There’s something so powerful about a central place to store all of your ideas, thoughts and to-do items.

You don’t feel distracted and scattered because everything is in one place.

Whenever I start feeling overwhelmed, I make a master to-do list of everything I need AND want to do.

My current list contains things I have to sent out in the mail, business projects I want to work on, and documents I need to update, like some e-books and coaching tools.

So why a master to-do list?

What’s wrong with the back of an envelope and millions of post-it notes?

1. Writing it all down frees up your brain for big picture thinking so you don’t have to concern yourself with remembering details.

2. It eliminates all the bits and pieces of paper, post-it notes, backs of envelopes, etc.

3. There is something about the act of actually putting pen to paper that seals things in your mind. If you’ve ever been on one of my goal-setting workshops, you know exactly what I mean.

4. Once you see it in black and white, you can deal with reality so much better rather than imagining how bad it all is.

5. You can choose the exact number of tasks you want to tackle every day (I don’t recommend more than 6) without feeling overwhelmed. Move these 6 tasks to your daily to-do list.

My challenge to you

* Download my paper-based master to-do list from my website or use Outlook if you like the electronic version. The method doesn’t matter much; what does matter is that you have a central place to collect your tasks.

* First brain dump everything – go wild, you can sort it out later.

* Now, make categories and then start attacking that list.

Happy organising!

Over to you – do you use master to-do lists?

Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focussed action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full.

Visit  http://purposefultimemanagement.com  for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.

You may think, as a time management expert, that I have a perfect life as far as time goes.

Wrong!

I’m human and in addition to being late sometimes, I’ve also had some major bloopers, like the time I missed my flight from Dublin.

We were travelling from Dublin back to Johannesburg via London. At Dublin airport, we missed check-in by 5 minutes even though we were in the queue on time.

I must confess that I broke down and SOBBED!

As a result, we had to take a later flight from Dublin to London… that landed at a different airport, Gatwick. Our taxi broke many speed limits getting us to Heathrow on time for check-in but again there was a mad rush to get us on the flight leaving for Johannesburg. It was like The Amazing Race as we ran through the airport terminal for 20 minutes, only worse, as we were also out of shape.

If memory serves me correctly, we were in the last batch of 4 people who managed to squeeze through the aircraft’s doors on time. What should have been a stopover of 7 hours turned into a second, nearly missed flight!

How on earth does this happen, you ask?

Well, let me share the 3 critical mistakes I made:

Not leaving enough buffer time for the number of people involved

The more people you have to accommodate, the more time you need. We had been staying with a friend who was also going away that weekend and we (mistakenly) assumed that he’d take the same amount of time to get ready as we did.

We usually leave enough time to get to the airport and then add on another 30 minutes’ buffer time. In this case, we should have added on an hour.

Assuming that things are the same on weekends

At the time there were major roadworks in Dublin. Our friend was used to the detours during the week but not over the weekend. On this particular weekend, the highway was worse than it was during the week. Maybe it was the best time to work on the roads, but not for all of us travellers.

Not planning for different cultures and/ or countries

In South Africa, I’d had many, many customer service interactions where I could talk and reason with the people and get my way. South Africa is known for hospitality, friendliness and helpfulness.

The ground staff at the Dublin airport were not having my logic (that we WERE in the queue on time) and didn’t care that we might miss our flight to South Africa and that it was the last one for a whole day. I even started crying from sheer frustration and those cold-hearted ladies didn’t budge an inch.

This whole experience cost a LOT of money (had to get new tickets and pay a taxi to take us 50 miles to the correct airport) and time with friends (with our Dublin friend as we had a very unsatisfactory, quick good-bye and we totally missed meeting up with another friend at Heathrow), and was really not worth the extra 30 minutes it would have taken to let things work out perfectly.

Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes because I can assure you, you NEVER want to go through an experience like that.

I flew internationally twice after that incident and both times left an extra TWO hours’ buffer time as I never, ever, ever want to go through that again!

Have you ever missed a flight? Share in the comments.

Want to use this article in your ezine or on your blog? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb.

Marcia Francois is a time management and organising coach who empowers small business owners and other busy professionals who want to make the most of their time. You’ll get simple, practical organising and time management secrets to help you work less and enjoy life more! Visit http://takechargesolutions.org for your free Organising Success Pack.

I am soooo not a fan of the baking mess although I do love to bake.

Actually, it’s the eating part of the baking I really love

So to avoid the kitchen looking like this every time I feel like baking something…

I measure out 3 sets of ingredients.

I then label the outside of the containers with masking tape so I know which container has which dry ingredients.

It’s not very difficult because I usually only bake muffins and these oatmeal cookies.

Then when I feel the urge to bake, all I do is get one of these containers, add the wet ingredients and load the dough onto the baking trays.

Baking then takes about 10 minutes so saves me LOTS of time and best of all, NO MESS!

What are your best baking tips?

P.S. I was all done with Christmas baking but then on Christmas Eve I found these Cowboy cookies on Bakerella’s site. They made me absolutely DROOL so I rushed home from work and got baking. And they’re delicious.

That could explain the extra weight I’m carrying…

As with almost anything though, I can’t seem to follow a recipe exactly as is so I’ve changed it a bit to suit our household (I weed out ingredients I’m not likely to have in my pantry).

P.P.S. Why is it that when you go into a homeware store you suddenly see the CUTEST baking utensils that, until that very moment, you didn’t know you absolutely had to have? You’ll be happy to know I was very strong and bravely walked out the store.

So many tasks we do as a matter of routine can be seriously streamlined to save us loads of time.

But only if you prepare in advance.

My gym bag looks like this most of the time.

What’s in there?

• takkies (sneakers)
• socks and sports bra
• long and short pants
• t-shirt

When I get back home from the gym, I immediately re-stock it so that it’s ready to go again.

It takes me literally two minutes to do but saves me time on gym days because I don’t have to think, “oh, what do I need to put in there again?”

Do you prepare in advance like this for gym or other activities?

This ecourse will take you, step-by-step, from overwhelm to peace and order. There are short lessons and practical steps because I know you already don’t have time! You also get a quickstart 60-minute audio to jump-start your progress.

Check it out now

image from www.breakitdownblog.com

Do you prefer to text or phone?

Why?

Read this and weigh in here.

Preparing my clothes the night before. By the way, I got that top in Scotland.

(Suzanne, that was the day we went shopping because we didn’t want to do touristy things without you )