Time is the greatest equaliser, We are all given the exact same amount of time every day, and how we choose to spend it defines us. When asked about the importance of time management, Warren Buffet once said, “I can buy anything I want basically, but I can’t buy time.’’

So what do successful people do differently? How do they spend their time to achieve more than everyone else? To answer this question, we’ve put together a shortlist of time management hacks that will allow one to take more ownership of their time.

1. Gamify your to-do list

Maintaining a to-do list is the first step to boosting your daily productivity. You could start your day off by giving yourself a list of tasks that must be completed by the end of the day. At the end of the day, go through your list again crossing off tasks you’ve completed, and record how much time was spent on these tasks.

Tracking your activities gives you a clearer picture of how you’ve spent your time and where you could save it. Leave comments and feedback for yourself. Once you identify areas for improvement, you could incorporate the same next time and manage your time.

2. Blank spaces are your allies:

Unforeseen meetings and appointments often disrupt schedules. They cause postponements and cancelations thus wasting a lot of time for all parties involved.

Pro Tip: while planning your schedule would be to leave as many blank spaces as possible between appointments and meetings in order to accommodate any unforeseen emergencies or delays that arise.

3. Small steps lead to big changes:

Completing the easiest tasks first gives you the confidence to proceed with more challenging ones. Your mind is set to believe that if you’ve completed this task, the next one is also achievable. Adopting this mindset can help you stay motivated and focused on completing all the tasks you’ve set out to do for the day.

Similarly, it also helps to break up large projects into smaller, quicker, and easily achievable tasks. Tricking your brain into completing multiple smaller parts of a project motivates you, helps you focus, and allows you to complete these tasks sooner without letting a sense of challenge or monotony set in.

4. Be smart. Delegate:

As the day progresses, our brains get tired of making decisions. Successful people are all key decision-makers, and the important decisions they make have a huge impact and consequences. This is why leaders try to limit the number of decisions they take every day by instilling and following a routine by reducing the number of unimportant decisions they may have to make. This way, they can resolve matters that actually require their attention.

Delegating your work and targets to your team can help you take more ownership of your time, which will in turn allow you to complete more work and make better decisions. You could evaluate and empower your teams to have initial discussions and meetings in your absence and ask for the minutes of the meetings instead. This saves you a lot of time as opposed to being in meetings where your inputs aren’t immediately necessary or when deals could have been negotiated by your team instead. You need to know what requires your immediate attention and input and delegate the rest to others on your team.

5. Task-Bundling

In our previous blog, we spoke about how multitasking isn’t actually as effective as it sounds and how it could take away more time from your day. Task Bundling is a creative way of completing two tasks simultaneously and may not require double the focus. For example, you can listen to a podcast or watch a show that you enjoy during a workout.

A smart hack that successful people use is that they reply to emails, read a book, or read the news while on their commutes. Certain activities don’t necessarily require your complete attention and can often be paired with another simple activity, thereby completing both in a shorter span of time.

100% productivity is an unachievable goal for anyone, but there’s always an option to do better. A coach helps you track, measure, and record your progress to identify where you can do better. A coach ensures that you’re accountable for your goals and will handhold you while constantly pushing you to achieve them.

Working with a coach can help you and your organisation get very close to 100% productivity by taking the right steps towards overall growth.