These days, most of us have hundreds – or even thousands – of files on our hard drives, both at work and at home. Finding them when we need them can be a major challenge if they aren’t perfectly organized. In fact, when you add up the time most of us spend an average week or month looking for the files we need, it could easily add up to hours that have been lost.

Given that we are always recommending that you keep a clean and organized workspace or task list, does it not make sense to do the same with your computer files? Here are a handful of tips to help you keep your files right where you need them:

Use names, dates, and versions. It is easy, when you are in a hurry, to give a file you are working on a simple name like “Kevin’s new account list.” But what happens when you are searching for that file three months from now? The only way to prevent problems is to develop a system for naming files and folders, and then use it consistently. Over time, it will become second nature, but only if you get into the habit at first.

Develop a file tree. All the major projects in your life or career should have corresponding folders on your computer. Beneath each of those should be sub-folders, moving from the broad to the specific, until you’re down to individual projects, clients, months, and so on. Again, this takes a little bit of discipline at first, but it is a habit that will pay you off for years to come.

Clean your folders and discs once in a while.  Assuming you are backing up your data as often as you should, there is no sense in keeping folders and files that you haven’t used for years –they are just in the way, making it harder to find other items you need now. Try to spend a few hours a month archiving and deleting old information; doing so will make it easier to find the name new files.

Add keywords to scanned documents. Many scanning programs allow you to mark scanned and digital documents with keywords, as well as file names. An invoice from a marketing firm, for example, might be saved with the company name, month, and year. But you could also mark the file with keywords like “expenses,” “marketing,” or “vendor invoice” to make it easier to find in the future.

One way to handle both your paper and electronic files is to use a program like Paper Tiger .  It helps you combine all of your filing with a quick retrieval method and make better use of your time.

Could making your work environment noisier actually increase your productivity? As strange as it sounds, that’s a distinct possibility. Do not worry, however, I am not about to propose that you introduce loud music or a jackhammer to your office…

Most of us would like less noise and distractions in the workplace, but it turns out that noise-canceling headphones and soothing sounds – both of which largely revolve around “white noise” rather than silence – can help us to concentrate and be more productive. In other words, by drowning out the sounds that distract us and replacing them with ones that are more common, we can focus our minds more effectively.

Here are a few tips for making the most of them and increasing your productivity:

Use the right equipment. Noise-canceling headphones run from the inexpensive to the wildly outrageous. Still, I recommend getting the best care you can afford within your budget. That is because the higher-end models don’t just block out more distractions and offer better sound quality, but they are also more comfortable to wear, meaning they will put less strain on your mind and your ears.

Test out a few different sounds. We all have different sounds that make us feel calm and relaxed; while the gentle rain or waves crashing might do it for one person, others might like soft music or just plain white noise. The trick is to find something that helps you focus, but does not make you feel overly drowsy or distracted. It might take a few experiments to find one that works best for you.

Take advantage of the “quiet.” The point of adding some white noise isn’t just to take away office sounds – it is also to help you concentrate on what’s important. To that end, you should remember not to put on noise-canceling headphones simply to “tune out,” but also to follow the other time management tips you frequently find in this blog, like blocking off time for your most important tasks, eliminating phone calls and distractions when available, etc.

It might sound strange to focus your attention by adding white noise to your work routine, but I hope you’ll give it a try and see if it just might help you concentrate.

Once you have conquered the noise interruptions, you can turn your attention to the other distractions that rank in the Top 10 for Office Interruptions.

When it comes to time management and productivity, sleep can be a tricky thing: Without enough of it, you can’t do your best work. And yet, one of the best time management tips you’ll find – and one I am quite fond of – is to get up a little bit earlier to exercise or work on your most important tasks.

Are these contradictory messages?

In one sense, they certainly are. You cannot get all of your sleep time and have your early-morning productivity, too. And so, managing your sleep is a bit of a balancing act. Still, there are a few things to remember when trying to decide when to get things done, and when to get a little bit of shuteye:

Prioritize your health. Doctors and experts will tell you that most of us are not getting as much sleep as we should. This isn’t always a time management problem as much as it is a problem prioritizing. If you have to cut down on your list of projects and obligations to stay healthy and alert, that is a trade worth making.

