TIME MANAGEMENT
phone allows you to access, organize, store, and
work on your list on the run.
Wherever you keep your list and whatever
form it takes, get into the habit of looking at it
often. Review it fi rst thing in the morning as well
as every hour on the hour and—as almost all
time-management courses strongly urge—before
you go home at night, while your work is fore-
most in your mind.
Each time, update it and add to it, repriori-
tizing any tasks you haven’t fi nished. At night,
clean up your list by crossing off the tasks you’ve
accomplished. Then rewrite the list with the
tasks rearranged by priorities, especially if your
priorities have changed. In the morning, you’ll
be prepared to dive right in.
Managing Your List and Priorities
Most time-management experts recommend
ranking to-do items in terms of priorities. Once
you’ve ranked the tasks on your lists, it’s impor-
tant that you start with the fi rst item—the most
important or urgent—on your list and only
move to the next task when you’ve completed
the previous one. If you usually take a list of
tasks arranged in the correct order of priority,
but then dive in at number fi ve or six, you are
not using your list effectively. Often people skip
tasks high on their lists when they fi nd them
too intimidating. If that’s the case, then these
tasks haven’t been suffi ciently broken down into
manageable bites; try breaking them into smaller
chunks again. Also, remember that tasks high on