Everyone starts each New Year with great aspirations. Take a look at the New Year's Resolutions that you have set. Is one of them to be more organized? For many people, it usually is. My Time Management seminars are always popular, yet at the end of one year, onto the beginning of the next, they seem to be most popular.

Use a "slush" box - have a specific place to put all papers, which are not important enough to file permanently, but which you feel uncomfortable about throwing away just yet. Many people I speak to are afraid to throw things away! Here's how the slush file works: Take an empty photocopy paper box, and put it under your desk. Every time you come across something that doesn't have a real home, you aren't sure if you should keep it or not, or you are afraid you may need it in the next couple of weeks, put it in this slush box. When this box is full (and it should take a while), place it in the bottom of a closet, or filing cabinet. Start with a new empty box under your desk. By the time the second box is full, the idea is that you "dump" the first one if you've never had to take anything out of it!

Avoid clutter. Keep everything you are not working on out of your immediate working area and out of sight, if possible. Always tidy up your desk and work area before leaving the office. Believe it or not, I recently read a statistic that said the average "messy" person spent 1 ½ hours per day looking for things! It's incredible how quickly 2 or 3 minutes here and there add up. That 1 ½ hours per day is 7 ½ hours per week! Over a full day wasted looking for things. Take some time during the first week of the New Year, and find a place for everything. Even if it is on the top of your desk, make it organised! Take a little longer, and attached your name to the bottom of things like your stapler, desk calendar etc etc. Every once in a while one of these things will go missing - it saves you a lot of time to find your own if your name is on it.

Plan each night what you are going to wear the next day, and lay it out ahead of time. As childish as this sounds (and even sometimes feels) it will make a big difference. I do the same for my kids. This avoids any last minute arguments about not wearing that outfit. I take my clothes right into the bathroom the night before, including panty hose (I don't want to go on a mad dash in the morning looking for a pair without a run in them!!). If I wake up more tired than the night before, it saves me the time of even having to think about what to wear that day.

Rewrite and re-prioritize your goals and activities at least every three months. The world changes, we change, and so must our goals. This assumes, of course, that you have written goals somewhere that you can re-examine. I have heard from goal setting experts that approximately 97% of the population does not have written specific goals. One of the things I teach in my seminars is: If you don't have a specific goal, how on earth can you be happy with what you have? Society sets far to many expectations for us to be fulfilled with those standards. Ignore society, figure out what you want, and then plan to get it (or keep it!).

Don't impose your perfectionism on other people. It is frustrating for them and time-consuming for you. Remember when you were a child, and your mother re-did something you were proud of (like making your bed)? How did that make you feel? When we need things done a certain way (like folding towels the right way, cutting the grass in the right direction, typing letters in a particular format), we not only create far more work for ourselves (because others won't do them), we are also increasing our stress levels! Save time and stress, and let others do it their own way. Of course it isn't as good as you would do - only you can do that! What is the purpose, to save time, or create more work?

Purge your files annually. You will be able to find needed items quicker and will save on storage costs. Now is the time (if it is year-end at your office). Use the "slush box" approach if you feel more comfortable. Brian Tracey (author of Psychology of Achievement) tells us that of all the papers that are in your files, that are over one year old, 95% of them are garbage. I believe it - get rid of old stuff!

Stand up while on the telephone. Your conversations will be shorter. We tend to do this at home if we have cordless phones. Why shouldn't we do it at work? While we are on the subject, look into a cordless phone for the office.

Try to avoid being placed on hold on the telephone. It takes less time to call back. In my "Caring for Customers" seminar, I tell people to always control the outbound calls. Don't give people your number and have them call you at their convenience. Call them at yours! Plus, if you are good about returning calls, people will consider this approach an extra-added touch! You look good, and you save time.

Divide seemingly overwhelming tasks into small increments, and attack them one at a time. It's that timeless issue: "How do you eat an elephant?" "One bite at a time." Sometimes projects are far to big to handle, we just never get enough time to get it even started let alone finished. You will never find an uninterrupted block of 8 hours to do the budget - yet you may find 8 separate one-hour chunks of time if you look for them!

Remember, in any organising process, things often feel worse before they get better. Resist the temptation to pile everything up again and have a cup of coffee. Habits take between 21-28 days before they start to feel comfortable. This means that until the end of January, this will feel like MORE WORK! Keep going, cross the days off your calendar, do what you need to do to make these Top Ten your habits! Good Luck.

To find out more information on "Time Management" contact Rhonda Scharf (Finniss) at ON THE RIGHT TRACK - Training & Consulting (613) 821-0953.