Sleep is about quality as much as quantity. Of course, lying in bed for twelve hours each night will not leave you refreshed if you are tossing and turning, and getting six solid hours of uninterrupted deep sleep can do wonders. Do not just focus on the amount of sleep you’re getting, but also the quality. If you feel like you are spending a lot of time in bed, but not waking up with energy, then you may need to change your caffeine intake, or possibly see a sleep specialist.

A good routine can help. Another great way to improve the quality of your sleep, and your health, is to have a regular routine that you follow. Going to bed at roughly the same time every night, and waking up around the same time each morning, regenerates your body a lot more than trying to sleep in “binges” will. Knowing that, try to concentrate on the sleep routine rather than attempting to “catch up” every weekend.

For more solutions to the dilemmas of sleep deprivation, read “Sleeping Your Way to Greater Productivity.”

One of the  ironies of the “information age” is that there’s so much data out there that it is hard to actually learn anything, much less concentrate on it for very long. In fact, some experts think that, with so much information and so many facts coming at us all the time, the art of concentrating is getting lost.

Navigating information overload is a bit of a catch-22. On the one hand, the most informed men and women make the best choices, and get ahead in their careers; and on the other, learning to concentrate on one task at a time, and think deeply about it, is becoming a more rare and precious skill.

What often happens instead of concentrating is that we multitask, thinking this is a better way to manage our time and get more done.  I call this MLS, or Modern Life Syndrome.  MLS is often confused with ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder. 

With that in mind, here are a few tips for fighting information overload, staying on top of your field, and learning about the topics that are most important you:

Make priorities. Strange as it sounds, most of us know too much about too many things. In other words, we spend a lot of time reading and learning about skills and disciplines that do not actually apply to our jobs. It is one thing to learn about a personal interest, but dwelling on professional skills that aren’t relevant to the job you have – or the one you want – is counterproductive. Get in the habit of making and keeping good learning priorities.

Stick to a learning schedule. Whether it is keeping up with the news, or taking on new skills in your industry, commit to devoting a certain amount of time (a couple of hours per week, for instance) and then keep to it. That’s important because you do not want to fall behind, but also because you do not want to flood your mind with so many facts and details that you suffer from “paralysis by analysis.” Treat information as you would food for your mind: Put enough into it be healthy, but not so much to slow you down.

Focus on one thing at a time. One of the reasons we feel so overloaded by information is that we allow them to come at us constantly. Not every e-mail, article, telephone call, or other piece of information that comes your way is urgent. Try to focus on one thing at a time, and you will quickly discover that your capacity for learning and absorbing is increased. Our minds are built to tackle a single issue and move on, so concentrate on what’s in front of you and let your brain do its job.

A lot of us went to the summer thinking about all of the things we were going to accomplish… only to eventually watch those goals dissipate away with the long days and summer sun. I have written in the past about the letdown that often comes toward the end of January or the beginning of February, when people realize that their New Year’s resolutions weren’t realistic enough, and the same thing can happen at the end of the summer.

Believe it or not, the more goal-driven you are, the bigger problem this can be. After all, summer does not just mean warm days and long vacations – many of us enter those months with the intention of getting some of our projects on track during the slow season. If you have not gotten as far ahead as you might have liked, the end of summer can actually be a little bit depressing. So, what do you do when your big summer productivity plans have gotten away from you?

The first thing to do is go easy on yourself. Regardless of what you did or did not finish, the fact that you even made plans to start with is an accomplishment in and of itself. Beyond that, here are four things you can do to get your goals back on track:

Appreciate the progress you did make. Maybe you didn’t finish that online learning course or nail down the details for major proposal, but you probably did take at least some steps in the right direction. Every positive move and action brings you closer to your goal, so learn to feel good about what you did get done over the summer. Building from where you are now is still better than starting over.

Figure out what held you back. In the same way, if there are some specific reasons, problems, or time constraints that kept you from finishing as much as you might have liked, now is a good time to acknowledge them and figure out what you could do differently going forward. Setbacks are part of life. What separates the most productive men and women from their peers is how they learn from them and move on.

Set shorter-term goals. If there is one persistent goal-setting problem that could be said to affect most people – other than not having any goals at all – it might be that they do not think of the details. In other words, they want to do something fantastic, like earn another degree or find another ten clients, without thinking about all of the smaller steps that have to come first. If you find that your summer goals were a little too ambitious, take a step back and consider whether there aren’t some other, smaller targets you could set for yourself in the near future.

