You can argue that the universe’s most valuable commodity is time. There’s never enough, and (as far as we know!) you can’t make more of it. But what you can do is make the most of the time you have. 

Why is time management important? Because proper time management can help people save time, be more productive, and lead better lives, both on the job and off. 

That’s a pretty great reason to better manage your time! Here are some specific reasons for improving time management skills​.

What Is Time Management?

Time management is the act of using one’s time more efficiently through careful planning and organization, often using time-saving apps.

This can be accomplished many ways and for many reasons. It can involve specific tactics like using AI assistants to manage your calendar. It can involve broad philosophies like “not getting bogged down in minutia.” Whatever tactics you use to better manage your time, you’ll likely see results both on the job and off.

7 Benefits of Proper Time Management

The overarching benefit of better time management is more productivity. However, that productivity isn’t limited to the workplace. More efficient time spent on the job can easily translate to less stress while off the job, leading to a better work-life balance. 

Here are some specific benefits of a good time management strategy:

1. You’ll Be More Productive

Identifying your most important daily tasks and scheduling your day to complete those tasks is the most direct route to higher productivity. That’s why time management is so important! 

Without a clear schedule and hard deadlines, it’s very easy to be indecisive about what to do next, which leads to anxiety, stress, and blown deadlines. Using time management to plan your days, weeks, and months will help you always know what you should be doing. Let’s break down how time management leads to productivity in a specific on-the-job situation:

Say you’re a journalist—a very deadline-driven profession—working on a long, investigative piece. This often requires hours of interviews that need to be edited down to their most important information. 

Even after turning your hours of recorded interviews into scannable, searchable text with Rev, the transcriptions can be daunting to tackle. The stress of getting started can lead to procrastination, rushed work, and results that aren’t up to your usual standards. Journalism is all about being accurate, so a lack of focus can undermine your whole project.

But by effectively managing your time, setting clear goals for each day, and hard deadlines for each goal, you’re much more likely to finish accurately and on time.

2. You’ll Have More Time Overall

If you spend less time every day trying to figure out what you need to do, you’ll spend more time actually doing the thing, which means you’ll get more work done every day. And with better time management, the work that you do do will be more efficient. 

For example, let’s talk about meetings. For a lot of people, they consume a significant part of every week, and it can be hard to be “productive” if you’re taking notes while trying to pay attention and contribute to the discussion.

But what if you used an AI notetaker like VoiceHub? It can automatically take a look at your calendar and attend meetings with (or for) you, where it will take comprehensive notes while transcribing the entire meeting. You’ll be free to focus on and contribute to the conversation, and you won’t have to spend any time post-meeting organizing your notes or reviewing a recording. 

More time for work. Better work in less time. More time not doing work. Seems like a no-brainer, right?

3. You’ll Procrastinate Less

Nearly 20% of adults claim to be chronic procrastinators, and some studies show that nearly 70% of college students may be procrastinators. 

Procrastination is often the result of indecision and the accompanying anxiety. If you can’t figure out what you need to do, it’s easy to put whatever it is off until later. In short, poor time management leads to procrastination.

You can mitigate a lot of this indecision with a good calendar app like Calendly and an AI assistant like VoiceHub that can examine your calendar and streamline meetings and tasks. Knowing what you need to do every day eliminates your indecision and lets you get to work.

By effectively managing your time and setting clear expectations for yourself, it’s easier to feel like your workload is easier to handle, which means you're more likely to get it done in a timely manner.

4. You Won’t Be As Stressed

Job-related stress happens for any number of reasons, but being behind on work is one of the bigger ones. This is probably why it’s proven that time management reduces stress. By breaking your mountain of work down into easily-tackleable chunks, the mountain can quickly become the proverbial molehill. And no one is stressed by molehills! 

5. You’ll Find it Easier to Focus

Not to beat a dead horse, but by managing your time and breaking bigger tasks into more manageable pieces with clear deadlines, you’ll be able to focus harder on each task. If you know exactly what you should be doing at all times, your mind will spend less time thinking about what you could be doing. A good AI assistant can help you focus as well, because they can handle a lot of the day-to-day tasks that force you to multitask. 

You know how you sometimes decide to watch a movie or show, but with all the options on all the streaming services, you get overwhelmed and end up watching nothing at all? Work can be like that, too. There’s something to be said about clarity. If you know what you should do, it's easier to focus on that specific task.

6. You’ll Do Better Work

Better work is the ultimate goal, no matter what profession you’re in, isn’t it? Good business and time management go hand-in-hand, so it only makes sense that we all strive to use our time on the job more effectively.

For instance, if you’re a morning person, it might make sense to schedule your important tasks (or the tasks that require more brain power) in the morning, so you can devote your full attention to them. Many calendar apps allow you to label tasks with different priorities or urgencies, making it easier to see where your full brain will be needed. You can manually adjust your calendar accordingly, or have your trusty AI assistant do it for you.

With the clarity to know exactly what you’re doing, you can focus on that task and ensure that it gets done to the best of your abilities and—possibly even more importantly—on time. Better, more focused work done in a timely manner ultimately leads to less stress and more free time. 

Making the Most of Your Workday

If you make the most of your workday, you’ll make the most of your after-hours time, too. If that’s not an incentive to start effectively managing your time, we don’t know what is. Here’s how to get started:

• Get VoiceHub. Our AI note taker can handle many of the day-to-day tasks that take your focus away from the bigger-picture tasks. VoiceHub can attend meetings in your place, take thorough notes, and even summarize conversations for you. 
• Use a digital calendar. There are dozens of calendar apps that can help manage your time. Calendly and Google Calendar are among the most widely used, but your mileage may vary. It’s worth noting that VoiceHub easily integrates with most popular calendar apps.
• Create to-do lists. Ideally, you’ll do this using your preferred calendar app, but a clear to-do list created on a daily and weekly basis will help you know exactly what you need to accomplish.
• Review your calendar every day. A thorough review means no surprises!
• Work in downtime. All work and no play….you know the saying. When managing your calendar, be sure to incorporate regular short breaks. Grab a snack, see the sun, and breathe some fresh air. It’ll energize the rest of your time until your next break!

Rev Can Help You Manage Your Time

Proper time management makes your work better, your job easier, and your life more liveable. Those are pretty good reasons to learn how to effectively manage your time, whether you’re in the office or working remotely. 

Rev VoiceHub is a perfect tool for helping manage your time, with its built-in AI assistant that can take notes for you, automatically transcribe meetings and interviews, and even highlight important information from every meeting. The only thing VoiceHub can’t do for you is enjoy your extra free time.

Get VoiceHub Now