I’m laughing at myself this morning, as I come into the office and immediately go to my administrative tasks: update calendar and empty inbox.

After trying out the GTD format, and then being a Franklin Covey convert for a while… and then the reality of working for someone else (ie. you use software designed to make your life easier that really -thanks to poor implementation- makes your life harder) have developed my own set of rules for the management of my day/time.

This might work for you, it might not…. but you can waste a couple of minutes of your life reading it if you want to!

1. Keep your calendar updated with REAL events… not those “maybe” appointments that you know never really happen… or those meetings that are scheduled for 30 minutes but always take 2 hours… get real!!

2. Review and update your calendar at the beginning and ending of every day. Keeping a calendar real takes real work, but it’s worth it. Schedule out your time to do admin, put your tasks time in, get your calendar to look like your reality. EVEN MORE go back to yesterday and update that calendar so it reflects what you really were doing.

3. Clean out your inbox. This comes from a long history of being an underling – I may have a msg in there that either gives me back an hour (someone finished the project so I don’t have to) or takes away an hour (last minute presentations). So going through my inbox gives me the piece of mind to know that I am actually working on what’s real as of this minute. If I don’t sort out the reading to my “reading” folder, and the non-work stuff to my non-work folders, I end up reading all that junk when I should be working, and even worse working when I should be goofing around with family/personal stuff.

I could go on and on, but that would tyrannical (and take me much more than the 10 minutes I have set aside to write this article), so I’m going to wrap it up here and wish you the best of luck. Whether you use my system, someone else’s, or mashup your own system… GET A SYSTEM and STICK TO IT. Your piece of mind will increase and your stress will decrease. I promise.

Cheers,

Rebekah