Four time management techniques to boost your productivity in 2016

For most people, coming back to work in the beginning of a calendar year means arriving with renewed energy levels after the holiday season, fresh perspectives, and a list of goals or resolutions in their back pocket.

Whatever your career goals are in 2016, they will undoubtedly revolve around one critical success factor – making better use of time and being able to juggle multiple activities at once.

Trying to work out the best way for you to work to become the ultimate productivity champion in 2016? Here are four of the most popular techniques.

1. The Pomodoro Technique. This technique tries to work alongside, rather than against, time. Essential to its success is the notion of breaking work down into 25 minute intervals, followed by short, scheduled breaks, to improve mental agility and focus.

2. Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. This focuses on plotting out your activities on a quadrant evaluated by two main criteria – urgent/non urgent, and important/not important. You’ll obviously want to prioritize activities that are important but not urgent – which include strategy, planning, relationship-building, and recognizing new opportunities – and will produce long-term results.

3. The Pareto Principle (or the 80/20 rule). This is based on the idea that 80 percent of your success comes from 20 percent of your efforts. Adopting this technique means that when you write your ‘to do’ list, you should prioritize each item by the amount of effort required and the potential positive results. Based on this ranking system, your priorities could change so that what you think is top priority is the least important compared to all tasks.

4. Eat that Frog. This startling-named technique is helpful for procrastinators in particular – it refers to going through the day by tackling the biggest, hardest and important tasks first. If you do this, then you can relax knowing that the day will become less stressful – and you don’t have that task niggling in the back of your head.

At Replicon, we see time as an enterprise asset. We emphasize that time is a function that if effectively harnessed, can deliver significant bottom line value back to the organization – whether that’s through increased profitability margins, higher productivity gains, or other cost efficiencies. For individuals or teams, this means making the most of time & attendance solutions as the starting point to drive better work/life balance and success. If you capture how you spend your time accurately, then you can manage how you spend it better in the future, and optimize how you work to drive the greatest results.

What will you do this year so that time works with you towards career success?