As a company made up of some of the brightest minds in the business, we all have a lot to learn from – and teach to – each other. In this series, FCGers will showcase their biggest, baddest tools, tips, and tricks to teach our readers something that just might make their work more efficient and their days a little easier. Because as leaders in the industry, our goal is to constantly be learning and improving. First up: Mansi S, Associate Software Engineer, on all things time management.

Your tool, tip, or trick: I want to share some tips on time management and overall life wellness, including a few specific tools, that have helped me be more productive in my day-to-day work.

Why time management?
In college, I felt like I wasted a lot of time on nonsense stuff like Netflix and TV. Being a Computer Science major, there were some major projects which can take up time and when I found myself pulling more all-nighters or just late nights (when I already had stuff to do early morning) than my body liked, I realized that it was time for a change.

Ok, walk us through it!
Here are my most helpful (and most personally used) tips for time management and productivity:

• Always take care of your MITs (Most Important Things) in the morning. I like to track these using a tool called Trello. I was first introduced to it at one of my earlier internships and then saw other kids in school also using it to track personal progress on whatever they wanted to achieve. Blocking off time in your calendar is another great thing to do. You have to mark and treat it like an appointment. If it’s a particularly important or urgent task, I also like to just switch my phone to airplane mode and send an automatic text message when someone tries to call me.
• Understand and follow the 80/20 rule (aka Pareto’s Principle). It says that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts put in. For example, fixing one or two big-ticket, higher-impact bugs in my applications does more to make the application run smoothly than trying to take care of a bunch of little changes that might not have that great of an immediate impact on the overall look and feel of the program. So, my advice is to take a look at your day-to-day schedule and pick out a few of the most important tasks that will give you the biggest results instead of filling in time doing a series of less important, less complex tasks first.
• Different types of tasks demand different types of thinking so batch similar tasks together to cut the time you have to spend mentally switching gears. That will save some brain power – and we only have so much of it for a day before we get tired and thus unproductive! When I was in school, I would block off my free/study time on certain days and only complete tasks associated with one particular class at a time. Now that I manage and work on two applications at FCG, I try (as long as the circumstances dictate) to work on one application and finish all needed bug fixing before moving on. Daily to-do lists help with this. When everything you want to get done in the day is written down in one place, it’s easier to see what can be grouped together.
• Telecommute if possible. Many online articles have mentioned that, on average, Americans have a commute of about 26 – 30 minutes. If we add the time that it takes to get ready on top that, that easily adds about an extra hour to our workday. Any day or days in the week you can telecommute will save you time that you can shave off from other days of the week when you don’t have the privilege of working from home.

If you want to learn more about time management, Mansi suggests checking out self-help books on time management, such as “The Productivity Project,” “15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management,” “Getting Things Done,” and “I Know How She Does It.”

Looking for more tools, tips, and tricks to improve your day-to-day life? Keep an eye on the Freedom Consulting Group Blog for more from the Freedom Youniversity series. While you’re at it, check out some of our other blogs to get to know our staff, find out about the events we’re attending and projects we’re working on, and learn what we’re all about!