Time Management

According to this study from Harvard Business School, that was reported on their newly launched HBS Blog, the more projects one takes on, the less one seems to accomplish.

Here are their suggestions for Time Management:

• Try to bring old projects to some kind of closure before new ones get on the list.
• Make sure to book some time with yourself for those strategic, but non-urgent tasks (like thinking, or writing) that tend to get crowded out by urgent demands. I have one client who has a mythical person named “Joe” – meetings with Joe are for thinking, and it’s understood that they are not to be interrupted.
• Check email only twice a day (promise- it won’t kill you!)
• Try to make the consequences of your tradeoffs clear to those (like a boss or colleague) who may be creating excess work for you.
• Match your strategic priorities with how you spend your time – and question activities that don’t drive those priorities.
• And finally, do question the value of every activity – if it simply didn’t get done, what would happen?