10+ Time Management Tools & Techniques You Need to Know

Productive is a great time management tool for professional services companies. It’s biggest benefit is that it includes all of the necessary features for managing billable hours:

But Productive is more than a time management app. It includes useful capabilities for financial management, resource planning, project management, and business reporting, making it a great all-rounder platform.

With Productive, you can go from multiple sheets and PSA tools in your tech stack, to just one.

Let’s explore the key features in more detail:

Productive’s time tracking helps your team find the best way to track their time, but also provides in-depth insights into budget spend, revenue, and profitability.

Whether your teams like to track as they work or do it all at a later period (or even not at all with automation), Productive has it covered:

Another notable thing is that Productive doesn’t include productivity tools such as location or cursor tracking and app usage. Your teams can feel reassured that their privacy is respected.

Project managers can get an easy overview of their team’s entries and power up a range of financial reports. Productive’s Budgeting tracks how time logged affects budgets and profit margins in real time.

Another very useful feature that comes baked into Productive is time off management. Employees can request different categories of time off and have it approved through the platform.

The biggest benefit of this is that you no longer need to manage time off in one solution, then manually enter it into another software, then make sure everyone is notified.

Everything can be done through Productive, the all-in-one time management tool.

If you’re struggling with keeping everyone in sync, Productive’s availability statuses are here to help. Your Productive status will be updated when time off is approved, and can also be synced with Google Calendar and Slack.

Productive helps manage administrative tasks connected with running a professional service business, and one of these tasks is client invoicing.

With Productive, you’ll be able to access billable hours to create invoices more easily. Or, if you’re working with a fixed budget, you can also invoice for your remaining amounts.

Productive supports subsidiaries, multiple currencies, and lets you bill an entire project or just part of it. With the Documents Styler, you can also customize your invoice for a professional and brand-friendly look.

You can also access handy insights, such as:

Finally, with Productive you can forgo your spreadsheets and get all your key business data from a single platform.

Productive is pretty flexible, so you can customize your reports in various ways: group and filter data, choose different visualizations, and even create custom formulas.

There’s also an exhaustive reports library with pre-set templates, if you want something more plug-and-play.

To share your reports, you can create dashboards and add the widgets you need. For example, you can have a dashboard with insights on time management, such as:

Reports can also be scheduled for sending with Productive’s Pulse (to Slack or email).

Productive offers seamless integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR, Breathe, Humaans.io for HRM; and more.

You can also try Productive with a free trial.

Time management tools are apps designed to help individuals and teams plan, prioritize, and track their hours more effectively.

These tools can range from digital calendars, time trackers, to task management and productivity tools.

On the other hand, techniques refer to time management skills and practices you can learn to spend your hours more productively and get the most out of each day. Popular techniques include:

Commonly known as the 80/20 rule, Pareto analysis suggests that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts. How do you apply this to your time management?

You’ll need to identify the activities that bring the most benefits and focus your efforts on them. The activities that bring only 20% of outcomes should be done quickly (instead of perfectly), or if possible, delegated or automated.

It’s the basic principle of work smart, not hard.

Time blocking is a practical technique for improving focus and reducing the daily interruptions. It includes dividing your day into blocks or slots of time for doing specific tasks and activities. Instead of managing a to-do list, you work from these bigger blocks of activities. If you have a lot of tasks, consider task batching, where similar activities are grouped into one block (for example, replying to emails).

The idea is that, once you’ve blocked your time, you dedicate 100% of your attention to this task until you’ve completed the block. Make sure to rest between blocks.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method where you work in focused intervals, followed by a short break. After four cycles, you take a longer break (15–30 minutes).

The idea is to reward short bursts of deep focus with rest, which should ideally prevent burnout and maintain energy throughout the day.

The intervals can also be adjusted according to preference. Some prefer longer bursts of focused work, while others might need more than a 5-minute break. An example is the Flomodoro technique, which suggests the following work/break intervals:

The Eisenhower Matrix is named after the 34th US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoted saying, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important”.

It helps you prioritize tasks with a simple, visual matrix. Tasks are divided into four quadrants and handled accordingly:

While this technique is more applicable to business, it can be adjusted to private-life problems. The biggest benefit is that if work is categorized into these quadrants, you’ll be able to think more clearly and focus your efforts where they’re needed most.

A Zero-Based Calendar is a fairly extreme planning strategy where every hour of the day is planned and accounted for, including lunch breaks or sleep hours.

This method may be effective for periods of intense focus and tight deadlines with a lot of obligations, but it’s overall not sustainable for long periods. Adhering to a tight structure leaves little room for flexibility or unexpected changes, which is necessary for long-term productivity.

The 90/90/1 Rule is a productivity method that suggests you spend the first 90 minutes of your day, for the next 90 days, focused on your single most important project.

This technique is rooted in the principle that discipline requires repetition. By consistently dedicating hours to your highest-value project first thing each day, you’ll be able to start each day on the right foot and create structure in your busy schedule.

The downside is that this technique relies heavily on having flexibility early in the morning, which is not possible for all people.

Finally, the Seinfeld strategy was used by Jerry Seinfeld to keep him motivated on his writing. Find a habit or task you want to do daily and get a physical calendar.

For each day you spent working on your chosen project, mark this day with an X. The idea is that seeing one X will make you want to see one more, then more, then more. Similarly to the 90/90/1 rule, it’s intended to encourage consistency.

However, it’s important to avoid feeling disheartened if a day (or more) are missed.

Here’s a summary of the time management apps reviewed in this article:

Productive stands out as an all-in-one solution, combining time management, invoicing, project management, and financial reporting in a single platform. With its powerful features and seamless integrations, Productive helps teams save time, stay organized, and gain full visibility into their operations.

Book a demo with Productive to learn more.