The 4 Time Management Strategies of the Top 1%

You are reading an excerpt from The Challenge, a newsletter where I discuss self-improvement, goal-setting, habits, time management, and health tips and tricks.

Every week, you will get the following:

• a challenge to pursue to improve your life
• an infographic to track it.

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In Four Thousand Weeks , Oliver Burkeman introduces people to the 3-3-3 Method.

According to Burkeman, you should split your working hours into three parts of three hours each.

• Three hours for deep work on your most important project.
• Three hours on smaller tasks that take less time and concentration.
• And three hours for maintenance activities for when you feel tired.

The 3-3-3 Method combines simplicity and balance. And it’s great for starting to balance your work life. But it doesn’t consider your mandatory free time.

Everyone should get at least three hours of free time every day. For this reason, I suggest the 3x4 Method to manage your time.

Here’s what balance looks like with the 3x4 Method:

• 3x3=9 hours of work
• 3 hours of free time
• 3 hours to survive the day (a.k.a cooking, eating, etc.)
• and 9 hours of sleep

Personally, I never sleep for more than 7 hours. But for the sake of balance, this is perfect!

To this day, The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the most efficient ways to prioritize your tasks. And once you know the highest priority, you can shape your time around it.

I created a bunch of specific content for the Eisenhower Matrix:

• You will find an explanation in my article about mastering prioritization (where you can also download the free infographic ).
• Or you can get the Notion Template by buying a premium subscription to The Challenge (here’s the link to the article).

Yet, here’s a brief explanation for those who don’t have time to catch up.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization method that focuses on two metrics:

• the importance of a task
• and its urgency.

You can build a matrix with four sections based on these two metrics. And you can use this matrix to categorize your tasks or goals.

• DO contains every urgent and important task.
• DELAY includes activities that are important but not urgent. Schedule them.
• DELEGATE contains duties that don’t require your direct intervention. Someone else can do them for you.
• DELETE contains all the unimportant and not urgent tasks. If they are not important, you can delete them safely.

The MoSCoW method is a prioritization technique I discovered lately. But it helped me gain new perspectives on my projects.

I use it a lot as a software developer when interacting with clients. But I also find it helpful to define the entity of my goals.

How does it work?

Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method to track project requirements. Therefore, it focuses on four main development initiatives.

• Must-have covers all fundamental initiatives you have to complete to consider the project finished.
• Should-have includes all initiatives and tasks that are important but not vital.
• Could-have includes all the nice-to-have initiatives that have a trivial impact on the project if left out.
• Will-not-have covers every initiative you are leaving out of the project’s scope for now.

But how do you get from software to personal development?

Usually, we subdivide software projects into initiatives. An initiative is a collection of new developments or updates that refer to the same section of the project.

The same goes for a good goal strategy (or, at least, it should).

You can split a goal into milestones. Each milestone refers to a specific section of the goal. And it will include all the tasks needed to reach that goal.

So, pick up your goal. Split it into milestones. And find what’s a must-have first. Define the shoulds and coulds. And leave out everything that’s not strictly necessary.

Prioritization techniques are essential for balanced time management. But once you get your list of tasks, how do you plan them on your calendar?

Do you pick the top task on the list every day?

That’s a simple strategy, but it gets the work done. And if you sort the list in any way, you will get some of the most efficient techniques out there. Eat the Frog, for example, focuses on the hardest task of the day, every day. And it works.

But all these techniques have one flaw — they don’t give you much control and flexibility. That’s why you need something more elaborate as time blocking.

Time blocking’s principle is simple but requires more strategy and knowledge.

• You build strategy by noticing relationships between tasks.
• You build knowledge by analyzing your timings.

So, how do you block time?

1. List of all your tasks (my Notion templates are perfect.)
2. Take notes on the completion time of every task. Include distraction time into this tracking because you will get distracted.
3. Split your calendar into half-hour slots.
4. Plan your tasks in the calendar slots. Start with the highest priority following the Eisenhower Matrix.

Now, you have your schedule. Stick to it!

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