How to Improve Your Time Management Skills

Mastering Time Management: Practical Strategies for Leaders

Feeling overwhelmed, busy but not effective, or struggling to find time for what truly matters? In this episode of Change Agent Leadership, executive coach Jonathan Hankin shares powerful, actionable strategies to revolutionize your approach to time management.

Discover how to:

Conduct a Time Audit – uncover exactly where your time goes and reclaim lost hours.
Prioritize with Purpose – use the Eisenhower Matrix to clearly identify urgent versus important tasks.
Master Time Blocking – structure your day proactively and boost your productivity.
Set Clear Boundaries – confidently say “no” and focus your energy on tasks that truly matter.

Ideal for leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, or anyone feeling stretched thin. Jonathan’s practical tips and relatable insights will help you manage your energy, priorities, and focus better, leading not only to personal growth but also stronger, more productive teams.

00:00 Introduction to Change Agent Leadership
01:24 The Time Trap: Identifying the Problem
01:53 Conducting a Time Audit
04:19 Prioritizing with Purpose
06:24 Mastering Time Blocking
09:28 Setting Boundaries and Saying No
12:32 Final Thoughts and Weekly Challenge

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Transcript

 Welcome to another episode of Change Agent Leadership, focusing on helping you and me become better leaders because when we grow, the people we live and work with also are impacted, along with our employees and those around us. I'm Jonathan Hankin, your change agent coach, and today we're gonna talk about something.

I think we all wrestle with time management. As we become better managers of our time, we have the margin to lead well and focus on the changes we need to drive leadership at our organizations and drive ourself better as leaders. If you're busy, but not effective, overwhelmed, but still working late, this video is for you.

Whether you're leading a team, managing a business, or just trying to keep your head above water, you feel like there's never enough time in the day. But what if the real issue isn't time? It's how we manage our energy, our priorities, and our focus. 

I say that because we can't add more time to the day, and even if we could, I. Well, we just fit more things in. I mean, if I had more time of the day, I'm sure I would just fill it up. 

So let's drive into real solutions that lead to real results. 

In the next few minutes, I'm going to give you some practical strategies, some mind shifts and other hard truths that I believe can help you and I take better control of our time and our leadership.

So remember to like and subscribe for weekly leadership tools and tips. 

So the first one we're gonna talk about is the time trap. For me, this has been a real  challenge where many times the tyranny of the urgent. Overrides my planning skills and my time management abilities, and I just jump into reacting and not leading, which can be a challenge because even though we might be productive in getting things done, we're not doing our best work.

We're not excellent. Here's the truth for me. I believe time management isn't about just doing more. It's actually about doing what matters most on purpose. 

So one way to take control of our time is to truly understand where our time is going. And one way to do that is with the time audit. 

So the first tool is to know exactly how you're using your time by identifying what you're spending your time on.

If you had an employee who was always busy but never seemed to produce results, what would you do? Well, personally, I would sit down with them and discuss how they're spending their time, and it's easy in the moment to say, well, you know, that report took me six hours, or I was in back to back meetings, or whatever.

You want to fill in the blank, but when you have to account for all of your time in a week in a report, that's a different story. The time audit tells the truth, and it's where clarity starts. I do this myself from time to time, not just hold others accountable, but hold myself accountable. I ask some questions like, am I being productive?

Am I in the right meetings? Am I focused on the right goals? 

An action step for this. Tied to the time audit is to track how you spend your time over the next three days. Preferably a week. But if that's overwhelming, just start with three days. And what you do is you capture everything you do. So list out your meetings, your emails, your slack or your team messages, your phone calls, your social media, your breaks, any other key segments that are using your time up throughout the week, and then add the time with associated with those. 

You can do this in whatever electronic  program is convenient for you. You don't have to overthink it if it's too much to do it live, as in ongoing throughout the day. Then schedule 15 minutes. At the end of the day, think back and reflect on these areas and how much time you spent in each one after you listed it out, then reflect.

What tasks actually moved the needle for me? What tasks actually moved things forward? Two, ask what drained my energy? And then three, what can I delegate, delay, or delete? This is really where awareness begins and real change can follow. After you've done this exercise for yourself, you'll see the value of having your employees do this.

It will help you and them better understand not only how they're spending their time, but a chance to have an open discussion. It may be that they have too much work or are focusing on the wrong items, but instead of guessing. Now you'll know a side note. We're not talking about every minute here. We're look, think high level items that you can track on a regular basis.

The second is to prioritize with purpose. Once you've audited your time, now is to prioritize. We often confuse urgent with important, and not everything deserves our time. Especially as a leader, I use a simple question to rephrase my day as though I'm getting going. What's the one thing I can or must do today that will have the greatest impact?

Then I block the time for it. No distractions, no multitasking. Just focus. High leverage work. I'll put an example on the screen. Um, one way to prioritize, and there's many, here's one that I use. I just fold a sheet of paper in half, or I actually have a digital document with this, with four headers in each quadrant, and it's based on the Eisenhower model.

And so in the one quad quadrant is urgent and important. In other words, do it now. Important, not urgent. Schedule it urgent, not important. Delegate it. And neither eliminate it. This doesn't just have to apply to your work. You can use this model to list your personal tasks or things that are just getting outta your control in your life.

A side benefit is that this also helps me strategically think of tasks in terms of future timeframes. In other words, everything is not tyranny of the urgent. Today. I can actually block it out into these four quadrants. So an action step. Each morning, list out your top tasks in these four categories. Use it to guide your decisions throughout the day.

Try this for a week and find a rhythm and a system to track this that works for you. Start with this. Before jumping into an email or your list of emails for the day, ask yourself, am I doing something urgent or something important? If you apply this daily, you'll stop spending energy on things that don't move you or your team forward.

