8 Time-Savers for Busy Managers

May 14, 2025 ~ By Christine Thompson Are you wasting a good part of your day or week on cumbersome administrative tasks instead of managing business and projects that affect the bottom line? If you want to increase your efficiency and productivity, you don’t need to work harder, just smarter.

Here are eight ways to help you immediately streamline your workflow, reclaim your time, and run a well-oiled machine instead of running in circles.

1. Master the 80/20 rule

Most managers have heard of the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, which suggests that 80 percent of your results should come from 20% of your efforts. But are you putting it into practice? Most don’t.

Here’s how you can begin to achieve those percentages from something actionable:

• Focus on high-impact decisions instead of sweating over details that don’t matter as much. If you can, pass the more minor decisions onto one of your team members. Before you take on a task yourself, ask: what will the net effect be of this task? If it has the potential to affect the bottom line or the direction or success of the company, great! That’s a good place to focus 80 percent your energy.

• Set clear priorities, goals, and objectives. If the team doesn’t have a big picture mapped out, it will be difficult to create an efficient path to success. And that equates to wasted effort and time.

• Use data to guide your decisions in achieving an 80/20 balance. In today’s data-rich world and software to help, you can easily uncover your best opportunities and the effectiveness of the decisions you make.

• Guard your time like it’s gold. Carve out the majority of your available hours for bigger tasks, and allocate just a few hours (or less) a day for the more menial tasks like emails, meetings etc. Your strategic thinking will benefit from dedicated time, and you won’t get caught up in the operational minutiae that can derail you.

• Keep distractions at bay by communicating your ‘new and improved’ schedule to your team.

• Make your calendar your religion. Set alarms and reminders if you must. Structure and commitment help you stay on the tasks that really matter.

2. Automate routine tasks

Repetitive administrative tasks can eat up precious time, leaving you little space for strategic initiatives or deep thinking. In this technology-rich age, automation is the way to go.

• Like it or not, AI is here to stay. Why not use it to your advantage if it can save you time and help you focus where it really matters? Use AI-powered software for scheduling, invoicing, note-taking, and email responses.

• Implement project management platforms like Asana, Active Collab, or Monday.com to track workflows, keep team members informed and reduce unnecessary status updates.

• Automate approvals and any basic processes to cut bottlenecks.
  

The fewer tasks you handle manually, the more time you’ll have for high-value activities.

3. Create a culture of boundaries

If you feel pressure to be constantly available to your employees—burnout is just around the corner, if not already upon you. Set boundaries for yourself and your team so you can support efficiency while protecting the mental well-being of everyone.

• Establish clear and reasonable working hours and avoid responding to emails outside of those working hours. Tell your direct reports you expect the same of them. That will keep everyone on the same page and give everyone the latitude they need to create a good work-life balance.

• Limit excessive meetings. Schedule weekly or bi-monthly check-ins instead of issuing constant updates. And don’t meet just for the sake of meeting. If there is nothing to discuss that week, ask if everyone is OK to cancel.

• Stop the babysitting. Empower your employees while encouraging a culture of self-sufficiency, so they feel competent and confident enough to make decisions independently of you. If you’ve hired the right people and trained them well, that should be easy to accomplish.

  
  

4.  The 2-minute hack

If a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately instead of postponing it. You’ll help prevent small tasks from piling up unnecessarily.

• Respond to quick emails right away instead of letting them accumulate. Alternatively, if you have scheduled time to answer emails, consider responding within your pre-scheduled time instead. Just try to keep your answers concise and decisive.

• Approve simple requests and administrative duties right away without indecision. Belabouring a decision with a small net effect is a waste of your precious time.
  

By minimizing your time on small nagging tasks, you can keep your workload manageable and avoid unnecessary delays to projects.

5. Optimize meetings

It’s a cliché but also the truth: managers spend too much time in meetings that run too long and don’t have clear agendas. To make meetings more effective:

• Hold shorter, more focused meetings. Always have an agenda of the items you need to cover.

• Use a tool like Tactiq, Google Meet or Otter.ai. You can then focus on the meeting while AI documents, tracks, and organizes the information for you.

• Do you actually need a meeting? Use alternatives like quick stand-up huddles.

• Set a strict time limit and stick to it. Having a specific agenda helps move things along. Assign time limits to each item to ensure you don’t spend an unnecessary amount of time on any single item.

• Add up the hourly rate of each employee you invite to attend a meeting (including your own) to help you realize what it costs the company to hold that meeting. When you put it in dollars, does it still make sense?
  

6.  Perfect the art of delegation

Many managers fall into the trap of thinking they are best equipped to handle things themselves. But effective delegation to your direct reports is one of the biggest time-savers you can achieve.

• Even if you lack confidence in an employee to carry out the task at hand, give them a chance to prove themselves, with guidance and training if needed. When you empower them with responsibilities—it not only saves you time in the long run but helps them grow.

• Spend some hours identifying all the tasks that don’t require your direct involvement and assign them to competent team members. Overall, it might be the most productive hours you will ever spend.

• Use tools like task management apps to track assignments without micromanaging.
  

7. Leverage digital tools for seamless collaboration

Modern technology can streamline communication, reduce confusion, and help teams operate more efficiently.

• Use shared digital workspaces (Google Docs, Microsoft Teams) to minimize back-and-forth emails.

• Implement instant messaging such as Slack for quick updates instead of formal meetings.

• Store essential information in cloud-based solutions to reduce unnecessary document searching.
  

8. Hire contractors for services

Lastly, hire contractors to perform tasks in which you are not an expert. Trained professionals in their field will save you time, money, and give you superior results.

Efficiency is well within your reach. By incorporating smart delegation, automation, and structured time management, you will gain hours back in your day without compromising quality. Even if you start applying one or two of these tips, you’ll immediately gain more time and energy to focus on the important types of decisions you were hired for in the first place.

Christine Thompson is a senior freelance writer at her self-owned business, Jellybean Communications.