And it’s not just blogs that waste time in your life. A colleague was good enough to pass on the handbook from a ‘more effective time management’ course he was on (and swears by). It was given by Priority Management , on Getting Smart with Outlook , but it’s applicable to whatever email client that you use.

Notes from the Handbook are here on the KnowledgeBase.

Before you yawn and click elsewhere , consider the remainder of your life as 1 page per day diary – no matter how long you have left , you have a finite amount of blank pages left. It’s up to you how you use them. The headlines are:

• Get yourself organised *before* you read your emails in the morning. This way you are working to your agenda, not somebody elses.
• Only check your email 4 times a day – constant interuptions means that a task can take up to 4 times longer to complete (as your brain needs time to focus back on the task each time).
• When you get an Email , do one of the 4 D’s
• Do it now
• Decide When to do it
• Delegate – give it to somebody else
• Dump (ie Delete it)