Consider your goals and schedule before agreeing to take on additional work. Take a look at your to-do list and consider what you can eliminate or pass on to someone else.

Doing work right the first time may take more time upfront, but errors usually result in time spent making corrections, which takes more time overall.

The first step to physically manage time is to know where it's going now and planning how you're going to spend your time in the future. Schedule your events and set to remind you of events in advance, making your time management easier.

Time management is one of those skills no one teaches you in school but you have to learn. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t organize information well enough to take it in. And it doesn’t matter how skilled you are if procrastination keeps you from getting your work done.

If you’re on a computer all day, keystrokes matter because efficiency matters. “On any given day, an information worker will do a dozen Google searchers,” says Trapani. “How many keystrokes does it take? Can you reduce it to three? You might save 10 seconds, but over time, that builds up.”

Remember that a good time manager actually responds to some things more slowly than a bad time manager would. For example, someone who is doing the highest priority task is probably not answering incoming email while they’re doing it.