Have you ever felt the pressure of having too many things on your plate and didn’t know what to do first? Have you been under pressure to balance tasks with a deadline and ad hoc projects? Has it seemed that there were never enough hours in the day and you found yourself working at all hours just not to fall further behind?

If these situations sound familiar, maybe you need to consider an organized time management system. Here are a few steps that might be helpful, recognizing that this is just an abbreviated list of a more detailed process.

1. Create an “Activity Log” to show you how you actually spend your time and is often an eye-opening experience. Work on each task continually as far as possible and reduce switching from one activity to another.
2. Put together a “To Do List” and prioritize each task and list key steps, don’t waste time on trivial ones or be stressed by a large number of items. Completing some tasks each day keeps the list from growing, helps ones feeling of motivation and satisfaction.
3. Convert projects into “Actionable Activities”, identify those projects you have a good chance of completing and prioritize those jobs.
4. Create a simple “Process Flow Diagram” of how to process each new project coming in so you have a system, to deal and resolve them efficiently.
5. Become more organized and keep track of conversations, ideas, and reminders, using technology to keep your schedule and projects running smoothly.
6. “Multi-tasking” is not the most efficient process, but sometimes is necessary and be simply the only option for busy people even though it’s less efficient then completing one task at a time. The key is not to get sidetracked and losing focus by moving between tasks.
7. To function in today’s fast pace environment, one must leverage technology, organization and resources to increase their efficiency. 8. File management, documentation and a good filing system are critical to increasing efficiency, access data quickly and expedite report writing

To see all articles in this series please go to http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.