Personal Time Management Guide

Have you been trying to improve your time management skills or overall personal
effectiveness? Do you feel like you are still missing some key details? If so,
we've got something for you.

This personal time management guide and the accompanying newsletter are
dedicated to building a stronger foundation for your success. One skill at a time.

Each article or section below is an important building block you can put into your
foundation right now. Take one of the pages and read it: you will gain the key
insights and practical tips for one of the core areas of higher personal effectiveness.
Take another page and do the same. Each article will
move you one step forward in something that could be
limiting your success level today.

That something could be your skills and abilities to

• set priorities and manage your time to meet

deadlines,
• set and achieve goals,
• get over your internal barriers when putting your
goals and plans in action,
• effectively organize your daily actions
• make smarter decisions faster,
• uncover better options,
• work in a team or build one,
• prevent burnout,

or some of the many other aspects of personal time

management, with their related problems and solutions. If
you don't see directly what you are looking for, you can
also search through all our pages.

Below you can go through short summaries of the key sections of this site. Of
course, you may want to start from the time management topic that feels most
pressing to you today. Yet, do not narrow your vision too much: pay attention to
other related subjects and resources here as well. Your main source of problems or
your major breakthrough may still be hiding in your blind spot.

Thank you for stopping by. I want to share something valuable with you too, like
with many tens of thousands of people who have already used this guide before you.

1.set priorities and manage your time to meet deadlines,

Time management skills and techniques

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Time management skills are your abilities to recognize and solve personal time
management problems. The goal of these time management lessons is to show you
what you can do to improve those skills.

With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, of
your stress and energy levels. You make progress at work. You are able to maintain
balance between your work, personal, and family lives. You have enough flexibility to
respond to surprises or new opportunities.

All time management skills are learnable. More than likely you will see much
improvement from simply becoming aware of the essence and causes of common
personal time management problems. With these time management lessons, you can
see better which time management techniques are most relevant for your situation.

Just get started with them. Many of your problems gradually disappear.

If you already know how you should be managing your time, but you still don't do it,
don't give up. What you may be overlooking is the psychological side of your time
management skills, psychological obstacles hidden behind your personality.

Depending on your personal situation, such obstacles may be the primary reason
why you procrastinate, have difficulties saying no, delegating, or making time
management decisions.

The psychological component of your time management skills can also be dealt with.
The time management skills information below will point at a relevant solution for
your situation.

2.set and achieve goals,

Personal goal setting
Why is personal goal setting so important in personal time management? From the
time management perspective, your life is a sequence of big and small choices and
decisions. It is those choices that you really manage, not the flow of time.

Personal goal setting is the wisdom that comes out of a lot of practical experience
and psychology research to help you direct your conscious and subconscious
decisions towards success, building up your motivation to achieve your personal or
business goals.

3.get over your internal barriers when

putting your goals and plans in action,
Eliminate procrastination

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The essence of procrastination is very well reflected in this quote by Bernard Meltzer:
"Hard work is often the easy work you did not do at the proper time."

Are you affected?

Have you ever seen your most important tasks being put off until later and
then later and later, while you are getting busy with many not so important
activities? Did you hope that you may have more time and better mood in the future
to start the task and do it properly? Does an approaching deadline mean a crisis for
you? Do you keep hesitating every time you make a decision?

If you often see yourself in such low productivity situations, then there is a big
chance that your life got under control of the procrastination habit. And those
situations are only the most explicit symptoms.

What is it?
A basic definition of procrastination is putting off the things that you should be doing
now. This happens with all of us time after time.

Yet, what makes a big difference for your success is your ability to recognize
procrastination reasons and expressions in their different forms, and to promptly
take them under control, before this bad habit steals your opportunities, damages
your career and pride, or destroys your relationships. So why do not you do it now?

Causes of procrastination

What are typical reasons why you procrastinate? Here

are a few of the most common situations to consider in
your anti procrastination efforts.

It can be as simple as

• Waiting for the right mood

• Waiting for the right time

Then look at the way you organize your work. You may notice other reasons for
procrastination like

• Lack of clear goals

• Underestimating the difficulty of the tasks
• Underestimating the time required to complete the tasks
• Unclear standards for the task outcomes
• Feeling as the tasks are imposed on you from outside
• Too ambiguous tasks

And there are also many connections with

• Underdeveloped decision making skills

• Fear of failure or fear of success
• Perfectionism

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 •

4.effectively organize your daily actions

To do list tips
A written to do list is a simple technique that can increase your productivity by 20
percent or more, if you don't use it already. It also has extra benefits of clearing
your mind and saving you energy and stress.

