Randy Pausch’s Top Time Management Tips
1. Do the ugliest thing first.
2. Focus on the important urgent tasks.
3. Think about time in terms of money.
4. A filing system is essential.
5. Use multiple computer monitors.
6. Have some system to know where you have to be when (it saves brain power).
7. Get a speaker phone for your desk.
8. Stand during phone calls.
9. Start by announcing goals for the call.
10. Call people right before lunch or right before the end of the day.
11. Learn to say no.
12. Find your creative/productive time and defend it ruthlessly.
13. Find your dead time.
14. Turn phone calls into email.
15. Monitor where your time is going. Keep a time journal.
16. Make up a fake deadline and act like it’s real.
17. Empower those to whom you delegate.
18. When you delegate, do the ugliest job yourself.
19. Treat your secretary well.
20. Give people objectives, not procedures.
21. Have someone record what was decided at the meeting and who will do what when.
22. Take away everyone’s Blackberrys.
23. Require meetings to have an agenda.
24. Don’t delete emails.
25. If you want something done, don’t send it to 5 people.
26. Don’t watch television.
27. Eat, sleep, and exercise.
28. Renegotiate deadlines you can’t make.
29. Recognize most things are pass/fail.
30. Get feedback loops.