Some best practices and tools on managing time

Time management is always a pain!  Here are some excellent tips from various people on how they do their work.  Ultimately, prioritizing and doing the work is the most important differentiator.

I write down my to-do list for the week under different client headings. I “star” the hot items that absolutely must be done and then highlight those that are hot for that specific day. By midday, if I have not worked through most of those that are highlighted, I circle the ones that I must get done by day’s end. While it may seem anal, I have to say it works. I have a few co-workers that have adopted my legal-pad “bible.”  (Maria Reitan, MN)

Here is another way to prioritize:

I write lists of “must haves” and “let gos.” That way I can see what has to be done and what I can let go of. If I didn’t write it down, I couldn’t prioritize. (Jennifer Skipper, WA)

And here are some more tips

1. club all similar activities so that u don’t waste time in re-focusing. eg: do all phone calls at once.
2.Plan your list of to-do week on sunday, but allow some buffer for distractions
3. prioritize, prioritize, prioritize–spend some time in this activity to avoid losing sense of purpose, there by wasting your valuable time on non value-add activities.
4. decide what is important for your life (work family, entertainment) and apportion your time to all these activities.

What tools can you use?

Scrybe:  Kick-ass app but needs to have better user interaction.
Remember the Milk (RTM): Integrates excellently with Google specifically Gmail if you use the firefox
MS Outlook – your regular outlook
Jott: Create to-do’s on the go and also setting up reminders – just by calling a number. In fact Jott can add your appointments and tasks to Remember the Milk to-dos and also to your Google Calendar! (Great alternative).  You could even post written blogs by just calling!!  Is it cool or what?