When it comes to my personal projects i am hopeless – I have far too many I want to develop. I end up starting for 5 mins on one thing, then get an email, read it, and start on something else. That is one of the reasons I prefer working for clients – I know what I must focus on.

So I’ve come up with some tips for better time management and just generally to get more work done in a day!

• Plan – have a plan of things you need to do and what you also want to do if there is time. Write this the day/night before once you have all your work done for that day, and stick to that plan.
• Allow for fun – allow time to read your email, play the odd online game, read loads of blogs. Don’t not plan it, if you know you will do it.
• Focus – as you are doing things, do one thing at a time. Shut down your email client, turn your instant messengers off (or at least to “busy”), and just focus on the current thing you’re doing
• Do the worst job first – don’t like the thought of backing up your site? Make sure you do it first and get it out of the way. Then you won’t waste time doing things just to avoid doing that. Try it out – it does help a lot
• If you do the same thing each day, get a program to do it – this could be harder for some non tech’s, but even if in Word you always do the same thing (make a table a certain size, put a header in and change the font) either make a macro do it or make a “template” pre set out. It may save only 2 mins a day, but it all helps.
• Reply to emails straight away - don’t put them off, you will only forget about them or spend more time looking for them…

Of course there are lots more, a Google for time management ideas would come up with loads, but those are what I use and what actually work!