By Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, The Productivity Pro®

Do you remember those time management classes from the late 1980s? You were taught how to schedule your days: "Okay, from 8:00 to 8:15, I'm going to do this. From 8:15 to 8:50, I'll do this …" The tried-and-true methods no longer work. Planners, calendars, PDAs, e-mail programs, to-do lists — none of these things allow you to meet the demands placed upon you. Tools are helpful but unable to accommodate the speed, complexity, and changing priorities inherent in what you are doing. You need new ways of thinking and working.

Effective daily planning permits you to realize more of your expectations and reduce the stress levels associated with, say, writing a check on the way to a wedding.

Plan tomorrow today

It's important to plan the next day before you leave your office in the evening or before you retire for the night. Why?

• You wake up to a purpose   With a plan, you have a picture of the day in your head in the morning. A clear focus will reduce your stress.
• You will know whether you have made realistic plans for the day   If you find out your schedule is too full to accomplish the things that must be done tomorrow, you can delegate, cancel, reschedule, or move tasks ahead a day.
• You avoid the decision dilemma   Constantly asking yourself what you should do next and sorting and resorting tasks takes time. If you've already made these decisions, you simply start on the next task. As the saying goes, "Plan your work, and work your plan."
• You don't get insomnia   If you don't have a clear picture of what tomorrow looks like, you might lie awake and run those to-dos through your mind over and over.

Take control of your time

Your time is probably very fragmented, and much of it is uncontrollable. The best starting place to improve your use of time is to determine the extent to which you control the time available to you. No one has total control over a daily schedule. Someone or something will always make demands on you. But nearly everyone has more control over their time than they realize. Even during structured working hours, you have opportunities to select which tasks or activities to handle.

Most people have about 2.5 hours of discretionary time. The goal is to control 25% to 50% of your day. Some of your time will require attention to crises. Learn to manage the portion of time over which you do have control.

Here's how:

1. Fill out a worksheet to determine your total controllable time.

   Determining your daily controllable time	Time
   Number of hours you plan to work	8
   Subtract time in meetings	3.5
   Subtract uncontrollable time — based on a typical day or adjusted for the day you know you'll have. Includes: Routine activities Visitor interruptions Phone calls Crises	1.5
   Estimate of total controllable time	3

2. Review or build your to-do list.
   • Tasks you didn't finish
   • Systems-imposed activities
   • Boss-imposed activities
   • Peer-imposed or subordinate-imposed activities
   • Self-imposed activities
3. Prioritize your activities. Determine which of your tasks require the most attention.
4. Assign pure-time estimates to activities. Assigning time estimates to your tasks will help you determine which tasks can reasonably be accomplished in the time available to you.
5. Accomplish tasks in order of importance. When you have an interruption, you have already accounted for it as uncontrollable time. Handle the interruption quickly, and get back to your to-do list.

Here is a completed sample of a typical worker's controllable daily time.

If you add up the total pure time in this example, you would need 5 hours to complete all of the tasks on your list. With just 3 hours of controllable time, however, you won't be able to accomplish everything. It's important to know the reality up-front so that you are more focused on completing the high-priority tasks. Your two priority 1 tasks amount to only 2.5 hours, so it is realistic to get those items completed.

By blocking out time on your calendar for your top priorities, you ensure that if nothing else gets done, you completed at least your most important activities.

About the author   Laura Stack is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., an international consulting firm in Denver, Colorado, that specializes in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. Laura holds an MBA in Organizational Management (University of Colorado, 1991) and is an expert on integrating advances in business productivity with the retention of key employees. Laura is the author of the best-selling book Leave the Office Earlier (Broadway Books, 2004).