Time management and particularly the information overload that comes from your bulging email inbox is a problem that arises frequently for many people.

Just to emphasise the point I came across an interesting snippet of information recently that it takes you 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after you have been interrupted by an email (or, I suppose, any other interference).

So if you check your email every 5 minutes then that's about 1 hour per day that you think you are working but are not actually operating at your maximum capacity.  Even worse if you respond to that beep every time a tweet lands in your Tweetdeck.

So there is every chance that a scatterbrain approach to your work is going to take 8 hours or more per week out of your working time.  You think you are working Monday to Friday but in reality you don't get past Thursday tea time!

Solutions?  My own include the classic broad brush approach.

First, switch it off!  Set aside specific times to deal with your email maybe twice a day.  Leave it off the rest of the time to allow you to deal with your priorities – not those imposed on your by somebody else.

Second: use the unsubscribe link. If you are already having problems dealing with the volume of email then it makes sense to reduce the flow.  So unsubscribe from the least important sources of email, newsletters, reminders,special offers blah, blah..  If you don't have time to do anything about them then why bother spending the time to read them?

Third: use an email client to automate the process of filtering your inbox.  My preference is for Gmail because the effect of using filters to set up rules has a cumulative effect.  It may take a minute to set up a filter but if it takes that email (and every one that follows it from the same source) out of your inbox forever – or at least until you want to go looking for it – then that is a great investment.

Just my thoughts – but if you want the academic background then you can find out a whole lot more about the effects of email on how your manage your time at http://www.drthomasjackson.com/

Other email management articles

• Manage eMail Overload By Using A Temporary Inbox With Re:Subj (makeuseof.com)
• Principles of email management (informata.blogspot.com)

• Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems What is a Content Management System? A Content Management System (CMS) is a third party software application which allows web...
• Using MySQL In A Hosting Environment MySQL is a heavy-duty database server. Used with various software languages, most notably PHP, and part of the LAMP family...

Time Management

Having made my public declaration of intent about blogging methodically right here on 1st April I find myself here again on 10th April with very little achieved.  Except that I know more now than I did before – and there's the rub.

Knowing does you no good at all when setting out to make an impact.  It is only doing that will get you noticed.

In the last 9 days I have 'done' some valuable learning.  Some from reading Jack Humphrey's Authority Black Book and some from learning how to use a new software tool that I am using to put up lessons in the How Do I section.

But no matter how useful both the knowledge from Jack and the power of the software tool is now – or will be in the future, the fact is that I have published nothing and the result is that there has been nothing for either the search engines to digest or the public to read.

So now I am doing some doing and set out to write about the most valuable thing available to bloggers.  I'm writing about what is affecting me and my world right now – i.e. my problem with time management.

That's something to remember for every blogger and why blogging can be so effortless once you get the wheels turning.  If you have chosen a subject which really grabs your interest, enthusiasm or even passion then it is going to occupy a large part of your life – and aspects of your subject are going to be begging to be written about every day.

But coming back to managing your time.  We can all be busy and working to achieve multiple objectives, often all at the same time.  Maybe while you work for someone else for a salary that comes in every week or every month it can be OK for you if your efforts don't immediately produce a beneficial result for you personally because you are not dependent on the result of your efforts – but your employer is.  If your employer fails to focus your efforts on the things that are important to their business that is their concern and not yours.

Allocate Your Priority Time

However, when you, and you alone, are responsible for the result then that has to focus the mind.

There are a number of strictures you hear frequently in the self development. wealth creation and internet marketing world.  Mark Joyner teaches what he calls Simpleology, the art of keeping things simple.  'Do one thing' is another and 'complete what you do' to the point that it is productive and not a waste of your time is another.

All of these clearly relate to time management.  Either the priority that you give to a task or the effectiveness with which you complete the task – and neither is any good without the other.  So having experienced the 9 days of ineffectiveness I now have to learn from that lesson and manage my time better.

While I set out to emulate the salaried worker with a couple of hours to spare in the evening I am now going to make those two hours my priority in each working day.  Those two hours come first because that reflects the priority that I am placing on this project.

Bruce Bird is carrying out the ultimate test for bloggers of publicly working to get his blog to earn a living - and inviting other bloggers to join the experience.  Visit his blog and signup free to join in the learning experience.  Go now to http://NicheMarketBlogger.com

• A Letter To The USDB Advisory Council Dear Advisory Council, I am interested to hear what talks and decisions went on behind closed doors last Thursday, the...
• How to Learn from Your Competitors to Build a Better Corporate Blog Sometimes it can be pretty tough to get inspiration for a new corporate blog. You may understand that you need...