We all have goals that we want to accomplish. Maybe it’s building a business, changing to a new career, or simply improving yourself. Whatever these goals are, we only have a limited amount of time to accomplish them. Each of us has the same 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 730 hours in a month, and 8,760 hours in a year.What sets the top performers apart from those who just maintain the status quo? It’s how you use your time.One of the most effective ways to use your time how you want is to create a time management chart. These charts provide a visual representation of your goals, helping you figure out how you should schedule time for your work activities, free time and all the other activities that make up your life. They’re among the most powerful time management tools out there: Use them regularly, and your time management skills will massively improve.However, creating a time management chart from scratch can be intimidating. What should you include in the chart? How many levels of time management do you need? Should the chart be physical or digital? To take the work out of this process, we’ve created the following five time management charts. You can use these planner templates to ensure that you’re practicing effective time management, all while freeing up more time to focus on your professional and personal goals. 1. Yearly Planning Chart When you’re figuring out how to use the time you have available, one of the best time management tips we can give is to begin with your long-term goals. When you start the planning process with your biggest goals in mind, you can create guiding principles and priorities to structure your time at a smaller level.With these larger goals in place, you’ll have a way to track the effectiveness of your quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily planning. Whenever you’re not sure what action to take, you can come back to the yearly goals and ask, “How does this action align with my long-term goals? Is it helping me get closer to reaching them?”It’s also important to remember that your yearly goals can change as the year progresses. We don’t want you to be so set on them that they prevent you from taking advantage of new opportunities that you discover as the year goes on, or from modifying them based on things you learn in the process of pursuing them.For example, you might begin the year with the goal of starting a consulting business, but realize in the process that selling an information product would be a better business model. That’s okay — in fact, it’s great! But you would never have discovered this new business insight if you hadn’t set the larger goal of creating a consulting business to begin with. This is why yearly planning still has value — it sets you on the path to discoveries.For the yearly planning chart, you have a couple different options. One is a standard calendar showing all 12 months at a glance. This can be a powerful tool for seeing just how much time you have to accomplish your goals, but it doesn’t give you a lot of guidance with actual planning.Therefore, we prefer to use a simple list of 3-5 goals for the year. If you like, you can use a different category for each goal. For instance, you might have one learning goal, one business goal, one personal finance goal, one relationship goal and one health and fitness goal.Download the yearly planning template to get started. To use the spreadsheet, go to File > Make a copy > OK. 2. Quarterly Planning Chart After you’ve planned your goals for the year, you need to start breaking them down into smaller, more manageable goals. The first layer of this is quarterly planning. With a quarterly plan, you break the year into four quarters and set goals for each. These goals will still be fairly broad, but they’ll be more specific than your yearly goals.For example, let’s say you set a yearly goal to gross $100k. The quarterly breakdown of this goal would be to gross $25k each quarter. In practice, the numbers might fluctuate between quarters (especially if you’re selling a product that’s subject to seasonal variation in demand). But still, this type of planning will help you take an intimidating financial goal and start turning it into something that feels more achievable.Just as with yearly planning, your quarterly plan should be open to change. Let’s say, for instance, that you planned to spend the first quarter of the year growing your email list. But in the process, you discover that paid ads would be a higher ROI activity for your business. If that happens, feel free to shift your plan. Just don’t do it on a whim — make sure you have solid reasons for doing so.For the quarterly time management chart, we’ve kept the same basic template as the yearly chart but broken it down a bit further. We’ve added some generic example yearly goals, but you should feel free to replace these with your own.Download the quarterly planning chart here. To use the spreadsheet, go to File > Make a copy > OK. 3. Monthly Planning Chart Breaking things down further, we move to monthly planning. A month is the perfect time frame to push yourself just a bit out of your comfort zone, hence the popularity of 30-day challenges. You can also easily visualize a month on a calendar, which makes it feel like a more tangible time frame than a year or a quarter.To make a monthly plan, you have a couple of options. One is