Let’s look at each area separately:

TIME. Very productive people know exactly what they are supposed to be doing, at what time, every minute of every day. To effectively organize your time, you must manage three distinct scheduling components:

1. Appointments and Meetings. Keeping your calendar straight is a huge endeavor. Not to mention keeping it up-to-date with all your family’s activities. With so many choices and technologies, it’s difficult know what’s best. Paper planner or Blackberry? Printed calendar from your computer or a diary? Wall calendar at home or Internet solution? Making sure your schedule reflects your business, personal, and family life is a big key to success. Have you ever been in a meeting—and your colleagues ask when everyone can meet next—and you say you don’t know because your calendar is back at your desk? Have you ever been on the phone at home talking to a friend—and your friend wants to have lunch on Thursday—and you vaguely think you have a commitment that day but don’t know for sure, because you can’t check your work calendar from home? Bottom line, if you don’t have a system that contains your entire life in one, easy-to-use tool, you will inevitably face conflicts. This article will help you think through the various methodologies and options, what’s out there, what’s working for you and what’s not, and how you can adjust your choices to better meet your calendaring needs and manage your time more effectively.
2. Things to do. When you think of something you need to do, how do you handle it? Do you simply add it to a list? Make a new task in Outlook? Write it on a sticky note? Put it in your spiral notebook? Many methods for tracking action items are inefficient and disorganized, especially if you’re trying to figure out what to do this very minute with a list of 87 things in front of you. How do you know if you’re making good choices? The key is to maintain several different lists—not just one—master, daily, category, and idea lists for starters. If your friend told you about a great restaurant she visited that you should try, would you be able to remember the name four months later? If your dad rented a video he highly recommends, will you be able to recall the name the next time you’re wandering the video store aisles? Some information isn’t necessarily actionable: it’s recall. This article will help you organize your brain, tasks, and lists, so you can quickly and easily access pertinent information.
3. Reminders. If your friend told you about a great restaurant she visited that you should try, would you be able to remember the name four months later? If your dad rented a video he highly recommends, will you be able to recall the name the next time you’re wandering the video store aisles. It’s your wife’s birthday, and you absolutely cannot remember the perfect gift you thought of two months ago? Some information isn’t necessarily actionable: it’s recall. Reminders aren’t necessarily things you need to track on your to-do list, because you don’t know when you’ll actually do them, because you’re not sure when you’ll need the information again. You also need reminders about important events such as birthdays or anniversaries.