It's a typical weekday morning as you arrive at the shop: There's a lot to be done and there never seems to be enough time. To help organize your day, you decide to make a "to-do" list. That's a good start. But once you finish making your list, you put it inside your top desk drawer, right on top of yesterday's list, which is on top of about 10 other lists you've compiled over the past month. You'll get to all of them eventually, you tell yourself; but in fact you know you might only accomplish a fraction of the jobs on your list, and they probably won't all be accomplished that week.

Making a to-do list can be a good, productive habit. But if your intention is to actually accomplish the goals outlined on those lists, you will have to take your time management practices to the next level - and that requires organization and commitment, not just paper and pen.

Time Robbers
The top five time wasters at work are telephone interruptions; drop-in visitors; meetings (both scheduled and unscheduled); crises; and a lack of objectives, priorities and deadlines, according to Patty Kitching of Atlanta, Ga., who presented the "More Than Time Management Workshop" seminar at the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair's (I-CAR) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., last year.

She did acknowledge, however, that this list of time wasters was compiled a few years ago, before the use of cellular phones, e-mail and pagers reached the widespread proportions they represent now. Kitching presumed that these items would be high on the list were the poll taken today.

Some of the time wasters cited by shop owners in attendance at the seminar as major factors at their businesses include inadequate, inaccurate or delayed information; and an inability to say "no."

While many time wasters are unforeseeable and unavoidable, planning and organizing those aspects of your life that can be controlled makes you a more productive person, and helps you to be better prepared to handle those unexpected occurrences.

Planning
Have you ever wanted to accomplish something, but knew it would be months before you could get around to it? What do you do? Do you write it on a sticky note and put it on the list-pile in your desk drawer? Do you blow it off for now, telling yourself you will remember it later on? Proper planning will help you to establish both short- and long-term goals, and accomplish those goals.

According to Mark Murphy, instructor for Franklin Covey, a company that conducts professional seminars on various topics such as time management, there are three major excuses used for not planning: "There isn't enough time; putting out today's 'fires' takes precedence; and planning limits freedom."

Using a daily planner is much more efficient than having numerous to-do lists laying around. With a daily planner, you are not only able to list daily tasks, you can use it as a source to record your intermediate and long-range goals. Your phone numbers and addresses are all in one central location. You have calendars available for the next several years to plan far ahead. A planner also helps you to organize complex tasks by breaking up the duties and assigning them to different dates.

Murphy suggests spending 10 to 15 minutes each day planning and prioritizing tasks for the next day, either the night before or in the morning before starting your day. Although it takes discipline to maintain this routine - and people often tell themselves they are too busy to take the time to plan - the planning pays off by saving time in the end.

Priorities
Prioritizing tasks is a critical element for effective daily planning, according to Murphy. He recommends prioritizing daily tasks by tagging items as either "vital," "important" or "optional." Vital tasks, he suggests, are those that must be completed that day. He cautions, however, to not mistake urgency for priority. The most urgent task is not always the most important task, he said.

Kitching echoes this thought, and believes that all activities or tasks fall in one of the four following areas:

• Urgent and important (For example, buying a wedding anniversary present for your spouse when you have only one day to do so)
• Not urgent, but important (For example, buying that same present when you have about two months to do so.)
• Urgent but not important (A ringing phone, for example)
• Not urgent and not important.

Procrastination
Please ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you ever delayed doing something that didn't have to be done that day?
• Have you ever made a vow to stop procrastinating, only to break that vow a few hours later?
• Do you at times lack the ability to fulfill obligations and accomplish goals you set out to do because you delay even starting them?
• Have those experiences made you feel inadequate?

If you answered "yes" to any or all of the questions above, you have an acute condition know as the "average human syndrome."

We all procrastinate. Murphy cited a theory proposed by James Newman, author of "Release Your Brakes," which suggests that procrastination is relative to our comfort zones. We tend to move to our comfort zones when choosing which activities to pursue in a day, suggests Newman. We choose to do those tasks that are "comfortable" and avoid doing those tasks that are "uncomfortable." Therefore, to accomplish goals that are uncomfortable, we must expand our comfort zones to include those tasks we would otherwise avoid.

Procrastination can negatively influence a worker's productivity, and Kitching said there are a number of factors causing procrastination. Some of the main reasons people procrastinate are a fear of failure, a dislike of conflict, job difficulty and boredom or repetition.

