Prioritizing effectively is something that I continue to see real results when I take the time to invest energy in doing it well, and it’s amazing how everyone complains about the same problems of “not enough hours in the day”, “lists that don’t get done”, etc. I’ve read great suggestions on how to try to make email more focused so we avoid the back-and-forth messages, which is key; and I think finding the right balance of meetings, short conversations, phone calls, and emails is very difficult; but essential to prioritizing our time.

I don’t have a sound-bite answer, but I do hope to continue to refine how I prioritize my time to accomplish what is most important and avoid the many time-vacuums (e.g. I’m intrigued by Clay Johnson’s new book on an Information Diet http://www.informationdiet.com/).

One thing I have found is that I get more coordinated and quicker via the phone (even though I don’t like talking on the phone) as opposed to through email (which can go back and forth all day long); however, many projects require coordination across internal and external organizations and talking with one person only goes so far … so even that can be limiting before having to go to the much dreaded teleconference.

I’ve also found that completely ignoring phone calls and emails helps tremendously … at least, temporarily. If its that important, they’ll come find me, right?

@BillmonkFriends: All, Billmonk will be down this weekend. We are targeting the site to be back up Sept 20th. Tony

I’m the founder of SplitMyBill, a lot of your questions I’ve answered in this blog post on getsatisfaction. You can follow me on @peterconnor or @splitmybill or even mail me on Peter@splitmybill.ie if you have any questions

http://getsatisfaction.com/billmonk/topics/alternative_to_billmonk