When I work with people in my business productivity practice, the first question I ask them is, “What’s stopping you from being more productive?” The answers that keep coming up are pretty much the same from everyone.

In this article, we’ll take a look at these beliefs one by one, and see how you can turn them around.

1. There’s too much information coming at me too fast
Belief: My e-mail is overwhelming me. I can’t keep up with it.

Reality: The volume of e-mail isn’t the issue. How you process and organize the volume is the issue. Learning how to better manage your e-mail by using McGhee Productivity Solutions’ “Four D’s for Decision Making” will transform this belief.

Each year we receive more and more data from a growing array of devices, which can be accessed from an increasing number of locations. If you’re not careful, the quantity of data starts to drive you instead of the other way around. Learn 4 ways you can take control of your e-mail Inbox. And when you do, you can reduce the number of messages in your inbox by as much as 80 percent.

2. I have to keep everything
Belief: I have to keep everything. You just never know when you might need it!

Reality: Okay, prepare yourself. On average, the clients we work with throw away 50 percent of their stored information, with no ramifications. They feel lighter, happier, and have more time. So if you’re a “keeper,” and you know who you are, hold on to your hats! You “keepers” are a proud and experienced breed! There’s nothing quite like laying your hands on a file that no one else can find. It justifies all of your filing and keeping efforts. If you’re a keeper, you might recognize yourself in one of these statements:

•I got badly burned when I couldn’t lay my hands on an important document. Now, I’m afraid to let go of information.

•I want to be able to justify the decisions I make, so I keep everything.

•If my system crashes, I want backup information.

•I felt so good when no one else could find “that document.” As a result, I decided to keep everything so I could continue being useful.

At some point you made a decision about keeping all your information. That decision has been driving you ever since, but it may not be appropriate in your current situation.

The truth is, most people use only 15 percent of what they file, and this makes the other 85 percent ineffective. You can read about one way to develop a functional filing system in my Create an Effective Reference System article. By clarifying what is useful and letting go of the rest, you can reduce your filing, make it easier to find what you do keep, and save valuable time and energy that you can direct to more meaningful tasks. Also, learn 7 tips to help you manage your files better.

3. Organization cramps my freedom and creativity
Belief: Being organized blocks my creativity, and there’s nothing spontaneous about it.

Reality: Organization actually fosters and supports creativity and spontaneity. You may find your creativity being disrupted by the non-stop flood of reminders spinning around your head, such as:

•Call Kevin for his birthday

•Review the P&L spreadsheet

•Review PowerPoint slide deck

•Decide on a Valentine’s Day present

Imagine if you could clear your mind of all these lists and transfer them to Microsoft Office Outlook. You can do this by putting them in the TaskPad. This will create space for new ideas and creative thinking. Being disorganized can also stifle your creativity. Imagine you’re an artist and decide to paint the Colorado autumn colors in Aspen. You drive for three and a half hours from Denver to Aspen to find the perfect spot. When you arrive, you realize you’ve forgotten to pack your paint brushes. That can make being creative really hard! Preparation does support your creativity.

When your calendar is booked and leaves no time to be spontaneous, this can be frustrating. However, if you pre-plan, you can block out large chunks of time with no organized events, giving you more freedom to do something on the spur of the moment.

To get control of all the “stuff” in your life, I recommend you set up an Integrated Management System (IMS). An IMS gives you a methodology for storing reference information, turning action information into tasks, and scheduling tasks on your calendar. After you’ve set up your IMS, you’ll find that it will support your creativity and spontaneity. The best result is being able to close your system, knowing that everything is taken care of so you can relax and let go!

4. There’s not enough time in the day!
Belief: I just don’t have the time to do all the things I want.

Reality: Time is not the issue. The issue is deciding what you can do given the time you have.

As you know, managing your time with Olympian skill doesn’t create more hours in the day. We all have the same 24 hours, so the issue isn’t managing time—it’s managing what you can do with the time you have. You can’t do everything, but you can do anything, as long as it fits into your calendar.

If you keep your to-do lists in multiple locations—in e-mail, on a calendar, on paper, in an Excel spreadsheet, a list in your head, and notepad paper—you might want to consider centralizing this list in the Outlook TaskPad. This will make it easier to centralize and prioritize this list. Then, you need to schedule your tasks on your Outlook Calendar so you will know what you can and can not do. To start, put your to-do items on your Outlook Task list. Learn how to create a Task.

Create a task list to see all the commitments you have.
.Then, drag your tasks onto your Outlook Calendar.

If you click on a task and drag it to the Calendar, you can choose to move or copy it to your Calendar as an attachment, with all of the details intact.

View all your tasks on your calendar.
.As you drop tasks into the available time on your Calendar you will immediately see if you are overcommitted and if you need to re-prioritize your tasks and, in some cases, reschedule your commitments.

