Table of Contents
- What are time management skills?
- Why good time management is important in 2022
- Examples of time management skills
- How to put time management skills on your resume
- How to improve your time management skills
What are time management skills?
Time management skills are a set of transferable skills that help you decide what you’re going to do and how for every second of the day — in both your working and personal life.
Good time management skills help you:
- get more done
- improve the quality of your work
- decrease stress
As a result, developing effective time management skills can bring you better work and life satisfaction as well as prepare you for success in the workplace.
Why good time management is important in 2022
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has increased and is likely to continue. While preferred by many Americans, working from home — without adapting and developing your time management skills — can decrease your productivity and disrupt your work-life balance.
Scroll down to identify why it’s harder to focus, manage your meetings, and achieve work-life balance, and learn how to develop specific time management skills to overcome these challenges.
Home offices can make focusing hard
You may get distracted or procrastinate more without bosses and colleagues around for accountability. When you work remotely, you also have added distractions like children and TV.
Stay focused by:
- choosing an uncluttered working space away from distractions
- arranging regular schedules with house members to ensure you can work without interruption
- using software that blocks non-work websites, like social media, during working hours
- getting an accountability partner who works at the same time as you over video (e.g., Focusmate)
- checking in frequently with your boss and colleagues
- setting challenging deadlines
Employees are adding more meetings to their workload
Studies show that workers are having more meetings now than before the pandemic. In addition to the meeting time, meetings take up time before and after for preparation and post-processing.
Also, as it takes nine minutes or longer to redirect your focus to a task after being interrupted, meetings that break up your day can cost you a lot of time.
To have fewer but more productive meetings, set a few guidelines with your manager (or as a manager), including:
- determining whether a meeting is needed (e.g., would brainstorming in a Google document or a company-wide memo do the same job?)
- setting goals for your meeting
- ensuring the scope of the meeting is neither so big that it would exhaust workers nor so small that it could be added to another meeting
- verifying that every person invited to the meeting needs to be there
Remote work blurs the lines between work and life
Employees are working longer in COVID-19 times, reducing time spent with family and friends or doing hobbies. Additionally, because employees are easily contacted via technology, remote workers may not be engaged fully in their personal time.
To protect your personal life and take advantage of its associated benefits, track your working hours. Only work for the number of hours that you would normally work in the physical office.
And separate your work and personal space as much as possible to further differentiate work and personal time. For example, if your home office is in a living or dining room as opposed to a designated office, you may be tempted to slip into work mode while in those areas for leisure time.
5 examples of time management skills
Enhance your resume by adding these top time management skills to your resume:
1. Goal setting
Goal setting, or establishing an endpoint, is important for anything from small tasks to career-long projects. Set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based (SMART) goals to create a rough roadmap for how to get to your destination.
Specific skills related to goal setting include:
- Initiative
- Decision-making
- Self-motivation
- Self-discipline
2. Planning
Planning is organizing your time and resources to complete a goal. While planning may seem like time taken away from action, diving into work without a plan can actually lead to extra work, lost time, and project failures.
Planning-related skills include:
- Setting and meeting deadlines
- Prioritizing
- Scheduling
- Risk assessment
3. Developing and using a time management system
Time management systems are structures that guide how you work. Do you prioritize your work using an urgent-important matrix? Do you keep a to-do list? Do you block out your time for certain tasks? Using a time management system gets you partially through your planning, no matter the project.
Time management skills that are part of your time management system include:
- Resource management
- Organizational skills
- Breaking down tasks
- Batching and automating tasks
4. Focusing
Focusing is the action part of work, no matter how hard or boring a task may be. Like your physical muscles, you can develop the length and intensity of your attention. By using smart working strategies, you can maximize the four to five hours of intensive work your brain can handle in a day.
Specific focus-related skills include:
- Avoiding procrastination
- Eliminating distractions
- Avoiding multitasking
- Perseverance
5. Setting boundaries
Time management is a zero-sum game, meaning more time spent on one task takes away from time on another task. While your saying “no” may disappoint yourself and others at first, maintaining boundaries improves the quality of your work.
Setting boundaries involves skills such as:
- Communication skills
- Delegating
- Stress management
- Avoiding perfectionism
How to put time management skills on your resume
While critical for all jobs, time management skills are especially important to include on your resume if you’re applying for roles:
- that are client-based (e.g., consulting)
- made up of many different types of work (e.g., head nurse)
- in management (e.g., project manager)
Choose which time management skills to highlight on your resume based on the job ad and your job type.
There are three places to showcase your time management skills on your resume:
1. Include them in your resume introduction
If time management is crucial to your role, mention your time management skills at the start of your resume in a 2-4 sentence resume summary.
Here’s an example of time management highlighted in a resume summary:
2. Quantify them in your work experience section with hard numbers
In your work experience section, use hard numbers to describe your time management skills.
Instead of just using the phrase “time management,” give examples of your accomplishments on your resume that show how you managed time, like this bullet from a warehouse manager’s resume does:
Along with hard numbers, using time management-related resume adjectives, like the following, makes your work experience section concrete and engaging for hiring managers:
- Efficient
- Prompt
- Timely
- On-schedule
- In-advance
- Adaptable
- Decisive
- Organized
- Step-by-step
- Systematic
- Structured
- Quick-thinking
- Fast-learning
- Tireless
- Focused
- Purposeful
- Productive
- Proactive
Below are more examples of how to write your time management skills into your work experience section for various job roles:
Nurse
- Attentively and efficiently perform dialysis for 6 patients per day, systematically prioritizing patients based on department, number of rounds of dialysis required, and dialysis modality
Executive assistant
- Manage scheduling for CEO using organizational software like Calendly and Google Calendar, adapt to urgent requests from various departments, and answer phone calls and disseminate memos in a timely manner
Film project manager
- Set monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals for the editing team, and make quick creative decisions to prepare scenes for 4 screenings per year
Teacher
- Return grades in a timely manner with an average turnaround time of 1 week for exams and 2 days for homework assignments
Certified Public Accountant
- Promptly and accurately prepare 450+ tax returns per year, delegating tasks to temporary employees and batching similar returns to accommodate the large influx of work around tax season
3. List them in your skills section
If time management skills are considered secondary skills for your role, place them in your skills section at the end of your resume. Doing so saves space while allowing hiring managers to ask you more about them later in interviews.
Here’s an example of time management skills in a skills section:
How to improve your time management skills
Whether you’re looking to become more effective at your current job or succeed in landing a new job, use the following tips to develop your time management skills:
1. Decide which tasks to do
Define what “effective” means for your job role and your company. Once you’ve identified the tasks required for your job, set realistic goals based on the quality of work expected and the timeframe you’re given.
Setting deadlines for your goals will naturally help you arrange the order of your tasks. Generally, prioritizing a few high-impact tasks is better than completing many low-impact tasks (the 80/20 rule) when working toward your goals.
2. Develop a time management system
After you’ve decided what you’re going to do, figure out how to schedule the work.
Whether you use existing time management systems or create a system all your own, ensure your system takes into account factors such as:
- how many different types of work your job has
- how much or what kind of accountability you need to focus
- how often urgent matters come up in your job
- the times of day you like to work
- the number of hours of focused work you can do
Perform regular reviews of what is and isn’t working about your time management system. You may need to try many systems before finding the best one for you.
3. Use technology
While distracting at times, technology can also be used to enhance productivity. Software is available for all aspects of work, from organization and scheduling to focus.
Examples of time management tools include:
- digital boards for kanban and scrum
- virtual notebooks
- scheduling software
- pomodoro trackers
- time trackers that record how much time you spend on different tasks
- focus apps
