Time Management

1: Set Goals

Identify your long-term professional and personal goals to obtain a clearer sense of direction.
Target high-payoff activities in your life.
Plot priorities on a payoff/priority grid.
Break your goals into measurable steps.
Apply the 80/20 principle to determine the right thing on which to concentrate.
Write an effective to-do list.
Try to distinguish between being efficient and being effective.

2: Keep a Time Log

Begin to recognize your specific patterns of wasting time.
Estimate how long it will take you to accomplish certain tasks.
Measure your percentage of time effectiveness on any activity.
Schedule more realisticly.
Avoid those time crunches.

3: Attack Interuptions

Spot the many ways you interrupt yourself.
Deal more effectively with interruptions from clients, customers and other drop-in visitors (including the phone!)
Reduce the length of over-stays from friends and co-workers.
Handle interruptions from your superiors more tactfully.
Implement a quiet hour.

4: Stop Procrastinating Today

Understand why you and other people procrastinate.
State your desired goals clearly in a written form.
Break goals into smaller, less threatening and measurable steps.
Build motivation for projects and get psyched up.
Develop commitment for a job .
Follow through on projects.
Work to natural stopping places for a sense of completion.

5: Have Better Meetings

Make meetings wise investments.
Compute the hidden cost of your meetings.
Find effective alternatives to holding meetings.
Break routines of frequency and order of meetings.
Set time limits on meetings.
Start and end meetings on time.
Keep meetings dynamic.

6: Keep it Simple

Find a two or three comfortable styles of communication.
Establish instant rapport with people.
Communicate without making others feel defensive.
Listen more accurately to others.

(Edited after Peter Turla and Kathleen Hawkins)