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Manage your Time and Seize your Success

"Time is Money, so manage it" by Karen Salmansohnby
AM NY, Monday, April 23, 2007.

Good time management is a characteristic shared among all successful people. And this skill can be acquired with a little discipline.

1. Don't leave your e-mail sitting in your inbox. Only touch e-mails once, then take action as soon as you read it. Move it to your to-do list, print it out, or move it to your calendar.

2. Admit multitasking decreases productivity. Do only one action at a time.

3. Make a list of the day's tasks, and do the most important task for that day first. Organize the list the night before so you know what to expect tomorrow.

4. Check your e-mails on a schedule, not each time that e-mail sign appears on the bottom right corner of your desktop. Relax and remember: people want predictable responses - not instantaneous.

5. Keep Web site addresses organized using bookmark and favorite functions.

6. Recognize your highest-level productivity time and manage your schedule so you do your most important work at during that time.

7. Save keystrokes to save time. How many key strokes does it take you to Google search? Can you reduce it to three? You might save 10 seconds, but over time, that adds up.

8. Make it easy to get started on an overwhelming project by breaking it into manageable bits.

9. Organize your to-do list every day. Some people like writing the list out by hand. Others prefer using software which slices and dices their to-do list into manageeable, relevant chunks.

10. Dare to be slow. Remember that someone who is doing the highest priority task is probably not answering incoming e-mails while they're doing it. Consider what's most important and invest intellect - not speed - to completing the task.