to start with the goals you’ve set for that quarter and break each down into three smaller goals. This can work, but it’s not the approach we recommend. Unlike quarterly or yearly goals, too much can change within the course of a month for it to be worth planning the subsequent months beforehand.Instead, we prefer to set an overall monthly goal (that will help you work towards your quarterly goal) and then break that goal into four smaller weekly goals. You should feel free to adjust these weekly goals as you proceed, since things are bound to change.For the monthly planning chart, we’ve gone with four-week intervals. Some months will stretch into a fifth week, but that’s fine — there’s no need to stick to the strict calendar months. You set a goal for the month, and then break it down into subgoals for each week. These will help guide your weekly planning chart, which we’ll discuss in the next section.Download the monthly planning chart here. To use the spreadsheet, go to File > Make a copy > OK. 4. Weekly Planning Chart Of all the planning forms we’ve discussed so far, weekly planning might be the most familiar. Most of us start our Monday with a grand vision of what we’ll accomplish for the week, and we might even create a weekly schedule to help us accomplish it. But by the end of the week we often find that we haven’t even done a fraction of what we had hoped.The key to effective weekly planning is to be realistic. It’s better to underestimate how much you can do in a week and blow past that goal than to overestimate and end the week stressed and disappointed. This balance between short-term planning and long-term planning is key to reaching your goals.For instance, you might start the week off thinking that you can launch a new email marketing campaign. But a couple days in, you realize it’s going to take a lot more time than you’d imagined. At this point, instead of blindly forging ahead towards your goal (and setting yourself up for disappointment), you can adjust the goal to something more realistic. Maybe you can do all the research necessary for the campaign in the week, or write a few emails worth of copy. This way, you’re still working towards the goal, but you’re not biting off more than you can chew.Our favorite template for weekly planning is a good old-fashioned calendar. You can decide whether or not you want to plan the weekends; we’ve included them just in case. At the start of each week, come up with an overall goal (one that contributes to your goal for the month). Once you have this weekly goal, break it down into daily chunks. As with all planning, you’re just estimating at this point. If you find halfway through the week that the goal you set was too big or small, you can always adjust.Download the weekly planning chart here. To use the spreadsheet, go to File > Make a copy > OK. 5. Daily Planning Chart To finish this guide, we have the topic of making a daily schedule. We all do this type of planning to some degree, even if it’s just waking up with a couple ideas in our head of a couple daily tasks we want to accomplish, or a vague to-do list scribbled on a notepad. However, few of us plan our days in a methodical way, truly considering what we’ll do each hour of the day (and how that will contribute to or detract from our goals).To make a daily plan, it’s best to break your day down into 30-minute time intervals. These should last from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep. For each interval, you fill in what you’ll be doing. This may seem like an extreme method, one that leaves no room for spontaneity or relaxation. However, you should remember that this plan is just a guide — as the day goes on, you will likely have to adjust it as things come up and certain tasks take longer than you had planned.And with regards to relaxation and personal time, planning your day out this way is actually beneficial. Because when you plan what you’re doing each hour of the day, you can schedule time periods for leisure in advance. This will ensure that you actually do take time off from working, instead of giving into the temptation to work all hours of day.Finally, this method of daily planning has the advantage of forcing you to prioritize your most important tasks. When you block things out in 30-minute chunks, you see just how limited your time really is. This will help you devote as much time as you can to the most necessary tasks.To create the daily planning chart, we’ve started with waking up at 7 a.m. and go to bed by 11 p.m. (giving you a solid 8 hours of sleep each night). You can adjust the wake time and bedtime to fit your personal schedule. Just remember that sleep is crucial to high performance; regularly sacrificing sleep to get more work done causes the quality of your work to suffer.Download the daily planning chart here. To use the spreadsheet, go to File > Make a copy > OK.And if you’d prefer to use a physical daily planner, check out the Self Journal. Manage Your Time, Achieve Your Goals Accomplishing your goals requires planning, dedication and flexibility. With the time management charts in this article, you are now well-equipped to plan your life at all levels. Feel free to use all of these charts as a unified planning system, or cherry pick the ones that are most helpful to you. What matters is that the tools help you accomplish your goals and become your best possible self.

