Your ability to take the right actions at the right time for the right reasons is directly proportional to your time management skills. Are the in boxes in your work area overflowing: stack trays piled high, overwhelming amounts of email, and a full voice mail box?

All these things may be building up because you can't decide what to take action on, what action you should take and when to take action. The only way to get control is through action. These things won't go away or get better until you take action. And the longer you delay on taking action the more clutter you have in your environment. Just making a decision is part of this time management tip. Even though you may be overwhelmed even thinking about how to decide on what to take action on there is a simple solution. Start by just taking action on each in box until an action has been taken up to a specific date and time.

You have to quickly go through each thing and just decide what action you will take. Start with just one of your in boxes and begin reviewing each item either from oldest to newest or newest to oldest it doesn't matter which end you start from. Starting from the end of your choice evaluate each item to determine if you could take care of this item in one to two minutes, if you can then take care of it so it's done and over with.

Anything taking longer than two minutes will require you to decide on your next action. Add that action to your weekly To Do list immediately. There isn't any need to organize or prioritize your To Do list as you go because you'll prioritizing your list each day, and you'll be checking things off as you complete them. When the end of the week comes you'll find you have a lot of things checked off, and only a few things you'll need to carry over to the following week's To Do list. Ruthlessly make sure an action is required before you enter it into your To Do List. When you find an action you don't need to take immediately cross it off your list or toss it out.

If it's an idea that you want to think about at a later time add it to the future planning part of your To Do list. If it's an item you want for future reference set up a file folder and put the item in the right folder. Don't make this folder or filing complicated or you won't do it. You could just have a folder for each topic and organize the items within the folder alphabetically or by date or in another way that makes sense to you.

Prioritization is another time management skill. Some of the items from your inboxes are now on your To Do list. The next step is to determine when to take action on those action items. There is a simple and time saving way to approach this that doesn't make you feel overwhelmed. Once a week put together your To Do list with everything that needs to be there not worrying about organization or prioritization, your only concern is getting all things that require an action or future consideration on this one list. Then each day scan your list of actions and prioritize only the top 3-7 things that if you were to take just those actions would make your day successful. When you use this time management skill you consistently take actions and you consistently take the right actions. You don't need to tackle everything at once you only need to take on the most important things. After a couple weeks you may decide that some of the actions on your To Do list really don't need to be taken. Once you do this quick sort and make your action decisions to get control of your inboxes make a commitment to clear your in boxes at one point each day so you don't get into the situation of having overflowing inboxes again.

Business Products on our marketplace

Author: Cheryl A. Clausen can help you get unstuck. Improve your Time Management Tips get her free analysis. Improve your Time Management Skills, look here.