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It’s not secret, books are amazing resources and I personally love to read. But I know that not all of us do. That’s why I did the heavy lifting on your behalf and found the best tips from time management books so you don’t have to.
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Does this sound like you?
The alarm goes off and it’s still dark out.
You close your eyes for just another minute.
You didn’t sleep that well since you’ve been thinking a lot about how much you still have on your plate. Every day you’re working hard to try to pull ahead but things keep seeming to pile up.
You jolt awake.
Realizing that you drifted off and now need to get up ASAP.
You rouse the rest of the house and proceed to whirlwind through getting dressed, throwing food at the kids while trying to find your keys.
Once you’ve actually left the house you realize that you didn’t eat breakfast yourself and you only have an old granola bar in your bag.
Good morning to you too.
We can change that
Imagine this instead:
You’re alarm goes off and you open your eyes thinking about how grateful you are to have gotten a night of restful sleep.
You get up and start your routine, shower, get dressed and once you’re half way through your routine (and have a cup of coffee in your hand) you wake up the rest of the house.
You all sit down together for a quick breakfast then pull out the lunch containers from the fridge and put them in your bags.
Everyone is ready to go a few minutes before you have to leave but you start out anyway because this way you’ll beat traffic.
You smile because you know not many people have wonderful mornings like this one.
Spending your time the way you want to
Figuring out a way to get the most out of every day is life-changing.
I’m not talking about making more time to work or working more efficiently so you can do more work.
Although you can certainly do that with the tips in this post, the goal of this is to give you more time to do the things you love. If that’s work, amazing! If that’s going on vacation, woot woot!
Maybe it’s having a peaceful morning consistently.
Whatever you want to do with your time you should be able to. And that’s why it’s so important to make the time that we’re spending on something really count.
So without further ado, here are 10 time management book tips to do just that.
- Related: 4 Easy ways to save an hour a day
- Related: The PROM method of Planning
The Best Time Management Book Tips
Ok, so I pulled some of my favourite time management tips from time management books and productivity books in order to relay them to you. That way you can start implementing some of these tweaks to make your days less stressful.
Let’s get started!
Where the venn diagram intersect
In the book From Good to Great by Jim Collins he talks about Nucor’s 3 circles. These circles form a venn diagram and where they overlap is where we should focus our efforts.
The 3 circles are things you’re passionate about, things you can be the best at and things people will pay you for.
He’s specifically talking about business building but this is very relevant overall. So what does it mean for us?
First, we should be spending time on things that we’re passionate about. These things that we like to do naturally give us motivation.
When we’re motivated we’re willing to put in extra effort to develop our skills. As our skills grow we don’t have to spend the same amount of time doing the same task.
And if we’re doing something that brings us more resources (time, money, energy) it leads to great things.
For example:
If we really love calligraphy we can use it when planning our week. We get to practice something we like which motivates us to plan which saves us time through the week.
Learn to take it off your plate
When I read The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferris the part that stuck out the most to me was the section on automation and delegation. No matter what type of life you live this is a MAJOR breakthrough if you learn to do it.
I’m an Enneagram type 1- which means that when I start to get stressed I start thinking that I need to do it all myself because no one can be as good at it as me.
The “if you want something done right, do it yourself” mentality can be incredibly strong.
But the thing is that I just keep getting more and more stressed and resentful because I’m the one doing everything, even though all I want is some help!
So instead of just piling your plate with stuff to do try this instead.
- Ask does this actually need to be done?
- Could this be done at least 80% as well by someone else?
- Can I set up a system so that I won’t have to worry about this again?
Holy crow.
Does this really need doing?
The first question will get rid of like 30% of things on your to-do list.
Can someone else do it?
In terms of question 2, we can often get caught just doing things that people ask us to do. But if they can do it themselves (think refill the photocopier with paper, send an email to Melanie about a group lunch on Friday) just say no.
Politely of course.
But by bouncing it back to them you save a ton of time.
If you manage others, empower your workers to build their skills by showing them how to do a task usually performed by you. They’ll be excited to learn and when they get the hang of it, that task can be off your plate indefinitely.
The same thing for moms and spouses.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve listened to women complain about how their kids always make a mess and never clean up but then I always see that same parent telling the kid not to touch the mess and that they’ll do it themselves later…
If you don’t let them help or show them how to, they never will and you’ll always be stuck doing it.
SYSTEMATIZE that thing
By setting up systems to take care of routine or menial tasks you open up tons of time for other things.
Easy systems to set up are email auto-responders, morning and evening routines and work flows.
By having these things in place you have much less that you need to tackle and are better equipped to spend your time on things that warrant it.
The juice is often worth the squeeze
In her book Mindset, Carol S. Dweck talks about the importance of developing a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is the belief that we can enhance our skills and that we aren’t doomed to always be bad at somethings and good at others.
While I was growing up I had what you’d call a fixed mindset. I believed that I just wasnt’t the type of person who could be creative. I was a “science” kinda girl.
This lead to a severe lack of development in those skills, and not just the arts, but also in critical thinking. The things that needed creativity.
I remember the moment it changed.
I was out at a night club in my first year of university and I felt like Kevin James’s character in “Hitch”, my mind telling me I wasn’t a good dancer so I was only allowed to bob back and forth.
And while I was wall-flowering it I watched this guy out on the dance floor. He was just going for it. That guy was animated and electric and just really in the moment and I thought:
“He looks like he’s having so much fun”
So I decided to dance.
