The Second Most Popular Resolution

By Bill Shepard

After “losing weight”, the second most popular New Year's resolution is to get organized and better manage our time. Here are a few practical tips to help you gain more control over your time and your life and get 2010 off to a great start:

• Plan your next day before you leave the office. Starting your day with your plan in place allows you to control your time before it controls you. This can be as simple as a written to-do list. A good plan is a decision making tool - when something new comes up you can make better choices.
• Defy human nature and vow to tackle the highest priority items as early in the day as possible, but be realistic. If you anticipate it will take one hour to accomplish something, give yourself an extra 15 minutes to account for interruptions.
• Set artificial deadlines for yourself. If a report is due on Friday, plan to work on it on Tuesday or Wednesday. Waiting until Thursday afternoon is setting yourself up for failure…what if an emergency comes up?
• Clean out your e-mail in-box regularly and set up sub-folders for sorting the ones you need to keep.
• Speaking of e-mail, there is no reason to react to every one immediately. Check your e-mail at regularly scheduled times, and if you get lots of them, disable that annoying popup and sound that tells you when a new one has arrived.
• Work from a clean desk. Clear your work area of visual reminders of things you could be doing that distract you.
• Use an organizer, either paper or electronic, with a prioritized daily to-do list to allow you to put paper out of sight but not out of mind.

Of course, you can still resolve to lose weight too!

Bill Shepard, an Insyte Regional Sales Manager, has over 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and managerial develoment. Time management is one of his specialties.