Need some razor sharp tactics to reclaim your time management? Then consider these ideas.

The power of NO! Refuse unnecessary meetings and insist on an agenda before you commit Prioritise: Start with the most important items – not the most recent or those with the neatest deadlines. This applies to meeting agendas as well as daily tasks.

Breathing Space: With back-to-back meetings, create space in your diary in between for you to do other things and catch up o phone calls and emails.

Switch off: Turn off email and voicemail alerts and take the phone off the hook when you need to concentrate on a task.

Copy cut: Automatically file or delete all CC email. Tell people to email directly.

One touch: Do not touch an email more than once. If you touch it, you must reply, delete or file it

Dear Diary: Use your calendar for everything. Book in time for yourself, for your family, or responding to emails that take more than five minutes.

Drag: For emails you need to deal with later, click and drag them into your Outlook calendar File: Work out some logical file names for things that can’t be disposed of (Papers and emails) and make a decision of every item you possess.

Save: Back up your local hard drive daily, or at least weekly.

Temporary Reprieve: Create an email folder called HTB (halfway to the bin) for those emails you only need to keep for a few days, and purge it regularly.

Ration: Check your emails only once or twice a day and batch edit. Short: Keep each email to four sentences and state its purpose clearly in the subject line.

Contributed by Jim Prigg - Advice Publications and Training