The Single Most Effective Time-Management Technique EVER

People are spending literally billions of dollars every year on time management books, tapes, software, and doo-dads. Folks seem to think that if you spend the money on these items, you will suddenly become a time-management whiz - you'll immediately more productive, and countless hours of free time will appear out of nowhere. Amazingly, time-management gurus encourage this belief, indicating that with "no effort," their products will make you a more effective person. This is like a diet and exercise guru guaranteeing you immediate results for doing absolutely nothing. No one believes them. We all know that in order to get fit and lose weight, we need to watch our diets and exercise regularly. Magic diet pills are a joke, and so are magic time-management products. Fortunately, I'm willing to let you in on the single greatest time-management technique ever created. This technique is used by millions with some level of success, and one form or another is in use in every Fortune 500 company out there. The technique? The day planner. Don't laugh - day planners, used well, are incredibly effective road-maps for busy people, both executives and rank-and-file workers. The regular correct use of a day planner can absolutely transform the effectiveness level of your time and your work. The reason so few people are willing to trumpet this effectiveness is that they're DOING IT WRONG. Here's a primer.

Prioritize - A day planner shouldn't just be a list of things that you hope to get done during the day. Things come up, and some items on the list may not be completed. By prioritizing the items on your planner by importance, you can ensure that the most important items get done. Any that get missed get moved up to the next day. For this reason, prioritization should be the first thing you do every day - that way, missed items from yesterday can be re-evaluated based on the new time-line. They may move up the list, they may not, but daily prioritization will ensure that you truly consider each item every day, and keeps things from falling through the cracks.

Limit - When your day planner begins to resemble a shopping list, things have gotten out of hand. The most effective folks out there know how to limit their tasks, and in so doing, limit the size of their day planner. Productivity experts suggest including only two or three "must-do" items on your schedule for any given days. It's fine to be optimistic with the less-urgent items - those that can be put off if necessary. Try to limit your "must-do" items as much as possible, and give yourself time to do them well. The second part of limiting your planner is elimination. If you can possibly eliminate a regular part of your job, either through finding a better way, automation, or just letting it slide, do so immediately. I used to send an end-of-week report to my supervisor regarding the status of my program. She'd asked me to do so, at a point when my work was especially important to the overall progress of the organization. After the first three months, I stopped receiving feedback on these reports, and other programming had taken the lead in the organization. I approached my supervisor, asking about my reports, and she admitted to me that she hadn't been reading them. She started to apologize, and to promise me that she'd look at them in the future - instead, I proposed that we eliminate the report completely, freeing her from looking at them, and freeing me from preparing them. I assured her that I'd make any information she needed available immediately, but that the current reporting was serving neither of us. She agreed, and I instantly gained two hours a week. Limit your work whenever possible.

Refer - Writing it all down and prioritizing your work doesn't do a thing for you if you don't look at it. Every time you complete a task from your planner, your first action should be to cross it out and refer to the list for your next item.

Update - If something comes up, forcing you to "abandon your plan," don't do it! Sure, you need to do the urgent tasks, but they need to be ADDED TO your list, and the list needs to be reprioritized. Tasks requiring immediate attention should never be an excuse to abandon your planner.

Follow-through - If it's on the list, get it done. The items on the list are absolutely the tasks that you need to be working on. If you find yourself doing things not represented on your planner, think for a moment - is this task necessary? If so, why isn't it in my day planner? Can I add it to the planner later in the week? Later in the month? Can I skip it entirely? It may take a little time to get used to thinking this way, but you'll quickly learn to avoid unproductive work.

Review - Just as you start your day with the planner, so should you end with it. Look at your list, see what was finished, what may have been missed, and move unfinished work to tomorrow.

It doesn't matter what sort of planner you use, though I recommend a physical planner - they're portable, and the act of writing things down helps to commit them to memory. I use a planner from Franklin-Covey, and I like their methods very much. That said, anything that works for you, from a leather-bound planner to a sheet of notebook paper will do. The correct and daily use of a day planner will improve your time-management skills a hundred fold, and should be your very first stop toward more effective work styles.