As a senior manager or business owner, you most likely value your time above all else; mainly because there never seems to be enough hours in the day to complete the myriad of tasks you have set yourself.

You may think that you are working productively and managing your time effectively, but if you are still struggling to get everything done to the best of your abilities, then you could benefit from the below, vigorous time management techniques.

Track your time

How often do you finish a day at the office and think ‘where has the day gone?’; probably more times than you care to admit. This is a common problem in management as you are often required to deal with sudden emergencies or employee dilemmas.

Although you cannot pre-empt these occurrences, you can find out and analyze how much time you spend a day carrying out specific tasks and in turn, investigate ways that you can minimize the duration of said tasks.

Consider downloading a time tracker app to help you identify how you spend your time in a working week.

Go big in the morning

Most people are at their best in the morning; feeling energized and full of enthusiasm for the day ahead. Therefore, you should always tackle your biggest and most important tasks first thing; whether that be chasing new business leads, attending an investors’ meeting or rallying your staff for the day ahead.

The early part of the day is also the time when employees feel their most creative, so organize any brain-storming sessions in the a.m. to get the most out of your blue-sky thinking team.

Save admin-related tasks for the afternoon when your energy is starting to drain.

Work smart, not hard

If you really think about the tasks that you carry out every day, how many of those result in an improvement in your business? It can be a demoralizing thought, but a vital one if you want to maximize your time.

Spending hours replying to emails that have little benefit to your output as a company is not an effective use of your time. In the same way that analyzing large amounts of data every week in order to come to similar conclusions that you then don’t have time to implement is not beneficial to you as a manager or your company.

Instead, look to software that will actively save you time such as online time tracking which can help you make instant decisions based on up to date data.

Focus on one task at a time

Studies have shown that the human brain can only carry out one complex task to a high standard at any given time; put simply, multi-tasking is not the answer to effective time management. In addition, people are not able to concentrate on any one task for longer than 45-50 minutes without becoming distracted and/or less able to carry out the task to the best of their abilities.

Therefore, next time you have an important job to do, set a timer on your phone for a maximum of 50 minutes and once your allocated time is up, move on to a different task; ideally one that is completely different to the one you were doing previously. For example, if you were brainstorming ideas for a new product, consider a more admin-related task next. Or if you have been analyzing your employees’ performance, try an errand that requires you to be up and away from your computer.