How to Build an Effective Time Management System

Find what works for you, but consider these essential components of a good time management system.

The internet is full of good advice about how to manage your time. In this post, I’m going to share the components of an effective system. I’ll also share how I apply them. Just remember, no system, however shiny, will work if you don’t use it.

With Thanks to Time Management Experts

I need to give credit here to a couple of folks who have far more productivity expertise than I. I adapted my system using their advice. (This is a case in point that we each need to play with various time-management tools to see what works.) The first is Thomas Frank, a.k.a. The College Info Geek, whose articles and videos I have been recommending to students for years. You can see his three-tier time management system here. My system also has three parts, but only two are similar to Frank’s. The third, I learned from the book Deep Work by Cal Newport – which I also heartily recommend for graduate students.

The Parts of an Effective System

Part One: A Weekly Schedule

The first part of a good time-management system is to get a picture of what your days look like. I use Google Calendar for this. An electronic calendar allows you to make recurring events for things that happen at the same time each week or month (like classes, meetings, office hours, running group, book club). It also allows you to invite people to events (so my husband and I can avoid double-booking ourselves). It shows up on your phone, and it feeds into your work calendar. This helps you avoid conflicts among the different pieces of your life.

Your weekly schedule need not be electronic. You can use a paper planner or a printed-out weekly plan. But it is important to have a visual representation of what each day looks like. Then you can see where your flexible blocks of time are – in the spaces between the events.

Seeing the flexible blocks of time can help you figure out where classes, research, and writing is going to fit into your schedule. I recommend, as much as possible, setting those up as recurring events as well. For example, every Tuesday from 4-7 p.m. you are working on coursework. If you make something an event on your schedule, all of a sudden it has a time and place assigned to it. That’s kind of a deadline, and deadlines can provide motivation to get work done (Zhu et al., 2019).

Part 2: A To-Do List

The next part of a time management system is to add content to the events on your schedule. This way, when you get to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, you don’t have to waste moments figuring out how to use that space you have diligently blocked out.

You can keep a to-do list electronically, in an app like Evernote. I love Evernote, although not for this purpose. You can use the notes feature on your smartphone. This does not work for me, because I always forget to look at it. You can use a planner or a notebook or a bunch of sticky notes (as long as you don’t lose them). I like a paper planner for the to-do list. I am pretty picky about my planner. My mom buys the same one for me every Christmas (thanks, Mom!). It is the size of a half-sheet of notebook paper and each two-page spread has a week. I give tasks specific days, but I don’t worry about assigning times. I usually do this on Sunday afternoons, as I mentioned last week. If, before Sunday, I know I need to get something done during a certain week, but don’t know what day I will have time to do it, I just write it on the handy empty space on the side of the page (that’s another 5-star feature of this particular planner).

Part 3: A Daily Plan

This is the newest part of my system, and I love it, because it brings the two previous elements together in a way that is much more elegant than what I was doing before. This is the part I learned from Deep Work.

Every morning (this is the 10 minutes each morning from this post), I write the hours from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. on the side of a notebook page, every other line, so that each line represents 30 minutes (see below). Then I assign a task to each 30-minute block. As Newport suggests, I group smaller tasks (answering emails, making phone calls, or looking up directions or other information) into blocks of 30 or 60 minutes.

This addition has improved my system in two ways. First, it moves the decisions about what to do with time to the beginning of the day, when I have energy for that kind of thing. Second, it allows for flexibility. If something takes a shorter time than I expect, I simply move on to the next task. If something takes longer, or if I get interrupted, I adjust the rest of the day to accommodate the change. I try to plan more time than I think I need for each activity, and then have a list of things I can start working on if I end up with extra time.

Too Many Tools?

So that’s my system. It involves an electronic calendar and two notebooks, which may seem a bit clunky, but it’s working well. (And, in my defense, Thomas Frank’s plan includes phone apps, a notebook, and a whiteboard. Multiple tools aren’t bad, as long as they work well together).

I just realized, though, that I may have discovered a flaw in the paper planner I love. If it just had 365 extra lined pages in the back for me to write the daily plan, I would be able to ditch the second notebook. That’s something to be looking for, for sure. And yes, I could also keep that daily list in the “tasks” feature of my Google Calendar and streamline that way. I find, though, that I spend so much time staring at screens that I am looking for ways to make my life a bit more analog.

Let me know your favorite time management tools or systems!

References

Zhu, M., Bagchi, R., & Hock, S.J. (2019). The mere deadline effect: Why more time might sabotage goal pursuit. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(5).