be worth the money you paid for it. 3. Review Regularly The only way to tell if you’re accomplishing your goals (and to evaluate the effectiveness of your system) is to perform regular reviews. Most productivity planners will have space for you to stop and perform weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even yearly assessments of what you wanted to achieve, what you did achieve, and how you can close the gap between the two with your future actions. As Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Regular reviews of your productivity planner will help you make sure that you are examining your life, that you are continuing to make progress. 4. Plan at Different Levels The best planners help you focus on what you can most directly control (today) while also helping you set ambitious, yet realistic, goals for the future. Specifically, your productivity planner will help you plan (and review) at daily, weekly, and monthly levels. Let’s look at each of these levels in more detail: Daily - Daily planning makes sure you're reaching the daily productivity that will adds up to help you achieve your bigger goals. Planning each day (ideally the night before) helps you work with greater purpose and achieve your important daily tasks (while resisting unimportant distractions). Weekly - Weekly planning helps you figure out how to break up larger projects or tasks over the course of the week, as well as how you’ll fit in your work sessions amid other commitments such as meetings, calls, and business admin tasks. This level also includes a weekly review where you examine what went well with the week and how you can improve in the future. Monthly - Monthly productivity planning takes things an additional step up, looking at how your larger projects fit into your overall business and personal development goals, as well as considering how commitments such as travel or the start of new projects will dictate what you focus on in a particular week. Beyond each of these levels, you can also plan in quarterly or annual increments. However, these are such large increments (and so much can change within them) that we recommend you worry about them less than you do daily, weekly, and monthly planning. By keeping your scope a bit closer, you can make sure that your goals remain realistic and your good habits are accumulating. Don’t Just Set Goals, Achieve Them We hope you now see how powerful a productivity planner can be in helping you accomplish your goals and build powerful habits. The right planner will keep you on track at all levels, help you reflect and evaluate your progress, and ultimately lead to a life where you’re exceeding the status quo, not just maintaining it. If you’re looking for a productivity planner to help you accomplish these goals, then we recommend the Self Journal. It’s a powerful yet simple daily planner to help you structure your day, enjoy life, and reach your goals quicker than you thought possible.