Climb Everest with these time management tips

Have you ever had that feeling - when looking at your 'to do' list - that you are at the bottom of a huge mountain that you have no choice but to climb?

I am feeling it right now. In fact, my in-tray looks like Everest!

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but my pile of things to do is certainly big enough that I have to engage my top time management tips if I am going to meet all my deadlines and get to the top of the pile.

So, let me share with you my top paper-mountain climbing tips.

1. New apps and deadlines don't mix. This tip gets the top gong because I just learnt it - literally an hour ago – and I want to ensure you don't upset your neighbours with unspeakable expletives like I did.

Until you read the manual thoroughly or complete an extensive tutorial on your new application, do not use it if you have deadlines to meet!

Being the impatient, impulsive person that I am, I opened up my newly-installed dictation software today to transcribe a 20-minute interview, thinking this whiz-bang program was going to save me some time.

About an hour later, I finally finished the job that normally would have only taken half an hour.

Worse still, not understanding the application, I ignored some cryptic instructions and lost said work and mangled my original word document settings.

Lesson learnt!

2. Go from A to B - not A to Q to E to T to N to Z. Once upon a time, I only felt satisfied if I worked on every one of my tasks each day. In a single eight-hour shift, I would conduct an interview for one story, transcribe the notes for another, plan the brief for another and edit another.

At the end of the day, I would smile smugly, feeling as if I had pushed each job closer to their respective finish lines.

However, I soon realised that when I returned to each job the next day, it would take me five to ten minutes to work out where on earth I was up to. I had people whose names I couldn't recall responding to messages from days ago and I easily spent 30 minutes sorting the chaos of notes on my desk into manageable piles.

So, I overhauled the structure of my work schedule and now only work on one or two jobs per day.

Instead of spending one hour each day per week on every job, I attempt to knock over one task per day. Not only do I find I get the work done faster because I am no longer juggling the different requirements of each job and having to constantly shift my focus, my mind feels a lot less cluttered at the end of the day.

3. No means no. Only take on the amount of work you know you can handle. This may mean saying no to the occasional paying gig, but if you take on so much work that you simply cannot deliver good quality copy by the due date, you will soon find the work drying up anyway.

Editors won’t hang around to hear your excuses for poor, late copy.

4. Write before you wash. This doesn’t mean skipping your morning hygiene routine. What it does mean is don’t use chores as an excuse not to work.

Most freelancers work from a home office, so breakfast dishes, dirty floors and baskets full of washing are hard to ignore when they are in the way each time you hop up to grab a coffee. But resist the urge to fill the sink with sweet-smelling suds until you clock off for the day.

Set yourself designated work hours – just as you would if you had to show up at an office – and don’t do any housework in that time.

Take your ten-minute breaks every hour as the health gurus recommend, but spend them walking around the block, not washing up dishes.

5. Get real. Set yourself realistic goals. If you estimate that a task is going to take four hours to complete, allocate five.

That way you allow for unforeseen interruptions and hiccups, plus you are giving yourself the freedom to work at a reasonable pace, and not at a speed that makes your head spin and your computer mouse heat up with friction.

Better still, if you do manage to finish the job in four hours, you have a whole hour spare to partake in ‘you time’ or to start the next job (or to go and do the dishes).

I don't know about you, but I feel motivated when I am ahead of schedule - and decidedly cranky and apathetic when behind.

6. Got a better idea? Write down your ideas so you can get them out of your head. Writers often come up with good ideas when they least expect them. I usually get my best ideas when I am going to sleep, jogging or working on completely unrelated topics.

Sometimes those ideas form the introduction to your next article, blog post or book, so it's a good idea not to ignore them. At the same time, however, you have to resist the urge to stop what you are doing to go off and work on an unrelated project.

If a good idea pops into your head when you are working, allow yourself a few minutes to jot down some notes or bullet points. This ensures the idea is not lost while at the same time letting you temporarily forget about it so you can resume the task you had laid down for the day.

7. Don't feed your addiction. Somewhere, someday, someone will create a Twitter patch or Facebooks Anonymous. Fight the addiction. You won't miss anything if you switch off Twitter, Facebook or your email for a few hours. Believe me, you really won't!

I have set times of the day when I log onto Facebook and Twitter. I spend about ten minutes catching up with the most recent posts, and replying, responding, retweeting, chatting, etc, and then I shut them down again until the next designated timeslot.

I use Tweetdeck for Twitter because I can create columns of followees (This is not a bona fide word yet, but it will be!) and organise them efficiently to reduce my scrolling time.

For Facebook, I bookmark group and fan pages that I like to check daily. I also bookmark those who I only feel the need to check weekly… and I don’t check outside of those times.

On very busy days, I shut down my email and only fire it up once an hour.

8. Good self management = good time management. I won’t labour on this point because I have mentioned it in a recent post on business management, but it is important to include here. Establishing good business management systems will create time efficiencies by streamlining repetitive tasks.

Create templates for your invoices; automate your signature and contact information to appear in every email; file contact details for clients and colleagues where you’ll easily recall them; develop a tracking system for work in progress and work completed, paid and outstanding invoices.

There you have it, my top time management tips. Now that I've shown you mine, if you've got some good ones, why not show me yours.

For more information about Pamela Wilson or WriteSmart, log on to http://www.writesmart.com.au/