Are you trying to cram more into your day? If you are you're probably stressed out, exhausted, and irritable because you're working too hard. If this sounds like you take a time out. You've got to stop focusing on the wrong things before you burn out. You probably think you just need to figure out how to cram more into your day, but that's the wrong approach. You're only focusing on efficiency.

When you're efficient you get things done in the least amount of time. It's good to be efficient, but efficiency isn't the only consideration for improved time management skills. You definitely want to develop ways to perform necessary and important tasks in less time.

But the more important question for you to answer is whether you should even be doing the task. That's where effectiveness comes into play. Effectiveness is about doing the right things. And the right things are those actions that produce the greatest results. You have a finite amount of time just like everyone else and you have to get the most value from your time. That means that your main focus should be on taking the actions that produce the greatest results now. It's very easy to get caught up thinking you have to take care of a bunch of mundane details that no one but you would ever care if they were done.

I've seen sales people in a slump spending inordinate amounts of time neatly organizing their client files and making meticulous notes when that time would have been much better spent focusing on how to make their next valuable contact. How often do you fritter away precious time on low value tasks? In addition to the obvious time wasters there are all those gray area tasks that seem productive, but they really aren't.

Are you more likely to produce results spending an hour cold calling strangers or attending a breakfast you're prospects are likely to attend? As you make better choices you begin to develop good time management skills. Most people confuse activity with results and suffer the consequences of those misguided choices.

Effectiveness results from both focus and priorities. You have to focus on the actions that produce the greatest results. And you have to prioritize your actions so you always have time for the actions with the highest value, and you never have time for low value activities.