“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” – Victor Hugo
“The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained.” – Alexis Carrel
“The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
A person who possesses good time management skills can plan and organize their time. They can divide their time between specific activities and prioritize their obligations. Those people who possess time management skills are productive. They are more focused, and confident and they can plan their time in an effective way.
Anybody can benefit from having time management skills. Leaders, businesspeople, university students and even schoolchildren. Effective time management helps maintain work-life balance, increases people’s happiness, and contributes to better mental health.
So how can you improve your time management skills? In our Shiminly articles, we have already discussed the strategies that you can employ to be able to plan your time effectively.
In this article, we are going to discuss books that can provide you with all the necessary information on time management skills. In these books, you can also find helpful advice on how to improve them. So let us get started.
1. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
This book is one of the most trusted and authoritative sources of information on time management. The author of the book shares secrets on how to improve your concentration and avoid distractions. It also provides you with tips on how to resist the temptation of using social media all the time, how to remain indifferent to interruptions and how to accomplish your work objectives. This book is an invaluable source of information for those struggling to focus on their work and achieve results.
2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey
This book discusses the differences in characters between individuals with high achievements and increased productivity and the rest of the people. The author argues that to be a highly effective person one must develop seven key habits. These include being proactive, having the end goal in mind, being able to prioritize things, thinking in a win/win fashion, being able to understand others before being understood, synergising and taking the time to recharge the batteries.
The author of the book provides an elaborate explanation for each of the habits. More importantly, the author of the book provides advice on how people wanting to achieve success can work on themselves to develop these habits. This book will help you to harness each moment in your life and stop wasting time on unnecessary things and useless projects.
3. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
This book is a deep and thorough piece of research on time management. The author draws on the scientific findings from different fields, which include psychology, sociology, and economics. The author discusses how time management affects our motivation and the outcomes of our projects. The author pays particular attention to the stages that people go through when they work on their projects. It also talks about the emotional significance of breaks.
4. The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy by Chris Bailey
The focus of the book is a discussion about what working conditions are most amenable for our professional success and timely completion of projects. The author of the book, Chris Bailey, had been engaged in several curious scientific experiments which explored the issue of productivity. He even took part in some of these experiments and recorded the results. The observations and conclusions drawn from his experiments are now presented in his book in a succinct and clear way.
5. Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at work and in Life by Jason Selk, Tom Bartow, and Matthew Rudy
When talking about time management, this book highlights the importance of our mindset. The authors of the book argue that at the heart of effective time management are willpower and practice. So that is why the chapters are devoted to the issues such as pulling through challenging times, giving yourself a pep talk and even working under pressure.
6. Time Management in 20 Minutes a Day: Simple Strategies to Increase Productivity, Enhance Creativity, and Make Your Time You Own by Holly Reisem Hanna
This is a short and simple book with useful advice on how to live each day of life with maximum benefit. The book contains only one hundred pages, but the tips contained in this book are simple and effective. Some of the tips that the book offers include creating automatic email filters, purposefully scheduling time to check your inbox, and making to-do lists as well as “stop-doing” lists. The book also provides a list of resources on time management, productivity apps, and services that help save time. All these small tips can help readers get their lost hours back.
7. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss
The best aspect of this book is that it provides unique advice on how to increase income without increasing the number of working hours. Some of the advice includes outsourcing tasks, making use of automation, and working for short moments of time. The book is replete with various case studies and curious examples. The book encourages its readers to seize the moment and not wait until retirement. It also invites its readers to consider an alternative lifestyle that does not require you to be an office worker.
8. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
The main premise of the book is that human brains are unable to store huge amounts of information at one time and that is why it is always a good idea to address tasks and problems as they come. This will prevent people from being overwhelmed. The author also insists that it’s always a good idea to prevent things from piling up and becoming forgotten.
9. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
This book is interesting and intriguing in many ways. First, this is one of the most recent contributions to the existing literature on managing time. Compared to other books, the approach of this book is more “spiritual” and even philosophical. The author draws on extensive historical evidence and the ideas of great thinkers.
The author proposes an interesting argument – there is no need to stay forever busy. He also challenges the existing notions about productivity. The book also gives us a useful reminder: life is very short, so we need to spend our precious time on the things that really matter. The author of the books also gives us useful tips on how to manage anxiety over our inability to keep everything under control and stop worrying about the future.
It goes without saying that time management is one of the most important skills that we all need. It is important to remember that the ability to manage time is not just something that our employers want. It is something that we genuinely need. Life is short and we need to remember that. We need to remember the importance of spending our precious time on meaningful pursuits. So, the question of time management does not solely revolve around the issue of how I manage to do all my tasks on time. Time management is also about understanding what is worth doing and spending time on and what is not.
So, if you find it difficult to manage your time and schedule, do not despair. The books that we have discussed in this article will help you manage your time. All of them are written in clear and accessible language and their main arguments will be easy for you to understand. If you are curious about the concept of time management and its importance, please check out our recent articles in our Shiminly blog written by our experts!
Russ Gadzhiev obtained his PhD in history and politics from University of Melbourne. He also holds a master’s degree in International Relations from Moscow State University of International Relations, a top-ranking diplomatic school. Russ is a strong education professional with a history of working in the higher education sector of Australia and effectively communicates with learners from diverse cultural backgrounds. He is enthusiastic about teaching and mentoring, writing, curriculum development, research, information management and public speaking. He is fluent in Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