Try to spend 5-10 minutes each day on planning your activities with a daily to do list.
Start your day with it. Even better, every evening write a plan for the next day,
listing your daily things to do. It is important that you actually write your tasks.

Some people are more comfortable doing it on paper, while others prefer using a
computer. Try and see what works better for you.

After you've listed all your tasks, review your to do list and decide on the priority of
each task. Give higher priority to the tasks that get you closer to your goals.

A proven simple technique is an ABC rating of your priorities. Mark the tasks on your
to do list with "A's" if they are critical for your goals and simply must be be done that
day (or else you face serious consequences).

"B's" are less urgent but still important tasks that you should start right after you are
done with "A's". "C's" are "nice to do" things that you could do if you have any time
left after "A's" and "C's". Those tasks can be safely moved to another day.

One important tip to keep in mind. If during a day some new unplanned task comes
up, don't do anything until you put that new task on your list and rate it by priority.
See it written among the other tasks and put it in perspective. The more you let go
off the urge to skip that simple step, the more productive and satisfied you become.

When making a to do list, break down your complex tasks into smaller manageable
pieces, and focus on one at a time.

Finally, after completion of a task take a moment to look at the result and feel the
satisfaction of the progress.

5.make smarter decisions faster,

Decision making skills and techniques

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We use our decision making skills to solve problems by selecting one course of action
from several possible alternatives. Decision making skills are also a key component
of time management skills.

Decision making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or
dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution where the positive outcome
can outweigh possible losses. Avoiding decisions often seems easier. Yet, making
your own decisions and accepting the consequences is the only way to stay in control
of your time, your success, and your life. If you want to learn more on how to make
a decision, here are some decision making tips to get you started.

A significant part of decision making skills is in knowing and practicing good decision
making techniques. One of the most practical decision making techniques can be
summarized in those simple decision making steps:

1. Identify the purpose of your decision. What is exactly the problem to be

solved? Why it should be solved?
2. Gather information. What factors does the problem involve?
3. Identify the principles to judge the alternatives. What standards and
judgement criteria should the solution meet?
4. Brainstorm and list different possible choices. Generate ideas for
possible solutions. See more on extending your options for your decisions on
my brainstorming tips page.
5. Evaluate each choice in terms of its consequences. Use your standards
and judgement criteria to determine the cons and pros of each alternative.
6. Determine the best alternative. This is much easier after you go through
the above preparation steps.
7. Put the decision into action. Transform your decision into specific plan of
action steps. Execute your plan.
8. Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps. What lessons
can be learnt? This is an important step for further development of your
decision making skills and judgement.

Final remark. In everyday life we often have to make decisions fast, without enough
time to systematically go through the above action and thinking steps. In such
situations the most effective decision making strategy is to keep an eye on your
goals and then let your intuition suggest you the right choice.

6.uncover better options

Brainstorming tips for better time

management
The major bottleneck in any planning or problem solving process is brainstorming or
generating new ideas and options for specific actions and solutions.

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The resulting outcome of your solution or plan is only as good as your best options
and ideas you put in it. It is also important how fast you can come up with new
ideas, as you will need many of them in your time management and decision
making.

Fortunately, there are ways to significantly improve your effectiveness in

brainstorming new ideas.

Though sometimes word brainstorming refers to group brainstorming sessions, here

we will look at how you can brainstorm to generate ideas on your own.

With very few exceptions, everyone already has a natural ability of creative
thinking. Yet, that creative ability is fragile. It is easy to block it just by the way you
use it, by your attitudes, by the way you think.

Here is a selection of brainstorming tips that can help you to unlock your idea
generation ability. Those tips are like brainstorming tools that you can use
systematically every time you need new ideas.

The best practical way to have good ideas is to have many of them first, and then
to select the best ones. Generating many ideas fast is what brainstorming is focused
on.

In your brainstorming session you can follow these steps.

First, take a few minutes to think about what it is you would ideally like to
accomplish. How clear a picture you see in your mind? Try to refresh and extend
your view of the problem. In particular, think of 5 people you know that come from
different background than yours. Imagine what each of those people, one by one,
would see in your problem, how they would approach it.

