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	<title>Frugal living tips @ CheapEncounters.com &#187; time management</title>
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		<title>10 Daily Steps to Higher Personal Effectiveness</title>
		<link>http://cheapencounters.com/2009/07/08/10-daily-steps-to-higher-personal-effectiveness/</link>
		<comments>http://cheapencounters.com/2009/07/08/10-daily-steps-to-higher-personal-effectiveness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:20:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BillyOceansEleven</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Working]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clutter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal effectiveness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[time management]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unclutterer]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[This isn&#8217;t directly related to personal finance, but I liked this list of things to add to your daily routine to make your life less cluttered that was posted at Unclutterer. A lot of the list, however, deals more with just getting things done rather than managing stuff. Here&#8217;s a quick run down, and for [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This isn&#8217;t directly related to personal finance, but I liked this list of things to add to your daily routine to make your life less cluttered that was posted at <a target="_blank" href="http://unclutterer.com/2009/07/06/10-uncluttering-things-to-do-every-day/">Unclutterer</a>. A lot of the list, however, deals more with just getting things done rather than managing stuff. Here&#8217;s a quick run down, and for more detail check out their site.</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>If you have pets, make your bed.</strong> Doesn&#8217;t really apply to us, but I can see where pet hair and the like would be unwelcome bedmates. </li>
<li><strong>Know where you’re going.</strong> This includes nothing your route and the traffic conditions that might warrant a detour. While traffic is a fact of life, a lot of traffic jams and wandering around looking for something because you&#8217;re lost can be avoided, saving time and money.</li>
<li><strong>Plan your perfect day.</strong> I&#8217;m an accountant, so there are no perfect days. However, I do find making a list of what I need to do the next day helps to focus my energy when I get into the office in the morning.</li>
<li><strong>Clean out your desk’s inbox.</strong> Some sorting and weeding of easy items is good, but it seems like trying at absolutely clean out the inbox is a recipe for either getting stuck at work late or leaving a bunch of stuff unorganized and unfinished for your arrival the next day.</li>
<li><strong>Set your desk for tomorrow.</strong> This should include cleaning up your desktop. I&#8217;m not the best at doing it, but I like to at minimum sort through the papers that accumulate on my desk during the day (in my job I do a lot of analysis, so I can end up with multiple schedules scattered on my desk by the end of the day). This goes well with #3 and #4 above.</li>
<li><strong>Sort, open, and act on your mail.</strong> I&#8217;m trying to get better at this as well. We moved my office downstairs in our house, so the shredder is now easily accessible as I sort the mail. The credit card offers and such go directly into the shredder and the other junk mail goes into the trash. Bills go into my work bag to pay while I&#8217;m taking my lunch at work the next day. The weak link for me is statements and such which end up in a pile on my desk until I get tired of looking at them and bring them to work to scan. I just need to bring them with me to work with the bills and scan as I receive them.</li>
<li><strong>Load (and, if necessary, run) the dishwasher or hand-wash the dishes.</strong> We&#8217;re pretty OCD about this. We never leave dirty dishes out overnight. Larger stuff gets hand-washed and everything else goes in the dishwasher. The only disagreement between me and the wife is she insists on running it nightly, even if it isn&#8217;t full.</li>
<li><strong>Get ready for bed an hour before you plan to go to sleep.</strong> I don&#8217;t use a full hour, but I&#8217;ve gotten into the habit of making sure my clothes are laid out and my lunch is packed before I go to bed. It is a waste of time and money for me to go out to lunch just because I was too lazy to pack the lunch the night before and I was too rushed to do it that morning. I also make sure that those bills and anything else that needs to come with me to work is packed up and ready to go.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here are a couple of bonus tips of my own for you:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Use your lunch break to take care of personal business. </strong>One of the luxuries of bringing your lunch to work and eating at your desk is that you normally won&#8217;t need the whole hour. Keep a list of personal items you need to work on (bills to pay, rebates to submit, etc.) and use those to fill the remainder of your lunch break. It helps allow you to relax once you get home from work and avoid booting up the computer to clear your personal tasks list. Haven&#8217;t you already spent enough time in front of the computer by the time you get home?</li>
<li><strong>Keep a to-do list with you at all times. </strong>We&#8217;ve all done this: think about something that you need to do and then completely forget about it. A lot of times these types of things will come back to bite us in the butt (i.e., when you forget to send in the credit card payment), other times it will just mean wasted time and effort (i.e., when you go to the store and remember something you were supposed to get after you&#8217;re already home). A great way around this is to keep a &#8220;to-do&#8221; list with you so you can jot things like this down and review it regularly. A pad and pen will work, although I find using the Fliq Tasks app on my iPhone to work really well. It helps keep me on track when I ask myself the question &#8220;what was it I needed to do.&#8221;</li>
</ol>
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