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.

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 hard as it may be to believe, we’re not any busier than the generations before us. Every working generation has felt the pressure, the overwhelm and the time constraints. The only difference between us and those who have come before us is that we have a slew of things that can easily distract us from the task at hand. There are two types of distractions we encounter daily. There are the “fun” distractions and the work distractions. The former are things such as browsing on social media or watching a funny video. The latter is responding to emails or group chats regarding work, while we’re supposed to be focusing on a specific task like working on a product or bonding with our loved ones. Although there isn’t a magic formula to work/life balance, it’s possible to learn how to slow down time and find the time to focus on the work and the people we care most about. How To Turn Into A Time Management Pro Forget about that perfect balance The first thing you need to accept is that you can’t strike the perfect balance between work and life every day. There will be days when work will take more of your time and other days when life will take over. This is part of the unpredictability of life. Don’t feel guilty about this. Photo Credit: Karl Fredrickson Use a calendar wisely There’s nothing new about using a calendar for time management but there’s a way you can use a calendar better: First, learn to schedule life, similar to how you schedule work. That means carving out time for chats over coffee, time to cook dinner and laundry, and time to do nothing but unwind. Second, schedule your time according to your priorities and goals. Identify your top 3 targets of the day and the week, then set specific times for each task. Lastly, change the time of the tasks on your calendar as you go about your day. This is a habit that will help you identify where your time is being spent. If you set one hour a day for writing but the task takes you two hours on the day, then edit the time on the calendar. The same goes for lunch time and coffee breaks. Write down the exact time you start a task and the time you end it. This way, you will start to see which things are taking up most of your time and whether they’re worth it. If in between one task and another there’s a thirty-minute gap and you can’t recall what you did, then you know that distractions are taking up your time. Focus on one task If you’re going to add an hour to writing, make sure the extra hour was needed to improve the quality, not because you spent most of your time distracted. It’s hard when notifications are always beeping but if you set a time for everything (including replying to emails and group chats) then you should have no problem putting everything on silent and focusing on a specific task. At the end of the day, you want to know that those six hours you scheduled for work were highly productive, so you can spend the rest of the day focusing on life. Photo Credit: Giulia Bertelli Schedule things you must do every day There will always be something important that needs to be taken care of ASAP. No matter what you’ve got going on, you need to schedule things that make up your idea of a work/life balance. For some people, it’s running every day, meditation or a weekly coffee date with friends. For others, it’s writing a 1000 words to finish their novel, volunteer work or working on their side project that could turn into a business. Whatever it is which gives you a sense of meaning, sanity and balance, make sure you schedule it into your calendar. Focus on quality not quantity 12-hour work days are meaningless if you’re not seeing progress. Instead of focusing on the hours you’re giving work, focus on progress made. Often, we take on long work days to feel good about ourselves. But we shouldn’t feel good just because we’re busy. We should feel good when we see that real progress is being made and not that we’re busier than anyone we know. When we see real progress, we can enjoy life without feeling guilty that we aren’t working as many hours as we think we should work. The same goes for life. If we’re with family, we need to be off our phones and having quality time. Work/life balance has become an issue issue because of the constant connectivity our phones have given us. Rather than trying to find MORE time, we should be finding ways to make the most out of the time we have. This means spending our time the way we choose to and on the tasks that matter.