Do you feel like the time you have to contribute to a worthy cause won't make a difference? This short exercise will show a small amount of time can have a positive influence on someone who needs it.

Learning how to manage your time to increase your effective work time will lead to increasing your productivity and this, in turn, will lead to you earning more money. The latter is provided that your productivity relates to money-earning activities and not you simply being busy. So here are three expert tips from Internet Marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, for better time management, increasing productivity and boosting your income: 1. Don't answer emails, 2. Don't accept unscheduled phone calls, and 3. Master at least a couple of money-making skills that are relevant to your professional or business goals. I can hear some of your objections so let's go into these with a little more detail. Don't Answer Emails By this I don't mean that you NEVER answer your emails but chances are you are receiving scores of emails each and every day that are pulling you in every direction. You probably receive your fair portion of spam mail as well. Be realistic about the amount of time you are spending reading and answering emails. If these emails are related to income-generation then all well and good, but I would be willing to bet that many of the emails you deal with simply take your focus away from what you want to achieve. They take your eye off your goal. They steal your time. Do you have a notification device that lets you know when you have new mail? If yes, please switch it off NOW. Again, each time that little icon flashes with that message "You have mail" you are distracted and it takes time to re-focus your attention to get back into a mode when you are being truly efficient. Here are five more quick tips for dealing with email: 1. Schedule a couple of times a day to deal with email. 2. Allocate a specific amount of time to deal with email 3. Be ruthless when dealing with email - if it is not relevant - TRASH IT! 4. Use a good spam filter 5. Set up filters for your emails so that they go directly to specific folders Don't Answer Unscheduled Calls Consider this example. Today I received a call on my mobile phone. The caller's id was "withheld" and, against my better judgement, I answered the call. It was a salesman from a company that I had a bad experience with. I couldn't care less how good their product was - I didn't want to deal with this company again. I told the salesman that I wasn't interested in his product and he asked: "Do you want to tell me why not?" I said no and then he started telling me about the results other customers were achieving - I didn't care. I firmly stated that I had made my decision and that I did not want to purchase this product but still he kept going. I hung up the phone. Can you see my point with this illustration? This salesman had no respect for my time. All he wanted was to make a sale. When you receive phone calls the person calling is often not interested in you they are interested in their own agenda. And, if you allow them to, they will steal your time and distract your attention away your goal. Your time is a precious non-renewable resource. Use it wisely. So here are five quick tips for managing phone calls 1. Switch your phone off during times of peak money-earning activity. 2. Have clear, instructional messages on your phone - generally, if the call is important and it's not sales-related, the person calling will leave a message. 3. Use a separate number for your clients. 4. Use caller id and screen your calls. 5. Allocate specific times during the day for making calls. Master Money-Making Skills Dan Kennedy doesn't mince words and said in a recent teleseminar that, "Most people try to get from point A to point B without any mastery. Bluntly, they are often lazy and cheap about investing in mastery" If you examine those who are making the most money from Tiger Woods to Warren Buffet, you will find it is because they have mastered a particular skill. However, mastery takes TIME and MONEY. By applying the tips stated earlier you will gain more time and you can put this time to good use. Let's say for example that you gain 20 minutes a day, although I am confident that these techniques will allow you to gain far more than that. Then over a five-day week you will gain 100 minutes, over a month 400 minutes and over a year 4800 minutes or 80 hours! If you spent that time in mastering a money-making skill relevant to your professional or business goals just think how your income could soar. However, you also have to be prepared to invest in your continued professional development. So here are five quick tips for mastering your money-making skills: 1. Identify a money-making skill that is relevant to your profession or business. 2. Identify the best in that field and learn from them. 3. Allocate time for self-development and mastery every day. 4. Seek out opportunities to put your skills into practice. 5. Repeat for a second money-making skill - it's always good to have options and multiple income streams. Follow these tips and you will be amazed at how much more you accomplish and delighted by how much your income increases.

Even if you feel that you manage your time reasonably well you probably know that there is room for improvement. Okay, you would like to have a bit more time for certain activities, but on the whole you generally feel that you handle your time well enough.

It's impossible to plan for every outcome that life offers us. We manage our time in order to meet our goals in life, but things don't always go just as we picture them. Because the outcome of our daily lives depends on what we decide to do with our time, we need to be willing to make adjustments to our schedule.

When you have a home business, your biggest issue is always going to be finding time for it. This is something that many people struggle with because they simply think that they will be at home and therefore they will be able to spend all of the time that they need on their business.

