What's the #1 change you've made to improve your time management skills?

I am most productive when I do the things I am dreading the most first. It's amazing how much smoother the sailing is when I no longer have to worry about a boring or otherwise unpleasant task on the horizon. Also, creating a rewards system helps. No beer today until the leaves are raked!

Get busy. Seriously. I am 100% more productive (not hyperbole) when deadlines are tighter. I have til the end of the day to do something? Yeah, still going to be working on that come 8 or 9pm. I have til the end of the day to do five things? Yeah, one or two of them might not get done but the most important ones do and I am more productive overall. It forces you to use your time better.

I enter absolutely everything into a to-do list and I actively work off of it. Everything else is just an extension or refinement of that basic premise: Write it down so I don't forget it, and then make "cross things off the list" my full-time job.

I started getting up an hour earlier. And, going to sleep 2 hours earlier. Everything else followed without much thought. I am much more efficient now.

Ditch any to-do system that you don't actively use after two weeks of starting. Everyone needs their own. What works for me: After trying many, many systems, I found one that's worked consistently for over a year. I started with the most important thing I needed to solve -- the feeling of being busy but not doing what I was supposed to. Major drain on anything I was doing. That came from not being able to answer the question "What the hell is going on right now?" That breaks down into "what should I be doing right now" and "what should I be prepared for." For me, the best solution for this was just to have a weekly list (on Trello) with sub-lists for each day of the week (So one list that just has seven cards on it, each named after the day of the week.) I look at it whenever I get that feeling. The things I don't have to do that day get moved to another day, one I think I'll have time for it. Stuff that's coming up I mark as a future item and put on the day they'll happen. Doesn't sync to my calendar, no assignments, sometimes I use checklists, but often things are shorthand notes. That's all I need.

The biggest thing for me was realizing that I am a morning person. Once I figured that out, it was easy to start doing the more brain-intenstive things before lunch and save the more mundane, rote stuff for the afternoon. You may not be able to do this, but I was able to shift my working hours, so I start earlier. I have an hour before the rest of the staff starts to arrive and I can get a lot done in that hour before work starts for everyone else.

I have a $1.49 http://www.staples.com/Ampad-To-Do-Notepad-5-inch-x-8-inch/product_368796 pad from Staples. I use one page per week. Everything to do this week gets written on the left side, upcoming projects go on the right side. I add to the pad as things go along. If there is a long-term project, I write out all of the steps, making sure I put this week's steps on the correct side of the pad. When I finish something, I mark the date that I finished it, and check off the box. (if the week gets insane, I add a sticky note to continue the list.) At the end of the week I enter the things I've done as completed Tasks in Outlook's task list. This is my digital record of what I've done that comes in mega-handy come yearly review time. I carry over the undone tasks to a fresh page for the new week. I've tried using strictly Outlook's task list, Remember the Milk, Teux Deux (it almost did it for me, but then it changed) and a watered down GTD system. This dumb $1.49 notepad does it. That, and a magnet on my cube wall with Eleanor Roosevelt's "Do the thing you think you cannot do" quote. Because most of the time I put things off, it's because I'm anxious about it. That quote reminds me that I need to run that meeting, or delegate that task or (ulp!) make that phone call.

Eliminating distractions! There is plenty of research on willpower and how it is a limited resource, so make focusing on work easier for yourself and remove the possibility of being distracted so that avoiding these distractions isn't even an ongoing choice. For me, and probably most of us, my biggest weakness was spending a great deal of time surfing the web when I wanted to be doing focused work on something else. My solution: Step 1: Install https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji?hl=en Google Chrome extension (or the parallel on whatever browser you use). Put all of your favorite time-sink sites in and then block them for an hour or two. Yes, you could theoretically just open up another browser, but you probably won't (and if you find yourself doing that I'm sure you could find something similar for other browsers). Step 2: Turn off your phone if possible, or at least disable notifications. Step 3: Get away from people. Step 3: Start working. If you're doing computer work and you find yourself staring at the screen spacing out, that's ok. As long as you're putting in the time don't stress about your productivity level. You'll eventually get tired of staring and you'll start working. This strategy is how I finished my thesis and it's completely changed how I do work. I originally found myself taking a Facebook/Metafilter/whatever break every few sentences and if I didn't stop myself these breaks could stretch on for 15 minutes. That doesn't sound like much but it adds up, and at the end of a 6 hour "work" period I'd feel like shit because I barely got anything done and spent most of the day surfing the Internet and feeling guilty about it. If you can't surf the Internet but every hour or two, you can get shit done and then surf the Internet for 15 minutes guilt free.

What Tomorrowful said. I have a notebook I write down everything I need to do in and check items off as I go. I use Google Calendar (synced with my iPhone) to keep track of meetings, deadlines, and appointments but I haven't found anything I like as much as a good old pen and paper for tracking specific tasks. My lists are arranged into three categories: 1. Needed to be done yesterday. 2. Needs to be done within a day or two. 3. Needs to be done in the near future. That's it. I have tried Remember the Milk and similar task management tools and thought they were neat and functional, but I spent way more time updating them than I did actually doing the stuff I needed to do.