The most successful people in the world guard their time above all other assets. Mark Zuckerberg wears the same clothes every day to save mental energy, while IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad schedules his entire day in ten-minute blocks to ensure he never wastes a minute.
But what about you? What if you could get more done in less time? What would you do with all those extra hours? This is the power of mastering time management — a skill that makes organizations more efficient and profitable while fostering a calm work environment.
Good time management skills to master (or hire for) in 2025
No matter where or how you work, you must master time management strategies.
These hold the key to making more money in less time and with less stress. Imagine being able to set clear goals, beat procrastination, consistently meet deadlines with ease, and deeply enjoy your free time feeling fulfilled across both your personal and professional life.
Developing this skill is more than just a lifestyle hack; you won’t be able to conquer a competitive environment without it. Knowledge workers believe just 54% of their work is high-impact.
That means they spend 46% of their time on busy work rather than making any real waves. Mastering time management immediately tilts the scales, helping you drive more impact in less time — a key skill for any organization leader.
Organization
Do you ever feel lost and overwhelmed as you flick between Excel sheets, a software database, and your emails? What about losing track of what project is at what stage or mixing up your deadlines? It can feel like driving on a gravely overgrown road — lots of fuel for not much mileage.
Systemizing your approach to work is like repaving the road. It will build routine into your workflow and lower cognitive load. This kind of mental organization will make you more efficient (and effective!) over time.
Physical organization also plays a role in your ability to concentrate. Our brains hate cluttered spaces—constant visual disorganization literally drains our cognitive resources.
Top tip:
Take five minutes at the end of every work day to declutter your desk and computer desktop.
Prioritization
Even the most well-paved road is useless if it takes you in the wrong direction. Organization without prioritization will just keep you aesthetically busy without leaving any real impact. We want to make a difference. And for that, we need to know what important tasks need our immediate attention.
There are lots of frameworks you can use to get your priorities in order. The Covey Matrix is a great place to start if you want to get a sense of what is urgent vs non-urgent and important vs non-important. Getting a better grip on this improves decision-making and delegation and makes you more likely to hit long-term goals.
Top tip:
Check out our in-depth article on how to use the Covey Matrix to squeeze more out of your days!
Goal setting
Setting clear, achievable goals is a great way to build a roadmap from where you are to where you want to be. By breaking down big visions into manageable milestones, you’ll build momentum and motivation right into your daily work life.
Make sure the goals you set are dependent on variables you can control, not external outcomes. For example, if you’re a freelancer who wants to grow their business’s social media presence, you cannot control how many followers you’ll get in the next 3 months. But you can control how often you’ll show up. “I will post 5 times per week” is a much better goal than “I will get 10,000 followers in 90 days.”
The head of a software company might have different types of goals that span different responsibilities. For instance, they might be hiring, leading a tech project, and dealing with business admin all at once. Keeping these goals measurable and time-bound ensures they don’t spiral into a rabbit hole on any of these (which can be easy to do), but rather keep moving forward at pace.
Top tip:
Setting SMART goals will keep you accountable. Put your goals somewhere you can see them on a daily basis and change their position every month. Otherwise, you’ll just stop noticing them after a while.
Task management
Few things are as satisfying as ticking off a to-do list. Once you know your high-priority items, you can start effectively managing the different associated tasks. Project management apps, such as Toggl Plan, can help with planning, tracking, and completing tasks efficiently.
Keeping on top of tasks is especially important for cross-functional projects that involve other team members. Poor time management can bottleneck a whole project needlessly, kind of like when traffic forms out of nowhere (seriously, that’s a thing!).
Top tip:
Do your most challenging task first thing in the morning. You’ll feel super accomplished regardless of how the rest of the day pans out.
Communication
What’s a junction without a traffic light? The same as a project without good communication — absolute chaos.
Clear, concise communication is what allows everything else to flow. Without it, teamwork and collaboration take a hit, and misunderstandings and stress levels rise.
Communication skills are especially important in remote teams, where it isn’t always possible to hop on a call and iron things out, especially if you’re spread out over 18 time zones like we are at Toggl!
That’s why we came up with a few basic Slack communication rules for our team. For example, if you’re asking for input or feedback on something, you must provide all the context needed to understand it in your message — that means links, tables, or documents.
We also recognize different people prefer different communication styles. This could be as simple as personal preference, or it could vary based on culture or even neurodivergence.
Top tip:
Improving communication without a specific goal can be a challenge. Try to practice focused skills like summarizing action points concisely or delegating tasks in a structured message.
Delegation
All the time-blocking in the world won’t give you more than 24h in a day. There comes a point—whether for better productivity or your own sanity—that you’ll need to delegate tasks. Knowing how to assign tasks to the right people is a skill in itself.
Doing so is important as it optimizes resources and time, leading to more overall profitability. It also is one of the most important time management techniques as it protects against burnout. By focusing only on priority tasks and delegating the rest, you’re able to keep dreaming—building out the vision and the team to make it happen, rather than worrying about multitasking across low-value activities.
Top tip:
Start delegating small tasks to build mutual trust and grow over time. Be sure to match up the needed skills for a task with the individual’s natural strengths.
