1. Organize your space. My office is my car and the left side of the sofa. I try to have everything that I need at my fingertips. It means preparing the area but it saves a ton of time down the road. I have pens, paper, stapler, readers, calculator etc right there on the little table beside the sofa. Otherwise I am constantly jumping up and looking for something. The car is the same way. Everything I need at my fingertips.
2. Get prepared the night before: Before you head to bed each night look at tomorrows schedule and plan the entire day. What time you will walk out the door, what materials will you need. Put them all together in the same place everyday so you don't run around at the last minute gathering up what you need. This is a great time management strategy.
3. Have a place for everything and everything in it's place. We all spend too much time looking for things. If you have a place for your keys, a place for your cell phone and put them there every time you walk in the house you will not waste time searching for them. This also means putting things back where they belong. I have baskets everywhere for everything. I'm a real basket case. A basket for vitamins. Just grab the basket. I have a basket for the mail. Opened or unopened, the mail goes in the basket. Baskets and bins are life savers.
4. Make a "to do" list. This gives you direction plus it is great fun scratching things off the list once completed. In the evening when you are planning the next day use today's list to start tomorrow's. Sometimes there are things on my list that seem to be transferred everyday until I finally decide they are unnecessary.
5. Limit things that occupy too much time. Give yourself only 20 minutes on Facebook or 1 hour only of TV.
6. Multi task. The car should either be a rolling university or a good time to return phone calls. (no texting and driving.) I have a list of calls to return and a stack of CD's just in case I get through all the calls or get stuck in traffic. I frequently have several hours of driving per day and every minute is filled. I sing in the choir at church and I always have a practice tape to sing along with on a long drive... or a Dale Calvert CD to educate me on recruiting.
7. Last but not least have a filing system. Invest in the necessary items to have things filed. Stacks of important things are bad... very bad. Things will get lost. Things that make you stress out. This ounce of prevention is definitely worth the pound of cure. When the mail comes in either pay it, trash it or file it. Don't be caught opening the same letter over and over and trying to decide what to do with it. Touch the mail once.
These are just a few of the things that help me with organization and time management. If even one of these help then you have improved your time management. And you may have heard... time is valuable, spend it wisely.
