Here are some ideas and rules for effective time management:

1. Set up a daily schedule. Plan your current activities, such as meetings, reading the mail, signing of documents, phone calls.

2. Solve the tasks which require your maximum of intellectual capacity during the periods when you are in your best mental shape. Solve the unimportant tasks when you feel that your capacity of concentrating on work is not so great.

3. Set up deadlines for any activity and respect them! The chosen task must take the exact amount of time you have assigned it.

4. Don’t postpone the important matters, even if they are unpleasant! They will block your mind, they will reduce your creativity and your capacity of working. They won’t become more pleasant by postponing.

5. Leave aside what is not important! Many problems have a tendency of self-solving, if ignored for a while.

6. Analyze the interruptions. Take measures in avoiding them or in diminishing their effect!

7. Set up fixed hours when you don’t wish to be disturbed. Ask someone to take over your phone calls or to deal with visitors. Tell your colleagues between which periods you are not to be disturbed. No doubt you will make yourself understood.

8. Do one thing at a time. Keep a globally vision of the next thing to do.

9. Plan your phone calls. Make shorts notes of what you want to say and what you wish to find out. This will save you time and will lead to a better communication.

10. Note all your ideas in a single place. Read them all the time and do something that they come true.

11. When you start an activity, try to finish it. If you portion it, you won’t work coherently and you will lose your global vision.

12. Use every break when you cannot really work, for example when you wait or when you travel. Take advantage of this dead time to plan, take notes, listen to audio courses, etc.

13. Be selective! Learn to say NO! Get used to ask yourself: “am I the right person for this task?”

14. Avoid taking work at home if you are not sure you can do this. It is better to work at the office until you solve everything and then enjoy your free time.

15. Do things well. Avoid the exaggerated perfectionism. This leaves you more time for the important stuff.