Problem-solving
Problem-solving is one of the top 10 most desirable power skills right now. Good problem-solvers are an asset to any organization, generating creative solutions, implementing effective fixes, and ultimately improving processes.
Their ability to quickly identify issues and develop solutions saves time and prevents minor issues from escalating. Again, this is so important in a remote work setting, where it’s especially easy to misread someone’s intentions over written communication or let small issues get big for no reason.
Top tip:
A little exercise to build problem-solving skills is to brainstorm five solutions to a problem instead of going with the first one that comes to mind. This will help you see things from different angles and will spark creativity.
Stress management
When you’re stressed, you can’t manage your time correctly, which just stresses you more. So how do we get out of this vicious circle?
Believe it or not, stress management is deeply tied to organizational and time management skills. When we’re organized, prioritize our tasks, and manage our schedules, we reduce the chaos that often leads to stress. Organizing tasks, setting realistic deadlines, and planning breaks maintains focus, prevents overwhelm, and reduces the risk of burnout.
To manage stress, try time-blocking intense work sessions — a time free of emails and other notifications or distractions. Build breaks into your day to keep momentum up. Lastly, it’s a good idea to channel excess stress into a workout or daily walks to ground yourself.
Top tip:
Set boundaries to prevent over-commitment. It’s better to be at 80% every day than at 110% for two months before burning out.
Setting boundaries
This last skill doesn’t come naturally to many. But like anything, with intentional practice, it will get easier and better. The hard fact is you’ll never have the spaciousness you crave in your personal life if you don’t learn how to say ‘no’ to non-urgent tasks.
Self-discipline to get more done is one thing, but recognizing when you’re at your limit is another.
Being able to confidently communicate when you reach that point is also important, as it will help you maintain your commitments to those who are counting on you. It’s unfair to your employees or teammates to take on more than you can handle because they’re indirectly taking a hit they didn’t consent to.
Top tip:
Communicate your limits clearly and early. Approach the conversation with proposed solutions or alternative options rather than simply saying, “I can’t do it.”
Why are time management and organizational skills important?
Improved time management directly impacts a company’s bottom line by as much as a 61% increase in revenue. But benefits run deeper than just dollar signs. With effective time management also comes…
🚀 Increased productivity
Time management skills help employees prioritize tasks and work more efficiently. By allocating time effectively, employees can focus on high-impact tasks, reduce wasted hours, and maximize output. This leads to a greater sense of accomplishment and enhances productivity without unnecessary stress or strain.
🔋 Enhanced job satisfaction
64% of workers have struggled with lacking enough time and energy to complete all their work in a day. By getting a better handle on their workload through time management, stress decreases, and work-life balance improves. This improves morale at work and reduces burnout, leading to an overall improvement in well-being.
⚙️ Improved team dynamics
Proper time management across the board makes a team work like a well-oiled machine. It means fewer delays, clearer communication, and smoother collaboration. Shared understanding and respect for deadlines strengthens trust and cooperation, making teamwork more enjoyable and productive.
Plus, collaboration boosts workplace performance. According to a Stanford study, employees who collaborated were 64% more likely to stay on-task than those who didn’t. They also experienced less fatigue, were more engaged, and had better results than their solitary peers.
🪜 Career advancement
Mastering time management skills is also a stepping stone for career advancement. Employers highly value employees who can manage tasks independently, meet deadlines, and optimize productivity.
That’s why time management is one of the top 10 most desirable soft skills, according to Forbes.
Mastering time management will no doubt make you stand out from your peers if you’re aiming to grow within your organization.
Why time management tools are such an important part of time management strategies
Time management tools come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. A simple to-do list on paper, a full-fledged software app, intangible frameworks, or techniques like Pomodoro…the list goes on. Different approaches will work for different people, but one thing they all have in common is you get better at them the more you practice.
Technology can automate repetitive tasks, simplify your workflow, and provide reminders for tasks or deadlines that might otherwise slip through the cracks. Some employee time tracking software even pulls usage data to offer insights into work patterns and suggestions to improve efficiency. Here are some suggestions:
- Todoist: A great alternative for pen and paper to-do lists
- Trello or Asana: For project management
- Toggl Track: Time tracking tool to see where you’re spending time on tasks and where you can improve efficiency.
Prioritize tasks with Toggl Track
Toggl Track is an intuitive, easy-to-use time tracker that accounts for every moment. It’s a great accountability tool to combat procrastination and get real about how you can improve your work days. It boasts some great time management features that will help you stay focused, like:
- Setting time tracking/management goals for yourself or for your employees
- Google Calendar and Outlook integration to block and track time spent on meetings and other scheduled events
- Seeing your tracked time in a calendar which helps you understand how you spend time in a visual way
For example, if Toggl Track reveals you’re checking your email inbox every 30 minutes, perhaps you should time-block two hours per day to dedicate to emails. This will prevent you from switching to that tab during the workday because you know you have time set aside for it later, enabling you to find flow faster in other tasks.
Sign up for a free account and try it for yourself!
Julia is a freelance writer and fierce remote work advocate. While traveling full-time, she writes about the intersection of technology and productivity, the future of work, and more. Outside work, you can find her hiking, dancing, or reading in a coffee shop.