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t an easy road. In fact, it can be a downright difficult one, especially without proper time management strategies. Many entrepreneurs never realize as much success as they would like or end up completely fail because they couldn’t meet their goals. Although it may seem easier to just give up or change your goal, a better approach is to change the approach you use to reach your goals. What you need, in other words, are effective time management strategies, which are among the most critical aspects of achieving better results as an entrepreneur. In this post, we’ll provide six time management tips to help you ensure you get the important tasks on your to-do list accomplished each day. 1. Manage Your Energy This is the most important aspect of effective time management in both your business and your life. You need to determine your most productive time(s) each day and then plan your schedule accordingly. Some people work well in the morning, while others are more productive at night. It's doesn't matter what time of day you do your most important work, as long as it works best for you. Regardless of what your most productive time of day is, here’s how you can figure out what it is: think about what your days are like. When you get out of bed in the morning and get ready, do you feel a burst of energy? Do you feel like you can tackle work right away? Or are you someone who notices a positive shift in energy during the afternoon or late at night? Whatever category you fall into, you should plan your daily tasks around your body's natural clock. For example, if you have no energy in the morning but tons at night, you can use the morning to do low-energy tasks like answering email and save higher energy tasks like writing for nighttime. 2. Plan, Plan, Plan If you want to achieve success in your business, you must plan. This is not optional. Everyone has personal preferences when it comes to how often they plan out their work. For example, some people may feel better if they make a plan each day for the next day’s work. Others may find it best to make a weekly plan. Regardless of how you plan, having a plan in place will allow you to stay on top of your goals and be prepared for what’s going to happen each day. Without a plan, you run the risk of missing deadlines and losing clients - not to mention losing sight of your goals. 3. Disconnect Between emails, texting, calling, and social media alerts, it can be overwhelming to finish any work with all the distractions. If you have an important project that is due soon, but you have too much going on around you, try logging out of your email and social media accounts. You may even want to put your phone in a different room so you’re not tempted to pick it up. Make sure to set a designated time each day to focus on work without any type of distractions. By doing this, you may notice more progress in your work and, as a result, success with your business since you’ll finally be able to get more done. The reduction in feelings of stress and overwhelm are just bonus benefits. 4. Understand When You Need to Draw The Line As an entrepreneur, you may be used to this scenario: a client calls and says, “I forgot to ask you, can you also do this for the project?” or “Can you call me really quick? I have something in mind for an additional project.” You immediately know this one call is going to derail everything you had planned to accomplish for the rest of the day, sapping your energy and wasting tons of time. When situations like this arise, you need to stand firm. By no means should you ignore the client, but you also must not interrupt what you’re doing at any time to be at their beck and call. Instead, firmly but kindly tell them you’re working on a project right now and ask to schedule a time to talk. By dropping what you’re doing every time a client needs you or wants another meeting for the fifth time that week, you’re derailing your progress and chipping away at your prospects for long-term success. 5. Schedule Time for Strategy Either at the beginning of the month or end of the month, you should block out some of your schedule and reserve it for strategizing for your business. For example, you can schedule a day at the end of the month to reflect on the success you’ve made that month (and what didn't work). By seeing where you succeeded and where you could improve, you'll be better able to create a future plan to accommodate your goals. Aside from monthly strategizing, you can also schedule quarterly and yearly strategizing sessions to dig deeper into your business. It’s important that you take time for yourself and your business in addition to all your client products. Without time for strategizing and reflecting on your business, you won’t be able to create any room for growth. 6. Work in Blocks of Time Rather than saying you’re going to work on your business for 5 hours each day, it’s best to work in small blocks of time. For example, you can schedule yourself to work for 5 hours but the time should be broken up the total duration of work into blocks of time. By working just one hour and then taking a 20-30-minute break that involves getting up and stretching or light physical activity, you will be able to clear your mind and ultimately boost your productivity. Make the Most of Your Time By choosing just one of the above time management techniques and implementing it into your workday tomorrow, you can improve your time management skills, boost your productivity, and ultimately achieve more business success. If you're looking for some further help managing your time, we recommend that you check out the Self Journal, a daily planner that will help you ensure you're scheduling the time to do your best work.