Do you feel the need to be more organized and productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven’t accomplished much?

Time management skills are important. You may find yourself performing many different jobs during the course of a single day. Here are a few time management tips will help you increase your productivity and stay cool and collected.

1) Realize that time management is a myth.
No matter how organized you are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn’t change. All you can actually manage is yourselves and what you do with that time.

2) Find out where you’re wasting time.
You may fall prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. Do you spend too much time ‘Net surfing, reading email, or making personal calls?

3) Create time management goals.
Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not changing time. A good place to start is by eliminating your personal time-wasters.

4) Prioritize ruthlessly.
You should start each day with a time management session prioritizing the tasks for that day and setting your goals. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish?

5) Learn to delegate and/or outsource.
No matter if your running a household or a business, there’s no need for you to be a one-person show. For effective time management, you need to let other people carry some of the load. Ask for help.

6) Establish routines and stick to them as much.
While crises will arise, you’ll be much more productive if you can follow routines most of the time.

7) Get in the habit of setting time limits for tasks.
For instance, reading and answering email can consume your whole day if you let it. Instead, set a limit of one hour a day for this task and stick to it.

8) Be sure your systems are organized.
Are you wasting a lot of time looking for papers and files? Take the time to organize a file management system. Is your filing system slowing you down?

9) Don’t waste time waiting.
From client meetings to dentist appointments, it’s impossible to avoid waiting for someone or something. But you don’t need to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs. Always take something to do with you, such as a book you wish to read, a checkbook that needs to be balanced, or just a blank pad of paper that you can use to jot ideas.

You CAN be in control and accomplish what you want to accomplish - once you’ve come to grips with the time management and taken control of your time.

How do you manage your time?