I remember one particular year in direct sales. The cold-calling, door-knocking old school kind of direct sales. Fun.

Let’s just say I was less than productive during that year but the experience gained was very valuable. Here are 10 tips I learned along the way…

1.  Leave some time between tasks and appointments. Do not schedule your items exactly next to each other. Having a little buffer time between allows you clean up and tie off loose ends and prepare for the next item on the agenda.

2.  Know when enough is enough. Overdoing the task happens because you don’t have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve. Getting started and then getting to 80% should be a good target. Just looking busy doesn’t count on the commission check. And, you can always add the 20% later if required.

3.  Buy a Day timer or Organizer. You need a place to put all of your action items, lists and contacts. Choose either paper or electronic whichever one works for you.

4.  Do what’s important. Go through your list and assign priority to the highest yielding tasks. Get someone to do the rest.

5.  Think ahead; plan to do similar tasks together. Do all your phone calls in one specified time slot, say 30 minutes. Reply to emails later in the day using the 30 minute interval as well. If you have business errands to run, schedule and plan your route so you have the absolute minimum downtime.

6.  Find an assistant to help out. Sometimes you’ll have tasks or duties that don’t require your level of expertise. Delegate that task to someone whom you feel will do an adequate job. For example, doing bank deposits, mailing correspondence, or picking up supplies are jobs that can be given to others– freeing up your time for higher level activities.

7.  Perfectionism is a costly flaw. Don’t blow a fuse over unimportant details. You’ll never get it 100% perfect so don’t let it hold you back. Clients don’t expect that. Certainly, they want their expectations met but perfectionism is the proverbial carrot the donkey will always chase but never get to eat.

8.  Never be late for meetings. Aim to be early. At worst, you’ll be on time. At best you’ll be there 15 minutes beforehand. Aside from showing respect for the other participant’s time, those few minutes aren’t wasted if you use them to prepare mentally, review your notes, or catch up on some reading you keep handy.

9.  Stop multi-tasking. It just doesn’t work when doing thought intensive work. Choose one task and work on it until you’ve reached your target. Switch to another and continue. The quality of work produced will be higher and you’ll feel better about the end result.

10.  Allow a certain amount of time per task. Make your best guess and then track exactly how long the task took to complete. In the future, this will help you to calculate how long a job should take. Parkinsons’ Law decrees the amount of work will expand to fill the time allotted to it. True.

Do you have any time management tips that worked well for you? Share them here.