I had the most fun at a dance, party or club that I ever had that night and later that year I signed up for a ballet class because I had always wanted to but was too worried about maybe being bad.
I became someone the teacher had demonstrate movement and continued to dance for years afterwards.
It also opened up my willingness to really try things and be ok with failing.
And that’s the tip,
Be willing to work at something you might not be innately good at. A growth mindset allows us to build our skills and get better at things.
And as we get better and stop dragging our feet, we get more productive.
Just because you aren’t good at it right away doesn’t mean it’s not worth learning.
Pick your destination
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People changed my life. There were so many things I learned that I can’t go through it all here.
But one thing closely related to time management tips and productivity is to begin with the end in mind.
Stephen Covey gives the example of having a bunch of people in the jungle hacking away to clear a path only to have someone climb a tree and tell them they’re going in the wrong direction.
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s incredibly hard to get there.
This is why so many people say they want a certain type of life but never get it. It’s because they don’t do the things that they’d need to in order to make it happen.
In short, they waste their time.
By beginning with the end in mind we can establish a clear goal then come up the an actionable plan to make it happen.
If you want to start making progress on a big goal, check our my 30.60.90 post– it’s all about creating an action plan for accomplishing a big goal in 90 days.
You are always choosing so take responsibility
When a business partner of mine gave me The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
And you might be thinking the same thing since this is an article about tips for time management books.
But, like me, you should give it a chance.
The tip I had re-enforced was this:
You’re always making choices so you have to take responsibility for them.
It’s incredibly hard to be productive and get ahead if you don’t take responsibility for your choices.
So in short, we can choose what information or beliefs we act on. We can choose if we’re going to be a couch potato or get some exercise. It’s up to us every day what we choose to give a f*ck about.
And when we choose what we care about and start acting on that we’ll start to get things done.
Your ATTITUDE determines everything.
Seriously, the way that you react to things will dictate a lot.
I love the book Be Brilliant Everyday by Andy Cope and Andy Whittaker. It’s all about finding joy in the little things and living your best life in the circumstances you’re in.
It’s hilarious and full of satirical cartoons making fun of our current world. Check this one out⬇
But the lesson in the book is that we can be happy and successful as long as we bring a strong positive attitude to our days.
If we choose to see the humour in situations or lend a helping hand we can find joy in everything we do.
And by finding joy our lives get better and we get more out of them.
There is a big dose of British snark and humor in this book. It’s delightful.
Use your strengths to your advantage
In the Working Woman’s Art of War Chin-Ning Chu discusses the legendary Art of War by Sun Tzu and adapts it for the modern working woman.
And one thing that really makes a difference for me is that we all have unique strengths.
If we use our gifts to our advantage and stay in our zone of genius then we are going to get more done and have better results.
There are so many things that we could be self conscious about or downplay and often those are the things that we should share with others.
Having confidence in our own perspective and buckling down on the things we’re good at is a recipe for success.
We are creatures of habit
As much as we want to think that it’s not true, it is.
And Charles Duhigg reiterates that for us in The Power of Habit.
Since our brains are wired for routines and habits we can make the most of them.
While creating good habits can take some effort, after they’re established you can take them to the bank. A good morning routine will make your day way more productive.
A good evening routine will revolutionize your mornings.
Established habits for fitness, nutrition, reading, studying will make you better at everything.
So don’t underestimate the difference creating strong habits can make on your productivity and life.
Do the hardest thing FIRST
You might have heard of something called decision fatigue.
It’s the phenomenon pertaining to the depletion of your ability to make choices as the day goes on.
Motivation is very much like this as well.
We start our day with high levels of motivation but as the day goes on we have less and less of it.
This is especially true if we haven’t gotten much actually done in the early parts of it.
In order to combat this, Brian Tracy in Eat That Frog, suggests doing the hardest thing on your plate first. That is when you have the highest levels of motivation.
It will only take doing this once to know that it WORKS.
If you get up and the first thing you do tomorrow is something that you’ve been putting off but know needs to be done this is what’ll happen.
- It’ll be done! Finally and you will feel so good about it
- You’ll give yourself more motivation since you’ve accomplished something big
- You won’t have that built up anxiety or guilt anymore about not doing the task
Life changing.
20% of what you do brings you 80% of your results
I know you don’t want to believe
But it’s true.
And it hurts.
Only about 20% of the things that we do really move the needle on projects, businesses and relationships.
If we figure out what tasks make up that 20% and increase the time spent there while cutting out things that don’t bring results our productivity will SKYROCKET.
This is the main principal in The 80/20 Rule by Richard Koch.
The first step to figuring out that 20% is to figure out what absolutely DOESN’T bring you results. Cut that crap out right now. You’ll at least save some time by doing just that.
Then look at some trends.
When you spent a full week coaching members of your team at work performance increased substantially and continued at that new level.
Spend more time doing that.
And that’s obviously only one example.
Find out what you do that really makes a big difference or impact and have that be your area of focus.
You’ll end up exponentially increasing your results while not necessarily needing to spend more time or energy.
What Now?
There we go!
10 tips from time management books that will have a huge impact on your life.
*Bonus* you only had to read this page instead of 10 books. I’m all about that efficiency. 😉
Of course if you want to get in deep and read some of tips from time management books for FREE you can sign up for a free trial of audible if you haven’t before. You get a month of service and a free ebook.
Go ahead and start in on becoming a time management guru.
Which tip did you find most helpful? Let me know in the comments below.
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