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We're all overwhelmed with too much to do, too many pressures on our time. Here's a chance to do something about it. Time Tamers is a source of practical advice and resources to make the most of your time. Most of us haven't got time for time management. Time Tamers recognize this. So this website is a single page, and our prescription for overcoming time problems is three simple steps:

There's no point thinking about time just to spend more of it rushing around doing things you don't want to do. Work out what you really want to do with your time first. A useful exercise is to imagine winning a very large some of money - say the equivalent of 20 years income. What would you still do that you do now? What would you start doing, based on your talents and interests? Channel the time you free up into these directions.
 

We've asked hundreds of people for tips on saving time. Here's are some of the best:

The ring-fenced hour (Avoiding distractions)
Set aside one hour a day, every day when you will be totally unreachable. Go for a walk with the dog, or head of into a park, or whatever you can do where you're based with no mobile phone or pager. Take a notebook, though, because you will find you come up with plenty of new ideas. If you've too much to do in 24 hours, it doesn't really matter if you trim that down to 23 hours - but you will be able to use that hour effectively for thinking, and that will be worth many hours at the desk.

10 minute meetings (Meetings)
Studies have shown that the vast majority of important decisions are made in informal meetings. So why do we waste so much time on the formal ones? Set a company-wide standard that all formal minutes should have a limit of 10 minutes (20 if you want to be generous) to vastly reduce time wasted.

Take control of  e-mail (Information overload)
E-mail is a time-sponge, taking over your life if you let it. So many people, especially in the corporate environment, have their e-mail set to notify them every time a mail arrives (often it's the default). Turn this off and just look at e-mail a few times a day. That way you take charge of the e-mail, rather than the e-mail controlling your time.

Avoid rapid task switching (Task overload)
When we've too much to do it is painfully easy to end up switching rapidly from task to task without ever completing anything. If you have an urgent task, a valuable tip is to block off the entire day for it, even if you don't expect it to last more than an hour or so.
      This has two benefits. First of all, you won't feel the pressure of the deadline. If, for instance, you only allow an hour then schedule a meeting or something else, that approaching deadline will prey on you. You will keep checking the time, always be aware of the ticking clock - and that lack of concentration will be enough to strongly reduce your effectiveness. The second is, should you finish in less than the whole day you have some unallocated time that can be used to catch up on other activities.

Visible top ten list (Prioritization/Avoiding distractions)
Each week, put up a list of your top ten priorities that week. Make sure everyone who is liable to distract you is aware of it. That way, whenever a distraction comes up you can check it against the list. You still might undertake the activity, but only by consciously changing your priorities. By making it visible you will put off others with trivial distractions.

Diary cheating (Saying 'yes')
It's all too easy to look at your diary when asked to attend a meeting or carry out a task and say 'yes' because there's blank space. Use a few simple cheats to prevent loss of control. Firstly, disconnect from any automatic calendaring - letting other people (unless it's your PA) put things in your schedule is totally unacceptable. Secondly, make sure you have one completely free day a week and at least two hours every day that aren't booked up. Block them off in advance (be prepared to shift the two hour blocks, but don't delete them).

Be driven by curiosity - contributed by John Scully, ex CEO of Pepsi and Apple (Prioritization/Avoiding distractions)
I am a person who is driven by the intellectual curiosity of ideas that can make a difference. To minimize the time spent on an activity, I try to decide the night before what the key project is I'll be working on the following morning. This helps me have better ideas much more quickly in the morning because the project has been percolating subliminally in my head overnight while I sleep.

Use hot time (Prioritization/Task overload)
We all have times of day when we work much more productively. Spend a minute to map your day - find your most effective times and your least effective. When you are deciding what to do when, make sure you put the tasks that will require most mental input and keep the urgent but unimportant tasks like admin for the less hot times.

Take the meeting to them (meetings)
I always go to the desks of my employees for a meeting rather than having them come to me.  It not only tells me more about their job but is also allows me to walk away when I wish to.

Here are two resources for those who don't have time for time management:
 

Instant Time Management by Brian Clegg. Over 70 exercises and techniques to enhance your time management skills. Good value and effective - the precursor to the Time Tamers concept. Available from Amazon.com [click here] (Americas/Pacific) and from Amazon.co.uk [click here] (UK/Europe).

The idea is a simple but effective one. Instead of having a thick book on time management to wade through, the Crazy Colour Card is a single, A4-sized plastic sheet that contains a condensed collection of tips, advice and practical tools for time management. The Crazy Colour Card is available from Amazon.com and from Amazon.co.uk. Want to try it out? Click here to download it for free.

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Time Tamers is a trademark of Creativity Unleashed Limited

Download our powerful time management reference card, the Crazy Colour Card for Time Management for free.

Click here