This might be of use to some and not to others, and nothing original but I expect anyone still reading might find some benefit, even if it is teaching their proverbial grandmother to suck eggs.
First off, time cannot really be managed. We all have 24 hours in a day, that's the great leveller, and noone is treated unfairly here. Only activities can be managed. So far so good but that's not much consolation if you are so overloaded you spent most of the time with a perpetual throbbing headache and feel crushed with the weight of it.
One good method is the ABCDE method: A stands for tasks which have to be done. Using the pareto principle, these should make up about 20 per cent of the total (so resist the temptation to make everything an A task, or if you have a manager who'll try to intimidate you into thinking everything is an A task, quit your job and do something else). In other words, if you get those two done, then that's the bulk of it already in the bag no matter what else happens. A novel twist on that is the 'eat that frog' approach. This holds that, if first thing in the morning, the first thing you had to do was eat a slimy, live frog, in all likelihood that's going to be the worst that's gonna happen to you on an average day. That said, sitting and looking at it all day isn't gonna make the task any easier, and so best get it out of the way in one gulp. You can do this with your worst task. Instead of, like Ben Elton's farties, you let it build itself up into a nightmare of such epic proportions that you in fact never do it. Then it's not so much a frog as a rottweiler which comes and bites you on the arse. So just make the biggest, nastiest task your 'frog' for the day and eat it before you do anything else.
B tasks are the things that need doing but which aren't gonna have any major consequences (ie you're not going to get into trouble for not doing them nor are you going to set the world aflame in doing them). They should be done, but NEVER before an A task.
Then there come the C tasks. These are the really tossy things that are nice to do but really have no benefit. There are as many of these as there are people, I should imagine, but common ones include chatting to friends, playing Civilization (or Medieval Total War in my case) non-stop for about eleven hours, Facebook (of course - in fact that debases 'C' tasks to mention it) and, dare I say it, sometimes even going to the pub.
Anything that's left over (which will usually be buggerall) should be devoted to these.
D stands for delegate, something that very few people do well since many people seem to think they have noone to delegate to. Not so. Anything you can't do, or can't do well, get someone else to do it. I don't pull my own teeth out or write novels, and the same goes for little things too. If you can get someone to photocopy something for you, print off a map, cook, do practically anything for you, then take it (as every husband knows). Even in obtaining the know-how to do something - people usually love to show off their knowledge too and often without realizing it, the time will come when you'll be doing the same.
Finally 'E' = Eliminate (yes, Facebook here actually!) .. worthless tasks go in here. Not sure if they warrant the dignitiy of being listed and yet they might need to in the beginning since there are often so many of them. It's great to be able to tick off things you've done today by simply not doing anything
A major time waster for many of us is dealing with bits of paper, especially if you live somewhere like the Baltic States (printed out receipt stapled to card with till receipt for a computer mouse, anyone?) and by extension emails, in which case the TRAF formula may work. Trash (ie throw away), Refer (to someone else) Action (ie pay the bill now, not cos the buggers deserve paying but just to save your own time which is far more precious; either that or just don't pay it) - this is where the frog eating comes in again. File (but only in the very last resort - avoiding the colonic irrigation that is going through your files and chucking most of it out once a year (only to inadvertently throw out something really important)). Sometimes you find yourself having to be ruthless and a little bit bold in what you're gonna throw out (I guess, I don't actually do any of this!) but it could be worth it for your own sanity and sense of control (again, I surmise).
In a nutshell, self-discipline needn't mean wearing a hair shirt and flagellating oneself into the small hours, just a little bit of planning and sticking to the task can pay itself back many times over, even if, in being self-disciplined, you feel bad about making all the un-self-disciplined people feel bad about themselves!
There you go, there are smooth talking north americans in expensive suits / tans who'd charge you thousands of dollars just to essentially spin that info out for an hour
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