Top 9 Time Management and Productivity Tools

1. Getting Things Done: Stress-Free Productivity

My favorite, current book about productivity and time management provides a decision making model that helps you manage work flow. This useful book also covers project planning, organizing and processing work, and developing a functional productivity and time management system. If you know a lot about increasing productivity, you'll still get new tips in David Allen's excellent book.

2. Handhelds and PDAs

I'm a list maker. If you are, too, why are you still using a paper calendar/planner? My favorite feature of my Palm is its ability to move incomplete items forward to the date of my choice without my having to re-enter the item. When I use my Palm as is intended, my paper-less time management increases my productivity. My attention to goals, plans, and progress keeps me on track professionally.

3. Palm Portable Keyboard

I learned how to write the graffiti alphabet within a half-hour of opening my Palm. But, I don't like to use either it or the stylus when I have a lot of writing to input. The Palm Keyboard makes typing goals, appointments, meeting minutes, addresses, and other entries easy. It often allows me to leave my laptop in the office because it's so easy to take to meetings in my briefcase.

4. First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy

I'm not a raving Stephen Covey "Seven Habits" fan, although I do believe in "begin with the end in mind." This book asks you to approach the time of your life knowing that the important actions you invest time in are usually not urgent. Thus, they’re harder to devote time to. Time invested in preparation, prevention, planning, and relationships comes first when you plan the time of your life.

5. Time Management from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System ...

Julie Morgenstern applies her "analyze, strategize, attack" philosophy to the management of time. If you are a person who juggles competing interests and events, her approach to creating a personal time map is helpful. I also like her emphasis on the fact that each of us will have a time management system that is different and uniquely ours. Your custom-designed system will work best for you.

6. Life Balance

Life Balance is award-winning software that will help you create a "To Do" list that is driven by your important goals, your desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from what you accomplish every day. A personal coach that works in your Palm OS system, a Windows version will soon be available; Life Balance Desktop Edition for Macintosh is available now.

7. Planning Boards

The perfect tool for teams of people who work together and need a visual, on-wall, depiction of their schedules, is an erasable planning board. Use this tool to schedule all of the tasks and events that have to happen for you to complete your projects on time. Visually schedule vacations and paid time off so people can plan around each other's schedules. A simple, but effective, tool.

8. Goldmine

Goldmine Contact Management software will help you keep track of every business contact you make. It's perfect for a team-based work environment or a small business in which schedules and projects need coordination. You can purchase a single user copy to manage your network of contacts or connect an entire office with this tool.

9. Tickler File System

My all-time favorite productivity tip is to make a hanging file for each week. Into files within these hanging files, I place all of the documentation relating to a meeting, a training event and any correspondence due that week. My desk is clear because all of the paper is in this file. I don't forget dates and supporting information as they are filed by date needed at my fingertips.