Have you ever really wondered just how much time in your work day is non-productive or simply busy time? In order to manage your time better you have to become a master planner of your time. This allows us to be more proactive than reactive in our work day. What are some of the ways that let our productivity fall apart during our work day? Let me site some for you. How about the good ole “Got a minute” meetings that crop up in work environments where it is acceptable for anyone to interrupt anybody at any time? Do you have a pop-up email notifier? If you do, do you see the email subject and click on it? How about your Smart Phone or Blackberry notifications, does your hip vibrate every time you get an SMS, Chat, Email, Call or Voice Mail? For you MAC users, are you using Growl, or some other global notifier? The list can go on and on. The point is all of these so called conveniences are causing us to become reactive in our work day which takes away from our ability to become proactive. If you are more reactive than proactive, you should give these six easy steps a try. It won’t be easy, and you will have to promise yourself that you are going to stick to your guns come hell or high water!

1. Touch It Once - Here is an example - You get to your workspace and you immediately realize that there are a couple of items on your desk that require some attention. You examine the first item and determine that it is going to take more time than you have at the moment so you back-burner it. Then you begin to address the second item, just as you are beginning to get some focus on it, the phone rings and of course being reactive, you answer it. Yep, you guessed it, there is a 3-alarm fire that needs to be put out and you are the Fire Chief so your are pulled in another direction for a good 15-20 minutes, as you are in the middle of hosing down the fire, an email comes in, and low and behold there you go again, off in another direction for another 10-15 minutes. An so on, and so on.So “Touch It Once”, if you determine that you don’t have the time to deal with it at the moment, then add it to a list of things that you will address at another time and file it, throw it away or drag it to another folder and you’ve touched it once, if you determine that you can deal with it, then do it and then file it, trash it, or drag it to another folder, either way you have implemented the “Touch It Once” rule.Do you realize that if you only spend a mere 15 minutes per work day revisiting your tasks instead of implementing the “Touch It Once” rule, you will total a whopping 97 hours of completely non-productive time during the course of the year. That is over 2 full work weeks of non-productive time! Can you honestly say that you only have 15 minutes of non-productive time each work day? I didn’t think so. You do the math, how many proactive results could you accomplish if you maximize your time.
2. Lists are your Friend - But be careful - I know that many of you probably already keep lists of some sort. In fact there are many thoughts on  the best way to keep lists. I prefer the good old pen and paper, it’s handy, doesn’t require an Internet connection, travels well and is always at the ready, a Moleskine is my poison of choice. But for those of you who think paper is evil, there are a ton of SaaS  apps spawning that will try to help you keep lists, here are just a few. My To-Do’s, TODOIST, Joe’s Goals, TaDa List, Mojo Note, Remember the Milk and Toodledo to name just a few. Some of these even integrate with calendars like Google Calendar and can be very useful.Here is where you have to careful with lists. I bet if I asked you how long your list is, assuming that you already are “A Keeper of the Lists” that you would tell me that it is very long 20+ items or so. The problem with the long list is that in an effort to feel more productive we tend to use a snowball method of dealing with the things on our lists, generally picking the easiest and quickest items to complete first in an effort to trim our list, but at the EOTD (End of the Day) you will find the most important items failed to get done either because they were to time consuming for your snowball or more difficult than the others, or both.So the concept I am presenting here is to keep your list limited to the SIX most important things that you must get done that day. Long lists have a negative psychological effect as well since they are a bottomless pit of things to do, however the short list has a huge mental boost when you cross off the sixth item of the day! I am not suggesting that you don’t need to keep a side list or running list of the things that you need to get done over the long term, in fact it is a good idea, but use that list as DISK SPACE or long term storage from which you load your short list into RAM to be executed that day.
3. Plan the Time You Will Give Each Item On Your List - This is the way that you can figure out if you can actually accomplish your six item list. I am not talking about at what point during your day you will do these things, just how long you are going to dedicate to getting each one done. If an item is too large to complete in a single day, then make sure that you break up the item into manageable time increments so that you will ultimately finish the item on the day you’ve committed too. You will find that if you break up your tasks that seem overwhelming into small time chunks, they will be less daunting and you can actually make good progress towards completion.
4. Plan Your Day -Now that you know how much time you are allocating to each of the items on your list is time to plan your day. WARNING - I am not talking about maybe’s here, these MUST be absolutes if you are to become a productive person. Your day planning should also include some flex time so that you can answer emails, respond to IM’s and other interruptions that are going to happen during your work day. I cannot stress enough the fact that this is not a general guideline, you must stick to your plan no matter what. Remember that writing in flex time is an essential part of the plan in order to deal with distractions and be able to maintain your schedule.
5. Employ Prioritization - Priorities are one of the most important steps in the time management technique. It is only human nature to put the simplest items on your list first, but ease of accomplishment is not a sound way to create prioritization. We usually do this because the more difficult items on your list require more focus and more energy to complete. The problem with this is that as your day develops, energy levels and focus abilities naturally diminish. This is not to say that the more difficult items on your list always receive top priority. Be honest with your list, really prioritize based on importance. Using this method of prioritization, if for some reason (and I am sure an excuse, errr, I mean reason will come up now and then) you will still gain power and momentum by completing the most important things on your list in any given day. This is difficult and requires a very high degree of discipline, so don’t get down on yourself if you slip, just get back on track and practice, practice, practice, and before you know it this will be second nature in your daily regime.
6. Can I Throw this Away? - Interesting question. There are many studies out there that show that 80% of the information that we store or file is never referred to or accessed again! Huh? What’s that? You pack rats, and you know who you are can probably attest to this fact. So ask yourself the question, will this impact me if I throw it away? You will find more times than not the answer is an emphatic no! Keep clutter to a minimum and stay organized and watch your productivity soar.

In conclusion you can see that managing your time effectively is not rocket science. There are not an infinite number of complicated steps or programs to accomplish super powered time management. Just six simple steps.

1. The Touch it Once Rule
2. Make daily lists of the six most important tasks of the day
3. Allocate the time that each of your tasks will take
4. Assign very specific time slots in your day for each the tasks on your list
5. Prioritize honestly
6. Ask yourself the question: Can I throw this away without negative impact on myself