If you're trying to get more done every day, time management is critical. Losing track of time or wasting precious hours on unimportant tasks is a big problem.

Whether you're on a strict time management system like Pomodoro or just want to remind yourself how much time has passed, your Mac has a built-in option that can help. It can audibly announce the time at specified intervals.

To enable this, first open System Preferences from your Dock, or by clicking Apple > System Preferences in the menu bar. Click the Date & Time entry.

Here, you'll see an option near the bottom labeled Announce the time. Check the box, then you can select which interval for the time announcement. The default is On the hour, but you can also select every half hour or every 15 minutes.

To get fancy, you can also customize the time announcement voice. Click the Customize Voice button and you can change a few options. Use System Voice is the default, but you can select from a few other voice, both male and female. Select Customize from the voice drop-down box for even more options.

After you pick your favorite voice, you can change the speed of speech and set a custom volume. Click Play to hear a brief sample of your current settings. When you're happy, click OK, and you're all set. Your Mac will now announce the time to you on the interval you've specified.

Regularly hearing what time it is will help you keep track of how much time you're spending on various tasks, even if you forget to check the clock yourself. Give this a try and see if it works for you! For more helpful tools hiding in your Mac, check out useful utilities you've probably never used.

Do you like hearing regular time announcements while you're working? Share your Mac productivity secrets with us below in the comments!