Five Ways We Could Manage Our Time Better in 2025

Not letting distractions and interruptions destroy our productivity

Distractions and interruptions are lethal to time management. That’s because they force us to context switch, which is the mental process of shifting our attention and focus from one task to another. According to research by a University of California, Irvine professor, we may need up to 23 minutes to regain or focus on a task after a distraction. In other words, every time we stop writing a brief or a memo to check some emails that just came in or chat with a colleague, we could lose 23 minutes’ worth of productive time. A few interruptions throughout your workday could lead to you wasting an hour or two of potentially productive time.

It sounds elementary, but a key aspect of effective time management is minimizing or eliminating distractions and interruptions. We all fall prey to them, but we all could do a better job of preventing them from interrupting our work flow. For example, putting off checking emails and social media when we are in the middle of focused work until the top of the hour could cause our productivity to skyrocket.

Eating live frogs (In other words, tackling our hardest tasks first)

Though often attributed to Mark Twain, he apparently never said that if you ate a live frog each morning you would go through each day knowing you had completed the worst task you would have to complete that day. But whoever came up with that quote identified another effective time management strategy: tackling our hardest tasks first.

Starting the day by tackling our most arduous tasks may seem counterintuitive, but it can increase our productivity. Prioritizing our hardest tasks will give us the opportunity to work on them when we are fresher, which should help us complete them efficiently. Completing them first will also give us a sense of relief that they’re completed, compared to the dread we may feel if we procrastinate and work on those tasks at night and on weekends. That sense of relief and accomplishment could also provide a productivity boost that lasts throughout the day.

Using our calendar for more than just a list of upcoming appointments

One of the recurring problems attorneys have with time management is that multiple deadlines seem to creep up on us, leading to stress and frantic days spent trying to wrap up multiple court filings or client memos that need to go out the next day. This stress and franticness may be ratcheted up even higher when a genuine emergency requires us to rearrange the tasks we are working on. The solution to this problem is as close as our trusty calendar.

Instead of using our calendar only as a list of upcoming appointments, we can add our matter-related deadlines to it. Even better, we could work with colleagues to create a shared calendar for all client matters so individual attorneys and staff could subscribe to them and have access to the most up-to-date calendar entries. When regularly updated with client deadlines, our calendar will allow us to see at a glance the various deadlines we have coming up, which should allow us to better prioritize the work we need to do each day.

Trying time blocking

That being said, even when our calendar has upcoming deadlines, it will not tell us when we will need to work on the tasks related to those deadlines. We will still need to fill in the blanks and figure out when we will have time to do so. But with time blocking, that concern becomes moot.

Time blocking is exactly what it sounds like: blocking out time on our calendar for the tasks we want to or need to accomplish. Just like we would when putting a client meeting or a court hearing on our calendar, we would create calendar events of varying lengths for various tasks we plan to work on.

Time blocking makes the intangible tangible. Instead of figuring out when to spend 90 minutes working on a task, you give yourself a date and time to do so. Because you have set it up as an appointment, you will be less likely to find something else to do at that time, provided no emergency has sprung up. In addition, if you expect a task to take three hours, time blocking allows you to see at a glance whether you have mapped out enough time on your calendar to complete a task based on that expectation.

Taking a darn break

Time management is not only about wringing out every possibly productive second of our day. It is also about efficiency. The more efficiently we complete our tasks, the more tasks we will complete, the more productive we will be, and the more time we will free up for additional tasks.

Sometimes, we need to slow down to go fast. Taking breaks of varying lengths can make us more efficient in the long run. Breaks help us replenish our mental and physical energy levels, increase our energy and productivity, and sharpen our focus. The wonderful thing about breaks is that they come in all shapes and sizes.

Working from home? We can take our dog—or ourselves—for a walk.

In a high-rise building? We can walk a lap or two around the floor our office is on, or take the elevator to the lobby and walk a lap outside around our building.

Remember, scrolling social media or checking our personal email account(s) will not be as refreshing as walking outside, listening to music, or flipping through a glossy magazine in our office. The more screen-free our break is, the more refreshed it will make us.

Here’s to better time management in 2025

The calendar flipping from 2024 to 2025 is a convenient time for us to make changes in our lives. One of my goals for 2025 is improving my time management. If you plan on embarking on a similar quest for improving your time management skills in 2025, I hope the above tips help you get off to a flying start.

Zach Agate is a workers’ compensation attorney at Pond Lehocky Giordano LLP, the largest workers’ compensation and social security disability law firm in Pennsylvania, and one of the largest in the U.S. He can be reached at zagate@pondlehocky.com.

Reprinted with permission from the January 2, 2025 edition of The Legal Intelligencer © 2025 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com.