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This is probably the hardest thing for most people to cope with.  Do you manage your time effectively?  Today Jane May at Daily Web Ideas blogs about this topic.

While I agree with her points on this, here are five things you can do each day to help manage your time better.

1. Put off what takes the longest until later in the day. Generally I try to take care of the easiest tasks first.  If you can hammer out the simple tasks first you will also feel more accomplished and you can spend the bulk of the day working on the longer, more difficult issues.
2. Take a break. This sounds silly, but it really is ok for you to take a break, or two or three during your workday.  Studies have shown that the more frequent your breaks are, ultimately the more productive you are because epiphanies usually happen when you aren’t at your desk.
3. Read More. Breakthroughs rarely happen when you are staring your problem in the face.  Try doing research to see if someone has already accomplished what you are trying to do.  No need to re-invent the wheel unless you think yours is better.
4. Avoid email first thing in the morning. Email can be a hindrance to your time and productivity because we tend to use email as a to-do list.  Take a half hour in the morning and use it for “me time” - eat something, read a blog, read the paper and then get to work.  This can help you be relaxed and allow you to focus when you need to.
5. Find plugins that help you keep from stat-checking. This is in direct response to Jane’s note about checking stats.  Ever heard the term “a watched pot never boils”?  Well, your stats aren’t going to update constantly unless you have massive traffic like YouTube or Amazon.com.  So use some browser plugins to help you out.  A great one is AdsenseNotifier for Firefox.  With this little browser add-on you can have your Adsense stats in the lower right corner of your browser status bar and see your clicks and earnings.  It’s also customizable and a right click can take you right to your adsense account. Another great add-on is the SEO for firefox.  With this tool you can quickly check your PageRank as well as how many links you have coming in and from where.

This isn’t a complete list and I am sure there are plenty more things you can do to effectively manage your time, but I think it’s a good start.  A lot of time management and productivity comes down to will power.  It’s easy to be distracted and lose focus especially when you work in a cubicle world.  Prairie-dogging to see what your neighbor is talking about isn’t going to help you get more work done and at the end of the day you’ll be wondering why you just can’t seem to finish all your work in 8 hours.

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