by Cheryl A. Clausen..
Your time management skills are directly proportional to your ability to take the right actions at the right time for the right reasons. Are your in boxes overflowing: physical “in” stack tray, email, and voice mail?

Perhaps all these things are building up because you just can’t figure out what to take action on, what action to take and when to take action. One way or another, an action will have to be taken to make them all go away and to remove the clutter from your environment. The act of making a decision is part of this time management skill. As you look at all this stuff you may be overwhelmed even thinking about how to decide on what to take action on. There is a simple solution to that. You will take action on each thing until an action has been taken on each thing up to a certain date and time. Don’t get scared we’re going to figure out how to do that next.

Quickly go through each item and decide on the action you will take. Choose just one of your in boxes and begin reviewing each item. Evaluate each item to determine if you could take care of this item within a minute or two, if you can do it now and get it over with and out of your way.

Anything taking longer than two minutes will require you to decide on your next action. Add that action to your weekly To Do list immediately. There isn’t any need to organize or prioritize your To Do list as you go because you’ll prioritizing your list each day, and you’ll be checking things off as you complete them. When the end of the week comes you’ll find you have a lot of things checked off, and only a few things you’ll need to carry over to the following week’s To Do list. Ruthlessly make sure an action is required before you enter it into your To Do List. When you find an action you don’t need to take immediately cross it off your list or toss it out.

Sometimes you’ll have an idea you want to think about later. Add your idea to the future planning section of your To Do list. Sometimes you have things you want for for future reference. Set up a file folder for those reference items and put the item in the right folder. There isn’t any reason to make this folder or filing system complicated because if you do you won’t use it. A simple way to organize your reference folder is to have a folder for each topic and then organize the items within the folder alphabetically or by date or in any way that makes sense to you.

Do you have trouble prioritizing? You now have the items from your in boxes entered on your To Do list. Now you need to decide when to take action on those action items. Once a week simply put together your To Do list including everything that needs to be. Don’t worry about getting these action items neatly organized and prioritized. Just focus on capturing all the things that require an action or future consideration on this one list. Each day scan your list of actions and prioritize only the top 3-7 things that would make your day successful. Using this time management technique consistently will get you to consistently take the right actions. Just tackle the most important things one action at a time. In a few weeks you may find that some of the actions on your To Do list really don’t need to be done. Each day as you do this quick sort and decide on your actions you’ll gain control of your in boxes. But this only works if you make a commitment to clear your in boxes each day. And when you make that commitment and hold yourself accountable you won’t get into the situation of having overflowing in boxes ever again.

About the author: Cheryl A. Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Enhance your Time Management Tips get her free analysis. Enhance your Time Management Skills, look here.

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