5. It takes too much time to get productive
Belief: I don’t have the time to set up a system. I’ve got too much to do.

Reality: You can save one to two hours a day using an Integrated Management System, so the return on the investment is significant.

Here are some interesting statistics. On average, people we work with spend two to three hours a day working in e-mail and 60 minutes a day finding and filing information. After setting up an Integrated Management System, they spend one to two hours a day working in e-mail and 10 minutes a day finding and filing information. That’s a savings of nearly two hours a day, or almost 12 weeks a year! The bottom line is: You can’t afford not to create an effective Integrated Management System.

Take a moment and consider the time you spend:

•Finding and filing information;

•Writing a to-do list, and then rewriting it a week later on another list, and then another;

•Opening e-mail, reading the message, closing the e-mail and then coming back to the same e-mail to read it again tomorrow; and

•Going to the store and realizing you don’t know the model of the hardware you need to pick up.

These are just a few examples of how we waste time by not having an Integrated Management System to help us remember what, where, and when. Take the time to set up your system. You’re worth it, and you can’t afford not to.

Author Bio: Sally McGhee
A recognized thought leader and innovator in the field of productivity management, Sally McGhee has trained thousands of people in the corporate environment. She has more than 25 years’ experience as a consultant and an executive coach, and is the founder and CEO of McGhee Productivity Solutions. Her book Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized is available online.

There is nothing like trying to work when your Internet connection is slow. It’s tougher to send e-mail, more difficult to send files to co-workers, and it’s frustrating wasting time while you wait for Web pages to appear. And even with the proliferation of broadband Internet connections, there are still times you may be working on a slow connection. You might be traveling, working out of your office, still using dial-up, or your broadband connection may be acting up. But there are things you can do.

This article will show you how to increase your productivity when your connection is slow. Many of these steps are also good tips for how to increase the speed of browsing and sending and receiving e-mail.

1. Send multiple files faster by compressing them
If you’re sending multiple files for example several files related to a project you can reduce their combined size by using a compression utility. Compressing your files can dramatically reduce the time needed to send files online, and won’t take up as much space in your (or the recipient’s) e-mail Inbox. WinZip is one of the more common compression tools.

2. Speed browsing by turning off graphics in Internet Explorer
Graphics are important to Web pages, but they also take time to download if you’re online. You can turn them off to speed your Internet browsing.

Disable graphics in Internet Explorer
1.On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.

2.In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

3.In the Settings box, scroll down to the Multimedia section. Clear the following boxes.

◦a. Play animations in Web pages

◦b. Play sounds in Web pages

◦c. Play videos in Web pages

Note This option is not available in Internet Explorer 8

◦d. Show pictures

4.Click Apply.

Speed browsing by turning off the graphics

3. Send e-mail using distribution listsIf you’re sending an e-mail to multiple people, create a distribution list instead of listing each recipient separately. Messages are sent faster and more efficiently when you’re using a distribution list. Your company may have established procedures for creating mailing lists. If not, learn how to create a distribution list in Outlook.

4. Work offline using Cached Exchange Mode in Outlook
Even if you lose your network connection, you can continue to working in Outlook if you’re using Cached Exchange Mode. With Cached Exchange Mode, a copy of your mailbox is stored on your computer. This copy provides quick access to your data and is frequently updated with the mail server. If you work offline, whether by choice or due to a connection problem, your data is still available to you instantly wherever you are. Cached Exchange Mode does require you to work with a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account. Learn more about using Cached Exchange Mode.

5. Reduce e-mail size with simple e-mail signatures
E-mail signatures leave a professional stamp on your messages, but elaborate signatures that include multiple images take up a lot of unnecessary storage space in each e-mail. Ultimately, they can slow down the time needed to send each message. Instead create distinctive text signatures combining fonts, type sizes, and colors to make your e-mail signature smaller and quicker to transmit and receive. Learn how to create e-mail signatures in Outlook.

6. Browse offline by saving Web pages on your computer
If you use reference a Web page often, save it locally to your computer. If you lose your connection or are working on a slow connection, you’ll still be able to read and find the information you need.

Save a Web page on your computer:
1.In Internet Explorer, go to the Web page you want to save.

2.On the File menu, click Save As.

3.In the Save As type drop-down menu, select Web page, complete.

4.Click Save.

7. Open Web pages faster by increasing your cache
If you increase the size of the Temporary Internet files cache in Internet Explorer, your computer won’t have to work so hard when you revisit Web pages. Many of the images will already be downloaded on your computer, decreasing the amount of time it takes to open a page.

Increase the Temporary Internet Files cache in Internet Explorer

1.On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.

2.On the General tab, in the Browsing history section, click Settings.

3.In the Temporary Internet Files dialog box, under Check for newer versions of stored pages:, click the Automatically radio button. Then, set the Amount of disk space to use: to at least 250 megabytes (MB).

4.Click OK.

Increase the Temporary Internet Files cache to open Web pages faster