It has only been two weeks since I started my own company, Alternative Funding Options, Inc. (AFO) and I have found time management to be one area that I must improve upon.

In today’s busy environment, everyone is pressed for time. It seems like our professional lives overlap our personal lives and our personal lives overlap our professional lives. Have you noticed it is hard to break away from the office even when you’re home, or it’s hard to forget about things that need to be done at home, even when you’re in the office? Time management is one of the biggest stresses we have in our lives. Good time management means less stress, less stress means a more productive work environment and a better quality of life. All of us have felt those days that never seem to end or those days that end right when they started.

I decided I needed to have a time management plan that would give me the opportunity to even out those days and make my time productive. Below is what I came up with:

Clarify my objections, set my priorities and then focus on them.

Analyze and evaluate my actions at the end of each day.

Eliminate at least one time waster from my life each week.

Write out a plan for each week. Ask myself what I hope to accomplish by the end of the week and what I will need to do to accomplish these results.

Make a to-do list every day.

Make sure every hour of my workday is productive.

Have some quiet time each day to organize my thoughts.

Employ the principals of self-reward and self-discipline.

Conquer procrastination. Learn to do it now.

Develop a personal philosophy of time – what time means to you and how time relates to your life.