Fastcompany asked the top entrepreneurial coaches for time management tips:
1. Avoid the email time suck.
- Email is my worst enemy, so I only check it three times a day
- Keeping email open all day is the quickest way to kill your productivity
- First thing in the morning I glance over most emails and address only the critical ones. Midday I check progress on the critical emails I addressed in the morning. And before I go to sleep my main goal is to clear volume and smaller or menial tasks. On especially busy days I only check twice a day, cutting out the midday scrub.
- Delaying or ignoring emails is a good way to make people not as dependent on you.
2. Choose your most important goal each week.
- Focus time and energy on it at the cost of other, less important things, and do it until completion
3. Know your productivity limits.
- Everyone has a maximum number of productive hours per day, after which output drops off significantly
4. Be like Dorsey: Take breaks to prevent burnout.
- We encourage founders to not underestimate the importance of exercise, sleep, and taking breaks to restore energy and creativity.
- It’s better to average eight solid hours of productivity a day than it is to output 12 hours of mediocre ones.
- Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey is running two $1 billion plus companies and he finds time to take Saturdays off to recharge.
5. Skip some meetings.
- One meeting can blow an entire day of productivity.
- Know why you’re meeting, and make sure it’s important–try to keep them to 30 minutes, max.
6. Say “no” when you need to.
- A critical skill we all need to learn.
Read the rest.
Not keeping the email open is a great tip! It’s so easy to get distracted on there!