This plan is unique. It's effective, too. Perhaps every man who reads it can't use it, but one thing is sure: You can't tell how much it may help you out until you do read it. And it's in the users own words. This is a filing plan that suits me down to the ground. It will suit you, too, if you do the same general kind of work I do, or have about the same problems when it comes to finding "that document" in a hurry. What is my work? It is of a non-routine nature. It is always different. No steady stream of reports and correspondence flows across my desk, the same day after day, to be handled by "referring" it to "the proper party" or answering by dictated letter. It runs, instead, eternally along new paths. First, there is some condition in the business, not yet covered by routine or ruling, that needs to be pruned or watered. We discuss the matter. We reach a certain unanimity as to the right kind of pruning or watering. Then these remedial measures must be translated into detailed procedure and concrete words and acts. I expressly abstain from stating the name of my job. The minute I do that every man whose job has a different name concludes this article is not for him. In reality, this article is for anyone whose work, in essence, is pro- motional and involves masses of hodgepodge memoranda, letters, blueprints, schedules, reports, notes of conferences, and the like. It is for the man who frequently "wants what he wants" out of this mass instantaneously to clinch his point in the eager talks so characteristic of uncharted work. It may be a complaint from a consumer; it may be a clipping from the morning's news; it may be a rough drawing by one's favorite artist; but one wants it quick! Here's the plan: the moment I can get any paper or document off my desk and into a drawer I do so. I use only one drawer. Everything is put into it, one thing on top of another. This is no sorting, no classification. Into the drawer it goes, the latest always on top, to be covered in its turn by the next paper, and so on. When I want to get any recent paper, I simply look in this one drawer for it. Evidently, the more recent it is, the oftener I shall want it and the more recent it is, again, the nearer the top it is, and the easier to find. That is the first half of the system. The basis is not alphabetical, nor subject, nor nature of document. '' Recency" is the sole basis. By simply laying one thing in one drawer, hour by hour, day after day, you automatically insure that the oftenest wanted paper is the one nearest the top and therefore easiest to find. You "file" as you go along. Whatever you want you will find in the drawer. You always get it. You get it inside of 30 seconds; often instantaneously. There is no pressing the button for the "filing clerk"; no wait for her to return, dismayed and fearful of rebuke, to report that the paper cannot be found but "the boys are looking for it; they think Mr. Drew had it, but he is sick today.'' That is all eliminated. "But what," you ask, "happens when this magic drawer becomes full to overflowing?" When that happens, and it happens regularly, of course, I take out the entire mass and lay it on my desk upside down. The oldest pieces are now on top. I turn each piece over in its turn and one glance tells me whether it should remain in the drawer or whether, by the lapse of time, it has become "dead" and it is wonderful how many papers, in constant use one week, snatched out and exhibited time and time again, become later mere antiquities because the work they represent is done and disposed of. The trashiest of the "dead" pieces go in the waste basket. The rest those that may possibly come to life some day or be wanted in connection with another task are filed this time in the ordinary and accepted sense of the word "file." They go either into the general office files, if they belong there, or they go into my own private subject file if they are such that no other department could or would want them. So I go on, working from the bottom up until the newness and recency of the pieces I encounter warns me they are likely to be wanted any moment because they concern work still unfinished. There I stop, and restore the now much reduced pile to its drawer, to be the foundation of today's and tomorrow's and next week's accumulations. I got this system from an advertising expert who is one of the shrewdest and cleverest judges of office methods I ever met. He has used the method for years and it works perfectly. I never knew him to be flurried or hurried in laying his hand on any paper. The precise document he needed seemed to appear in his hand as though it had materialized from thin air. He would simply reach to the one drawer and draw out what he required while he was talking about it. A good many business men retailers and other heads of businesses unconsciously carry out the first part of this system. They let papers accumulate in piles from day to day. Very much so! But this is planlessness rather than plan. These men allow papers to pile up unsorted, not because they have any method in so doing, but merely because that is a lazy man's way. "When they want anything from the heap, there is a hurried, scrambling search, with subdued "cussing" perhaps, but the desired document seldom is found. I sometimes think my method has a kind of philosophical basis. If we look upon a file as a kind of mechanical memory (and sometimes it is called so) then the ideal basis for filing would be that of the human memorY and we all know that facts are filed in our brains mostly by "recency." "We remember today's events best, yesterday's less well, and so on." I have used this system for 10 years, with infinite saving of nerve wear and tear.

There will always be more things that one might like to do than there is time to do them. When one looks at that collection of limitations, it becomes very clear that proper prioritization is essential to effective time management.

Time management is an exercise in attitude. Our personal attitude and disposition toward time and its use will have a far greater impact on our ability to manage time than any strategy ever can.

Sometimes the keys to successful time management have nothing to do with planners, schedules or organization technique. Instead, changes of viewpoint can make all the difference in the world.

In order to plan our days and to manage our time, we have to be capable of budgeting that time with a relatively high degree of accuracy. If we schedule multiple tasks in a given day and underestimate how long it will take to complete them, we will be forced to shove excess over to the next day.

There are cheap and easy ways to increase efficiency without investing in any product. Let us examine a few of them.

We may not always know the best way to handle time, but we certainly know a few things to avoid. Let's look at two common time management errors to avoid.