1. Manage Disruptions:  Have daily priorities. Figure out what your task list is for being online.  Assuming you’re actually using your social media tools to accomplish things for work or personal success…Do you want to have a blog post done by a certain time today? Do you want to have commented on all you favorite industry blogs by the time you get up and need to be out the door for dinner? Do you want to blast out a few links to the company blog and photo reel from your latest press event..? Do these things first. Then you can go see what photos your buddy uploaded from Monday Night Football last week….

2.  Don’t overload on information: Pick a few sites that work best for you, NOT all of them. Stick with what you know… and when new strategies and applications are added learn them. Pick a few and know them well, rather than dabling with many. Better to be an expert in a few social media sites than hardly understand them all, am I right? Google Reader offers an easy way to monitor many blogs, but unles you can read them all, don’t subscribe. The truth is, you do’nt have time for it all – and you will make your head spin trying to monitor it all so pick what’s important and do away with the rest.

3. Learn task management:  There are plenty of wasy to do this and many different programs that can help. I am an amatuer and I use my outlook task list, and my gmail task list.  Don’t use your e-mail as a task list. Delete e-mails that you wont reply to, and move on. If something needs to get done.. put it on a to-do list!

4 .Get a Routines: If there are things you need to take care of once a day, or once a week. Make sure you set reminders and create a rountine for those items. (Whether it be blogging, e-mail, reporting results & updates to clients, and checking in on social networks)

5.  Disconnect: Remember to unplug occasionally. Some things just won’t get done if you don’t get off facebook and twitter for a little bit, even if they do have to do w/ social media.  Spend some time each day, or each week un-connected. Stay away from the computer (iphone, blackberry etc) while you prioritize your to-do list and get organized for the week.

What things do you do to stay organized and manage your to do list???  What don’t you do – that you could be doing?

1) Eliminate time wasters in your life. What are you spending your time doing… that you shouldn’t be? Until you learn to cute these wasteful minutes out — you wont be able to use your time efficiently.

A perfect example of this in my opinion is TV. The majority of American’s spend WAY too much time watching TV. This must be limited for you to achieve ultimate control over your time. You’re probably watching way too much, so cut it out. The least you can do is improve the value of TV that you watch and only allow time for news or somewhat valuable or educational programming.

2) Decide what is important. Make a list of what is genuinely important in your life. What comes first? In what order? How much time are you willing to give to each of these important things, and if something must be bumped off, what will it be? One of the keys to time management, the most critical and often the most difficult, is prioritization—you absolutely must know what you want to accomplish before you can go do it. I waist a lot of time trying to decide what ORDER my to do list should go in, but this is something you need to do to start crossing things off. It is NOT effective time management to jump from task to task sporadically, and your work will probably not be as focused if you handle your tasks this way. Today’s world has too many distractions and when you allow those distractions to become priority, you lose efficiency.

• Make of list of what you want to accomplish

• Set time frames for accomplishing each item

• Organize each item in order of importance

• Create a game plan

3) Focus on managing your time (focus on your list) If you’re not thinking about how you can be efficient, chances are — you wont be! Begin to focus on your time management throughout the course of your day. Once you have determined what your priorities are start focusing on them. If something isn’t on your list — Don’t do it, until your list is completed. If you are distracted by something that should be a goal, put it on your list, and wait until you come to it, don’t be a slave to your distractions.