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The Brazen Careerist blog points out “10 tips for Time Management in a Multitasking World.” It’s a great list. I decide to share with everyone.

1. Don’t leave email sitting in your in box.
If
you are familiar with the Getting Things Done methodology, this is rule
#1. If you leave the email sitting in your inbox, you will end up
reading it 50 times before you act on it. That’s a waste of time and
energy. Touch each email only once. If you can answer it in less than 2
minutes, do it. Otherwise, figure out how much time you’ll need to deal
with it, and assign the appropriate action to it. Don’t look at it
again until you’re ready to do it. For example, if you need to make a
phone call to deal with the email, then put the email in your @calls
list and don’t pull it up again until you’re picking up the phone. If
the email is simply informative, or there is nothing you will need to
do within a short time period, file it.

2. Admit multitasking is bad.
Bad multitasking
is bad. Good multitasking is when you break your activities down into
discrete steps (in the GTD world, they’re called “actions”) and
complete an entire action before moving on to the next one. For
example, you get an email from a client asking you to make a change on
their website. You need to reply to the client to let him know you’re
on it. You need to make the change. You need to proofread or test your
work. You need to upload the change to the site. You need to close the
loop with the client to let him know it’s done. That’s a single task
with 5 actions that have to be done in sequential order. Don’t start
the email and then get distracted. Finish the email and send it. Then
move on to another action, even if it’s for another task. Projects have
phases. Phases have tasks. Tasks have actions. Multitasking in the
middle of an action is bad. Jumping around between tasks is not. When
you are working at home you are only measured when you produce results.
No credit for just showing up. You produce results by completing
actions and closing the loop on tasks.

3. Do the most important thing first.
The “most
important thing” is so 5 minutes ago. Before I stop working each day, I
decide right then what is “the most important thing” for the next day.
In the morning, I check email first. Each email is judged against “the
most important thing” from the night before. If “the most important
thing” is still “the most important thing,” then that’s what is done
first. When that action is done, I check email and make sure the next
“most important thing” is still “the most important thing” and so on. A
web worker doesn’t have someone standing over their shoulder setting
priorities. It’s a constantly evolving process that only you can manage.

4. Check your email on a schedule.
I see this
all the time and I just can’t agree with it. If you’ve broken up your
tasks into actions, then it’s easy to find the time to read email in
between completed actions. Follow the rules: if you can get rid of the
email in under 2 minutes, do it. Act like your email is a hot potato
and it won’t pile up or get in your way. Make sure your “most important
thing” of the moment is always at the top. Goodness forbid you miss
that 2:30 deadline to get a fax back because you read your email at the
scheduled time of 3 pm.

5. Keep web site addresses organized.
Have one
trusted system for organization. If you like to copy/paste websites
into a Word file, then always do that. If you like to write things down
on a pad of paper, then do that only. Don’t have websites in
del.icio.us, websites in an email, websites in a file and websites on
post-it notes.

6. Know when you work best.
Funny thing is, if
you don’t know when you work best your colleagues certainly do. The
more you work from home or remotely, the more the people who work with
you begin to learn your style. If you are most productive at 10:30 at
night, you can bet the email asking you to do stuff starts coming in at
9 pm.

7. Think about keystrokes.
If you’re on a
computer all day, keystrokes matter because efficiency matters. “On any
given day, an information worker will do a dozen Google searchers…How
many keystrokes does it take? Can you reduce it to three? You might
save 10 seconds, but over time, that builds up.”
Um sure,
whatever. For me the goal is to get the computer to think and move as
fast as I do. When my creativity and thought process is flowing, I
don’t want to be held up looking for a menu command.

8. Make it easy to get started.
We don’t
have problems finishing projects, we have problems starting them…make a
shallow on-ramp…I try to break own my projects into chunks, so I am not
overwhelmed by them…
Once again: Projects have phases. Phases
have tasks. Tasks have actions. Strike that balance between available
time and available resources to complete an action. If you don’t have
30 minutes of available time, don’t start an action that will take 30
minutes. You’ll just end up stressed and disorganized. See the mountain
as a series of very small steps. Before you know it, you’ll be halfway
up. Schedule your time-sensitive actions and tasks for the day first,
and then fill in the gaps with actions that have looser deadlines. Make
a point of doing at least three non-critical actions a day, and at
least one “I don’t want to do it” action a day. Do it anyway. Otherwise
you’ll end up procrastinating yourself right up to a deadline.

9. Organize your to-do list every day.
Once a day? Too broad. Every task on your plate has a next action. Keep
the list of next actions for every task/project close, and be prepared
to reorganize them after every completed action. Unexpected things
happen and priorities shift. It soon becomes habit. If you are using
Outlook for email, I can’t recommend the Getting Things Done add-in
strongly enough. It’s got its bugs to work around, but it’s an
incredible tool for filing and processing email into discrete actions.

10. Dare to be slow.
Remember
that a good time manager actually responds to some things more slowly
than a bad time manager would. For example, someone who is doing the
highest priority task is probably not answering incoming email while
they’re doing it.
I would argue that it’s not about speed,
it’s about priorities and breaking larger tasks down to smaller
actions. It may appear that you’re taking a longer time to complete a
task, when what you’re really doing is taking bigger gaps between
actions.