Over time, I believe you'll start shifting from focusing on what's screaming the loudest to what truly matters the most. 

So, so far we've audited our time and we've prioritized with purpose. So let's get tactical time blocking. The third area here is time blocking. I think it's really a superpower. This is change. This has been a game changer for me. Um, I designed my today by blocking time for what matters most, and here's how I structure it.

Morning blocks. So this is, I do this for strategic work. For me, this is my best time for thinking in the, throughout the day I'm most alert, so I reserve it for high focus, high impact tasks, and so I block strategically those times on my calendar, and then I do a midday block. So that's usually ideally from 10 to two o'clock for me, and that's for meetings.

So I've already taken care of my priorities so I can give my meetings full attention. I'm not distracted. I know what's happening. And then my afternoon blocks, so this is for administration and email. I get a lot of emails each day. I'm sure you do too. So I scan for urgent ones early in the morning, but then most of them, I just wait until after 2:00 PM people know from my, my schedule.

If you email me between 10 and two, I probably haven't seen it. If, if it's a code red people know to text me or to, uh, call me or come visit me If it's a code red, but I'm not gonna get to my email later in the day. And then the last part is buffer blocks. And so twice a week I just buffer time out, usually an hour or two.

Um, usually midday for overview, reflection or catching up on my someday list. And again, you can, you can block these out. Maybe you only do time blocking for morning tasks, specifically one or two days 'cause you're focused and you have meetings other days. Again, this isn't a, uh, exact science, but time blocking can really help you set time apart and know that you won't be interrupted during those times.

So for me, I have a list of things that I wanna work on that I just don't have time normally to do. So whenever a buffer comes available and there's nothing scheduled, instead of having to think of, oh, what should I focus on? I have a priority list that I can already use. I'm tied to my Eisenhower metrics that I can go through.

So here's the key. Honor your calendar like you would honor a meeting with your CEO. If you do that, you will find time will open up. So an action step, start time blocking. Immediately. I would recommend do one hour for your most important tasks, 30 minutes for email, triage, a block, one, a section for deep work, whatever that timeframe is, and then a small buffer zone.

Just start small. I. If you  📍 are a visual person, maybe you want to try this. I've worked with clients that they're  📍 more visual , so they do color code, their calendar by energy type. So they might have a time block for creativity for their thinking, a time block for collaboration, a time block for administration work.

So again, I. You'll start to see patterns and how your week flows. The goal here is not one size fits all, but try a method that works for you. Try time blocking to stay proactive and not reactive, and I really do believe it will reduce decision fatigue and keeps your mental energy sharp. But certainly not, but not least.

There's a fourth one here as well, and that is set boundaries and say no. So number four is saying no when necessary. Uh, question, what is the most powerful time and management skill you have? I think it's saying no with kindness and clarity, of course. Every yes to something is a no to something else, often to your health or to your family.

As a leader, your boundaries set the tone. If you're always saying yes, never unplugging and constantly reacting, you're not modeling healthy leadership. I've been guilty this many times and I continue to struggle with saying no, but I, I'm getting better at it. It. Here's one of my boundaries. You need to create your own.

So here's one of mine. If there's no agenda and no timeframe for a meeting, I ask. If it's not clear, why do I need to be here? I mean, why should I be in the room now if the president schedules a meeting, I'm not gonna ask him. I'm going to go, but I'm gonna ask what the agenda is. Why do I do this? I have sat through so many meetings and I've been in the room, I've looked around, I've counted the people and how much I think their salary is, and the thousands of dollars that have been spent in one hour, two hour meetings, and nothing has happened.

I'm just like, do we all agree that. If we didn't make $2,500 in this hour or $3,000 in this hour, like what's going on? So honor your time, block it out. Another boundary is when someone's in a panic and they're making me feel like I should be in panic with them. I mean, have you ever felt that? Well, I stop them and ask some questions.

When is this due? So do some clarifying questions. When is this due? When did you find out about it? What exactly do you need from me? And if the answers are, it's due this week, I found out a month ago and I just need help, then I usually schedule a meeting and I'm like, look, I'll give you some questions to consider.

But if that's something I should even be involved in, I'm not quite sure. Because for me, just because it's an emergency for someone doesn't mean I have to go into emergency mode myself maybe. But usually that's not the case. So don't get sucked into other people's failure to plan well. So here's an action step for saying no.

Think strategically. When asked to do something before saying yes to a task or a meeting, ask one. Is it part of my job or of my leadership priorities? If not, ask for clarification. Two, what's the time commitment? Knowing this is critical to determine if it's even possible, if it's even something I should be involved in.

And then three, how does this support what I'm already working on? Is it duplicate or unrelated work? And will it even add value to what I'm really doing? So try this. Create a decision checklist. Use it when requests come in, that 30 seconds of reflection might save you hours. 

Boundaries are not selfish. They're actually leadership tools, and when you lead with intention, your team will do the same. 

Final thoughts. Lead yourself first. Here's the big picture. If you can't manage your time, you can't lead others Well, time management is about self-leadership. Practice self-leadership by using tools that will help you manage and prioritize your time.

So. Are you modeling What matters most? Are you making space for vision, rest, and reflection? Are you spending your minutes and hours in alignment with your values? If not, now is the perfect time to start. So here's the challenge for you this week. One, audit your time. Two, identify what matters most. Three block time for it, and four, say no to the rest.

Start small. Be consistent. Don't chase perfection. Chase intention. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please like and subscribe and share with someone who would benefit from this. I'm Jonathan Hankin, your change agent, coach. Keep questioning, keep growing and keep leading change. See you next time.