I’ve really been trying to improve my time management lately, and have found a few things that have helped. Basically, I’m trying to completely separate work from play. When I’m on the computer doing work, that’s all I do. Here’s what’s helped me get myself sorted out:

Clean Up Your Favorites

If you’re like me and use Firefox, you probably have a ton of favorites/bookmarks at the top of your browser. Since I use these for most of my navigation, probably 90% of my Internet time is spent at sites on my favorites list. Because of this I recently cleaned out my favorites to avoid wasting time.

I deleted Facebook, PAP, CAP, PAL, ESPN, Gmail, Analytics, and all my affiliate program links where I can check stats. Of course I still visit these sites when I’m not working or when I really need to, but when I’m working it’s too easy to get off track by clicking the Facebook bookmark or the PAL bookmark.

E-mail Management

The next thing that’s really helped me out is disregarding emails lol. Seriously, emails are usually a waste of time. Since I have the Gmail desktop tool, I see every email as it comes in at the bottom right of my screen. However, as opposed to dropping what I was doing and replying immediately, I now try to reply to the important ones once or twice a day, and just leave the other ones alone. This really helps me focus on the task at hand.

Make Yourself Unreachable

This one has helped out so much. I used to work at my apartment with my roommate there/friends over. I’d be chatting on AIM, Skype, and possibly GChat. I’d be texting people if not talking to them on my phone. This is all obviously ridiculous, and doesn’t let me get anything done.

Now I work at the Dunkin Donuts near my apartment, either alone or with Chuck, who is also working. When I start work, I log off of AIM (I usually leave Skype up because I only talk to business friends on there) and put my phone aside. I also put on my Bose headphones (wayyyy better than Dre’s headphones ) so I can’t hear the noise around me.

All of this stuff has helped me work much more efficiently and stay focused longer. I’d love to hear your opinions on how to stay focused and on track.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.