Improve Your Time Management and Productivity With This Simple Tip

Productivity and time management do not need to be complicated. In fact like most things in life, a few simple changes can lead to dramatic results. I have found that life really follows the 80/20 principle. 80 percent of your improvement can come from 20 percent of the possible changes. After observing many people over the years in mostly office settings, I am convinced that one of the big impediments to productivity is pretty easy to cure. The big hurdle and impediment to successful time management is that people simply do not use one thing to write on. I see it all the time. People capture a phone message on a post it note. Then they take notes on a small pad of paper. Then later in the day they are in a meeting using a different notebook. Then walking past their cube later in the day, they are scribbling something on an email they printed out. At another time of day they are writing some reminders in outlook in the task section. As a manger of people it actually reduces my confidence in my staff when I see that people do not have a “system” to keep track of things.

How is it possible to be productive when you are using anything and everything as reminders of what you need to do. If you have twenty possible places to look for a phone number or note, the only result is lost time and longer hours at work. One major change you can make is to use one thing. What I mean is to write in only one place. In my time management guide The Simple Guide to Time Management I recommend that one thing be a simple spiral notebook, where you keep track of three simple categories more described in the book. In my other time management work, the Ultra Simple Guide to Time Management, we build our system around a simple legal pad.

Using one thing applies to; to-do-lists, project plans, notes and call to make. It is still necessary to our productivity needs to have a calendar and project files. But, for everything that is not a specific appointment or time sensitive reminder, I recommend the discipline of writing in one place. I also recommend actually writing versus typing. After trying the one thing method, I am sure you will agree it is the way to go and a pretty simple method to dramatically improve you time management and productivity.

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