Work on all parts of your life. Often, the difficulty in reaching a particular goal is that it ignores your other goals. For instance, spending more time at work is a good idea, but only if it doesn’t prevent you from being close to your family, taking care of your health, maintaining a social life, and so on. Getting too far out of balance, or becoming burnt out, is actually counterproductive over a span of time longer than a few weeks. So, the problem might not be with your goals in and of themselves, but that you do not have enough of that to apply to other parts of your life.

Taking these tips is a good starting point toward moving past summer and achieving a whole new level of productivity this fall. Just think of all the things you could get done before the holidays and New Year’s!

You can explore more about managing projects to help you accomplish more with your time.

If you read my blog or articles often enough, then you already know that I’m a huge fan of planning out your day in advance so that you can be sure you’re taking care of your most important work. The only problem with that approach is that it doesn’t take much to throw our plans and schedules off course. In other words, our days don’t always go the way we think they will, or want them to.

Depending on your job, it may only take one frantic phone call or e-mail to change your priorities… and then your plan is little more than a nice idea. Have this happen for a few days in a row and something that had seemed important to you – like working out in the morning, or making progress on a long-term project – no longer enters your thoughts on a day-to-day basis.

That can create a real problem if you are trying to establish routines. Modern working life calls for flexibility in your plans, but being too flexible can ruin good habits. Since habits are so important to long-term productivity and time management, the question has to be asked:  At what point does being flexible with your plans become being too flexible?

That answer will vary for each person, but here is one trick you can use to help you sort it out: Keep track of the major goals you set for yourself every week or month, and then see how often you were able to stick to what you wanted to accomplish. If it seems like you’re coming fairly close, then it’s likely that you are just a normal, productive person who has to deal with interruptions now and then.

On the other hand, if you find that you are very rarely meeting your major goals, then it’s time to take a closer look and find out why.

• Do you have too many projects and priorities?
• Do your time management skills need more improvement?
• Are you trying to finish work that’s far outside your department and expertise?
• Are other employees or supervisors putting too much on your plate?

These are only a few sample questions, and your issue may be similar, or very different. The point, however, is that you can’t really know whether you’re being too flexible until you can compare your actual productivity against some concrete goals. Once you do that, it should be easy to adjust your game plan for the future.

Mastering time management and productivity can change your life, regardless of what sort of industry or company you work in. That’s because once you find a way to control your schedule, get more done, and reach your biggest goals, the sky is the limit.

Although I strongly believe in this, I’d like to take a moment here to point out that there actually is one downside to improving your time management and productivity skills: that other people will start to expect more from you.

That may sound like the beginning of a joke, but believe it or not, it’s a serious issue that you should keep an eye on. Why? Because your goal should be to improve your skill set and grow your career, not to become so valuable or overburdened in your current position that you are utterly irreplaceable.

In today’s world, if employers find that you can do the work of two or three other people, then it probably won’t be long before they will ask that of you.  That’s a great thing if it means a promotion, higher pay, and more responsibilities. But it could just as easily turn into a situation where you are facing an ever-increasing work load and can’t advance in your company because there simply isn’t anyone else who could take over your responsibilities if you’re promoted.

Does this mean you should abandon your efforts to learn more about time management? Absolutely not. What it does mean, however, is that it makes sense to re-evaluate the projects you’re working on from time to time. Be sure they are in line with the goals you have set for yourself, and that your career is moving in the direction that you want it to – not just the one that is most convenient for your supervisor or coworkers.

There’s a big difference between being someone who can be counted on and the person in the office that others tend to heap with projects.  As you become better at managing your time and productivity, make sure that you are developing into the former and not the latter.

Suppose your job required all the same duties and responsibilities you have now, but without any sort of set hours for vacation time. How would you divide up your day? What sort of hours would you work?

These aren’t just purely hypothetical “pie-in-the-sky” question. With more and more companies switching to flexible work schedules, remote employment, and unlimited vacation, there may be room for you to design a lifestyle or career that’s more efficient than the one you have now. And even if you don’t have control over your own schedule yet, thinking about things in these terms can help you to make more of the time you do have it your office and workplace.  After all, we should have systems for everything we do.

