Time Management Technique: Organized Chaos?

How are those piles impacting your time management? Some people are naturally neat and tidy while others are comfortable with a far more relaxed environment. It really isn’t a matter of cleanliness, or your comfort level for tidiness it’s a matter of efficiency. Even though you may not realize it, disorganization can be the source of your time management struggles.

You can be organized without having to be all that neat, and it will improve your time management. You live in a world that is driven to chaos. Every day you have email coming in, real mail coming in, and voice mail coming in. You could spend your entire day just dealing with the onslaught of this information, but then you’d really never get anything done. So how do you survive? What do you do? You may want to start with a quick sort system.

Quick sorting is a good time management survival technique. Create folders within your email inbox that allow you to quick sort your emails. Select no more than two time blocks each day to do this sorting. There are several ways you may want to set up your folders, and you’ll probably have to try a couple to see what works best for you. When you regularly get email from specific people set up a folder with their name. You may also want folders for needs action today, needs action this week, needs action next week, or even related to projects. This allows you to quickly put your emails where you can look at them later, and gets you to immediately delete the junk. As you’re looking at the emails you need you to respond to today if you can do so in less than 2 minutes just deal with it rather than moving it into a folder. You can use the same concept with your real mail only having folders, boxes, or whatever where these items go. There are always things you want to save because you think you may be able to use them at some point, but you don’t know exactly when. For these items be selective about what you choose to keep, and then store them by topic so you can find them when you actually want them later. Repeat this process as you listen to your voice mail, writing down the pertinent information from those you want to respond to and then putting those messages in the proper storage spot related to when you will return the call.

So you’ve got all these piles or folders, now what? Each and every day your focus should be on doing the things that will make that day a success. Prioritize your email, mail, and voice mail and work it in after and around the really important stuff. If you find that the same email, mail, or voice mail comes up more than 3 times without you having done anything about it; how important can it really be? Is it something you really don’t have to do and could just throw away, is it something you can delegate to someone else, or is it something you just want to store? It’s your time, you are the only one who can choose the best way to spend it.

Once you get rid of all the unnecessary clutter you’ll begin to realize just how much stress disorganization was really causing you. When you aren’t organized you have a lot of unnecessary stress because you aren’t really sure what’s pressing, and what’s not, and it looks like the work is absolutely endless. When you force yourself to get organized and prioritize you begin to feel more in control, and more product because you are.