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It may seem like there is never enough time in the day to get everything done. However, with the right strategies, you can take back control of your day. In this post, we’ll explore three powerful time management methods: the Eisenhower Matrix for smarter prioritization, “Eating the Frog” and the Premack Principle for tackling your most challenging tasks first, and Parkinson’s Law for working more efficiently within tighter time frames. Together, these approaches can help you boost focus, cut procrastination, and make every hour count.
For more on how to make the most out of your day, check out our blog post Scheduling and The Importance of Breaks.
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is a really simple way to make sure that you prioritize what needs to get done. This matrix also helps you sort your to-do list so that things aren’t just 1 long list and overwhelming!
The matrix is based off of the urgency and importance of the task. So when sorting things into the matrix all you have to do is ask yourself: Is it urgent? Is it important?
- DO: These tasks are the ones that need to be done today or tomorrow as they’re both urgent and important.
- Decide: Careful with these ones! With this combination of urgency and importance, it can be a good idea to attach your own deadline, or choose a date to do the things in this category. Otherwise they may continually get pushed to the side.
- Delegate: For tasks that fall here, most applicable in group projects, we want to get others to do them if possible, making sure we check in with the people we’re giving the task to. If these can’t be done by others, consider scheduling them at the end of your day or during one of your breaks.
- Delete: Get rid of this task from your to-do list!
“Eating The Frog” and The Premack Principle
A helpful tool to avoid procrastination of things that need to be prioritized where the “frog” is a task that you’re dreading. Consider watching this video to learn more about “Eating the Frog”. This analogy comes from a book by Brian Tracy called “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Step Procrastination and Get More Done in Less Time.”
This tool fits in really nicely with the Pomodoro Method and the Eisenhower Matrix
- Break the unwanted thing into smaller pieces so that it is less overwhelming and more likely to be completed
- Then put it into your schedule first thing in the morning so that it gets done!
“Eating the Frog” also ties in with a psychological theory called the Premack Principle, which involves using an enjoyable reward as incentive to completing an unpleasant task. So consider “eating the frog” and then rewarding yourself with something after it. But don’t let yourself have the pre-planned reward until the “frog” is gone!
Parkinson’s Law
Have you ever said “I work best under pressure?” or struggled with procrastination? Then “Parkinson’s Law” may be a good time management strategy for you to try. Based off of the quote that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion” the idea with Parkinson’s Law is that if you give yourself 8 hours to finish a task, you’ll probably use the full 8 hours that you’ve allotted for yourself. So instead of giving yourself so much time, you want to provide yourself with enough time to finish the task but not too much time to do it that you’re spending time that could go to other projects.
To use Parkinson’s Law it’s really important to fall back onto that attainability piece discussed in SMART goals. If you gave yourself 5 hours to write your essay last time and found you were getting bored or distracted, try to only give yourself 4 hours to do it. Again, when you’re making your schedule and using the Pomodoro Method, block off 4 hours instead of 5 so that you have an extra hour to study something else, take a break, sleep, etc.
Blog post adapted from the McKinney Psychology presentation Time Management as part of our Student Series. For more on our Student Series follow this link. For further information on our presentations, please contact our office.