The goal of perfection, as strange as it may seem, can also cause procrastination. According to Kitching, perfectionists often postpone starting or completing a job because they want to do it perfectly, but perceive that they don't have the time to do so.

Having complete control over your time is not a realistic goal. We can't live our lives from one preplanned task to the next because there will always be factors beyond our control. And in fact, flexibility and spontaneity are characteristics we should possess occasionally.

Procrastination can be somewhat overcome by working hard to accomplish preset ambitions. You can change your bad habits, but it's not easy and it won't happen in one day. Work at it. Mark Twain remarked, "A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time."

Working Smarter
Goals should be realistic, according to Kitching, who advocates establishing "S.M.A.R.T." goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

She suggests workers adopt a "five minute" time habit, whereby they set goals for five minutes and see how much they can get done in that time.

She also suggests providing personal rewards to yourself for personal accomplishments. Completing a job provides a feeling of satisfaction, but that sensation by itself is often not rewarding enough to truly motivate oneself.

Simply feeling satisfied that a job function was completed is often not enough to truly motivate oneself.

Kitching offered some additional tips to getting more done at work:

• Barter jobs - trade off a job you dislike with someone else and do something they don't like doing too much.
• Delegate tasks if possible.
• Cooperate with coworkers to save time for everyone.
• Do double time - You can do two things at once (for example, driving while listening to instructional tapes).
• Learn to say "no."
• Strive for results, not perfection or neatness.

Also, you must treat your time as a precious commodity. Don't agree to do things that are not necessary and will only end up causing you more stress than they're worth.

Above all else, try not to stress out over things you can't control.

Better Worker, Better Life
Being organized and controling the events in your life has the cyclical positive effect of making you a better, more efficient and more productive worker, according to Murphy. Controlling the events in your life, he said, makes you more productive, which leads to greater self esteem, which in turn allows you to better control events, and so on - hence, the cyclical pattern.

As a shop owner or manager, you must properly manage your time. You know the positive result it has on the shop's bottom line. But helping your employees to better manage their time - both at work and in their personal lives - also will directly benefit the shop's productivity.

Don't just send your technicians to technical classes that help them become better technicians. Send them to classes such as time management seminars to help them better control their own lives. Seminars can teach them to plan and prioritize, and they can learn useful habits to overcome obstacles such as procrastination.

Sure, it's not cheap in the short term to absorb the cost for the seminar and for the time lost in the shop. You can justify not spending the time or money on such educational opportunities by insisting you don't have the time or money for such seminars. But you will never have the time to attend such seminars until you attend such seminars to help you learn to make time for such seminars. (It's a bit of a tongue twister, I know.)

It's never too late to break old habits and adopt new, more productive ones. You can work harder and longer to accomplish the goals you set for yourself, but the best method of mastering the most precious commodity of all is to simply work smarter. Effective time management is a good start.

Filling the Void
Patty Kitching, who presented a time management seminar at the I-CAR annual meeting last year, says people often get more things done in a period of time when they have a short amount of time to get them accomplished. She asked shop owners, for instance, how much they accomplished in the last few hours before leaving to attend the conference. The thought is that one will accomplish a lot more when there is a time constraint.

Kitching cited Parkinson's Law that suggests, "Work expands to fill the time available for its accomplishment." Under this principle, a person can get eight hours of work done in two hours if that is all the time they have. Vice versa, if a job should only take two hours but the person has eight hours to do it, the job often will occupy those eight hours.

Satisfaction From the Little Things
Show me the person who doesn't feel utter elation when he or she crosses off an item on a to-do list. Some use a check mark, some cross it off. Some circle it. Others, like myself, prefer to obliterate the item, zigzagging the pen over the item until there is only a big, blue blob of ink covering the previously existing item. I enjoy smothering that item, because I did it. I accomplished that goal. And it may be the only item I accomplish on my list for that day, but I wallow in joy because I did it. And although I wasted an ounce of ink covering that item on the list, smothering whatever it was I actually just accomplished, I subconsciously know what I accomplished and I feel much better. It may sound compulsive, but it is a simple reward. I do occasionally reward myself with larger bounties for accomplishing significant feats. But absent a meaningful motivator, give at least your subconscious ambitions the satisfaction of accomplishment by ceremoniously check-marking, crossing off or in my case, obliterating the item on the to-do list.

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