The Power of an Extra Hour, Part One: Thinking Differently about Time Management and How to Use AI Tools to Help

Most of us spend at least 10 hours per day fulfilling our work and home obligations. If we successfully evolve and adopt new technology to become more efficient, we'll get 10% more out of our day and gain one extra hour to pursue our hobbies, spend more quality time with our friends and families, improve our physical and mental health, or whatever our hearts desire. I'm sure your imagination will run wild dreaming about all you could do with a newfound hour per day!

While this mission might sound lofty, with the right tools and a shift in how we approach our time management, this objective is not only possible but easily achievable. By embracing cutting-edge AI tools and refining our time management techniques, we can streamline our tasks and reclaim valuable minutes lost to inefficiencies. Let’s explore how to achieve this transformation and what it could mean for your personal and professional life.

This article is the first in a new Reclaim Saturday series titled: "The Power of an Extra Hour." Through this series we'll explore practical steps you can take to get 10% more out of your day.

An Overview to Thinking Differently About Time Management

We all occasionally rethink our approach to how we manage our daily tasks, but many of us fall short in affecting meaningful changes in our behaviors. The first step to become more efficient is to understand our areas of inefficiency. Perhaps there are tasks that could be automated or delegated, and thereby free us up to focus on more high-value activities. But we first must identify which tasks to consider delegating to AI tools. Even with this automation, we also need help optimizing our calendars and the orchestration of our activities.

To compliment the power of new AI tools we employ, we should also consider implementing time management techniques such as the Pomodoro method or time blocking to structure our days more effectively. Breaking our days into focused work intervals can help us maintain productivity and avoid distractions, ultimately allowing us to make the most of every minute.

AI Tools That Can Help You More Effectively Manage Your Time

AI Tools Can Identify Your Areas of Inefficiency

RescueTime is an AI tool that works across all of your devices and tracks the time you spend on various applications and websites in the background while you work. It provides detailed reports and analytics, highlighting where your time goes throughout the day and identifies time-wasting activities. By offering insights into your daily habits, RescueTime helps you understand your productivity patterns and make informed decisions to optimize your workflow. Additionally, it features focus sessions and goal-setting capabilities to help you stay on track and improve overall efficiency.

AI Tools Can Strategically Manage Your Calendar

Balancing daily tasks and maintaining productivity can be challenging, but tools like Clockwise, an AI-powered calendar assistant, can help. Clockwise automatically manages your meetings, reschedules low-priority events, and creates dedicated blocks of uninterrupted time for focused work. By integrating seamlessly with Google Calendar, it adapts to your workflow and helps you make the most of your day. This intelligent scheduling can lead to better time management and reduced stress, allowing you to allocate more time to your most meaningful activities. Using AI to optimize your schedule can make a noticeable difference in how you manage your daily responsibilities.

AI Tools Can Optimize Your To-Do List

Instead of manually sorting through your to-do list, use AI-powered task management tool like ClickUp to prioritize tasks based on deadlines, importance, and your workflow. This ensures you tackle the most critical tasks first and reduce the time spent deciding what to do next. Its flexible task management features allow you to create and modify workflows that match your team's processes, enabling you to set priorities, deadlines, and dependencies with ease. ClickUp also integrates seamlessly with a wide array of other applications (including Slack, Trello, Jira, Google Calendar, Zapier, Hubspot, Zendesk, Evernote, and Confluence) to further enhance your productivity.

What's Next?

Using these new tools and techniques to more effectively manage your time is the first step in getting 10% more our of your day. With a strategic mindset and a willingness to adapt, you can transform how you use your time and achieve greater levels of productivity and fulfillment. In our upcoming articles in this series we will share practical advice on how to effectively use AI tools to automate common time-sucking tasks you identified through this step in the process. Finally, we'll explain how AI tools can help you produce better results in tasks where you invest your better optimized time.