Here are a few things to consider:

We all have different natural cycles.  Whether you love mornings, late night working, or something in between, there’s a good chance that your “natural schedule” doesn’t exactly match that of your coworkers. Are there parts of your job that require you to be critical and focused? Could you do them faster or better by changing the times at which you do them?

Grouping tasks is almost always more efficient.  Multitasking, once a corporate buzzword, is now looked down upon by many time management and productivity experts, myself included. That’s because it’s almost always faster – and better – to do one thing at a time, and do it well, then it is to try to spread your attention over half a dozen projects. If you can answer all of your e-mail messages at once, for example, or return phone calls in a certain time slot, you’ll save time and be more effective.

Routines can be a good thing.  People sometimes complain about having to go through a “daily routine,” but that’s only a bad thing if you don’t like what you’re doing. In other cases, it can make you a lot more productive, because your mind quickly gets used to doing certain tasks at certain times. For instance, if you set a habit of making sales calls each morning at 10 a.m., then you’ll quickly learn to anticipate and adjust. Before long, you’ll feel strange if you don’t take care of that activity, even if it was one you didn’t previously enjoy.

In today’s changing workplace, you probably have more control (or at least input) over your schedule than you think. Give some thought to how you could better organize your day, and then work with your managers and coworkers to see if there are ways to make your working day easier and more efficient.  It can be a good idea to get everyone on the same page with a group time management seminar.

A lot of men and women, upon finally gaining control of their daily schedules and inboxes, become something of “career commandos.” That’s fantastic, and the goal that many of us should aspire to… but it shouldn’t be the only goal they aspire to.

As important as your daily work tasks are, if you find that your personal, family, or relaxation activities are always taking a backseat to work commitments, then it might be time to re-evaluate just what those commitments are and what you are really managing to accomplish.  You might just have to learn to say “No”  in order to manage your time with a reasonable balance.

What we are talking about pertains to time management, productivity, and goal setting, but on a deeper level than many are familiar with. That’s because, at a certain point, none of these topics is really about how much you can do, but rather what you really want to accomplish, and why.

Where do you want to be in your personal and professional life 5 or 10 years from now? What things could you be doing more or less of that would help you reach that goal? And how many of the things that you’re working on now fit into those categories?

These are important questions, but ones that most of us don’t ask ourselves often enough. It’s not that we ever make a conscious decision to put our hopes and dreams on the back burner, but that the day-to-day reality of managing our jobs, keeping up with personal commitments, and staying on top of the details that are always around can easily distract us until days turn into months, and eventually years.  It is one of the reasons Americans tend to suffer from vacation deprivation.

The world is full of men and women who wish they had done this, or tried that, but contrary to popular belief, it isn’t only fear that holds them back – sometimes our bigger goals simply get lost in the “noise” of everyday life. Make sure that you are applying time management techniques in a way that makes you more efficient, but also more effective. Simply doing “more” without any sense of why isn’t just the wrong way to apply time management; it’s also a bad way to spend your life.

One of the toughest things about the process of learning time management and being more productive is that it rarely ever works out the way you think it will, or the way an author describes it in a book. It is not as if you jot down a set of ideas, or attend the time management seminar, and suddenly find that you are able to perfectly balance all of your projects and commitments right away. Instead, there are all kinds of starts and setbacks, moments where you are doing really well, and others where you seem to have “dropped the ball” in your organized office routines.

Unfortunately, a lot of busy people do not know this or anticipate it. For that reason, they set big goals for themselves and feel disappointed if they haven’t completely achieved them, rather than simply recognizing that they’ve made some progress in them but fell a bit short. That is especially dangerous because that can easily cause them to abandon their plans altogether and just fall back into old habits.

Because I do not want the same to happen to you, let me just take a minute to point out that no matter how committed you are to making changes in your life, there will very likely be some difficulties in overcoming old ways of doing things, not to mention times when life just isn’t going to cooperate. Expect that, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself to succeed right away. You never want to plan to fail, but you should leave enough wiggle room in your plan to accommodate the possibility that not everything you try is going to work out right away.

Learning to be more productive, as with any act of self-improvement, is an ongoing process. The simple fact that you are reading articles like this one means you’re serious about getting more done. Take that energy, and use it to get a little more focused, a little more productive, and a little more efficient every day, week, and month. Just don’t get so sidetracked by a disappointment that you are tempted to give up on your goals altogether.