Now it is time to start the actual brainstorming exercise. Take a sheet of paper, a
pen, and your watch. Set a goal to write a certain large number of options (over 10
or 20) or ideas within a specific short time interval (minutes). A good example is a
goal to write 20 ideas within 5 minutes.

What is important in this activity is that you focus on quantity of ideas, not quality.
When you brainstorm, you just write in a list manner whatever comes into your
mind, and write fast. You let your imagination flow, you play. Forget all judging or
analyzing, common sense, rules, or practicality.

A pressing, almost unrealistic, deadline plays an important role in the brainstorming

session. It mobilizes your subconscious and conscious minds. It helps to paralyze
your judgment, analysis, and other mental blocks, freeing your imagination.

After the time is up, take a few more minutes to brainstorm a few more ideas, until
you feel you cannot squeeze anything more out of your mind. Often those last ideas
will be the most valuable ones.

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At the end of this brainstorming exercise you have a long list of ideas, options, and
thoughts. You will discard most of them later, at the judgment stage. Yet, the ideas
you eventually select tend to be much better than something that would logically
follow from what you had in your mind before the brainstorming exercise.

The outcome may surprise you. It is worth every minute you spend on it.

7.work in a team or build one,

Team work and team building essentials
Team building skills are critical for your effectiveness as a manager or entrepreneur.
And even if you are not in a management or leadership role yet, better
understanding of team work can make you a more effective employee and give you
an extra edge in your corporate office.

A team building success is when your team can accomplish something much
bigger and work more effectively than a group of the same individuals working on
their own. You have a strong synergy of individual contributions. But there are two
critical factors in building a high performance team.

The first factor in team effectiveness is the diversity of skills and personalities. When
people use their strengths in full, but can compensate for each other's weaknesses.
When different personality types balance and complement each other.

The other critical element of team work success is that all the team efforts are
directed towards the same clear goals, the team goals. This relies heavily on good
communication in the team and the harmony in member relationships.

In real life, team work success rarely happens by itself, without focused team
building efforts and activities. There is simply too much space for problems. For
example, different personalities, instead of complementing and balancing each other,
may build up conflicts. Or even worse, some people with similar personalities may
start fighting for authority and dominance in certain areas of expertise. Even if the
team goals are clear and accepted by everyone, there may be no team commitment
to the group goals or no consensus on the means of achieving those goals:
individuals in the team just follow their personal opinions and move in conflicting
directions. There may be a lack of trust and openness that blocks the critical
communication and leads to loss of coordination in the individual efforts. And on and
on. This is why every team needs a good leader who is able to deal with all such
team work issues.

Here are some additional team building ideas, techniques, and tips you can try when
managing teams in your situation.

• Make sure that the team goals are totally clear and completely understood
and accepted by each team member.
• Make sure there is complete clarity in who is responsible for what and avoid
overlapping authority. For example, if there is a risk that two team members
will be competing for control in certain area, try to divide that area into two

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 distinct parts and give each more complete control in one of those parts,
according to those individual's strengths and personal inclinations.
• Build trust with your team members by spending one-on-one time in an
atmosphere of honesty and openness. Be loyal to your employees, if you
expect the same.
• Allow your office team members build trust and openness between each other
in team building activities and events. Give them some opportunities of extra
social time with each other in an atmosphere that encourages open
communication. For example in a group lunch on Friday. Though be careful
with those corporate team building activities or events in which socializing
competes too much with someone's family time.
• For issues that rely heavily on the team consensus and commitment, try to
involve the whole team in the decision making process. For example, via
group goal setting or group sessions with collective discussions of possible
decision options or solution ideas. What you want to achieve here is that each
team member feels his or her ownership in the final decision, solution, or
idea. And the more he or she feels this way, the more likely he or she is to
agree with and commit to the decided line of action, the more you build team
commitment to the goals and decisions.
• When managing teams, make sure there are no blocked lines of
communications and you and your people are kept fully informed.

Even when your team is spread over different locations, you can still maintain
effective team communication. Just do your meetings online and slash your
travel costs. Click here for a free test drive.

• Be careful with interpersonal issues. Recognize them early and deal with them
in full.
• Don't miss opportunities to empower your employees. Say thank you or show
appreciation of an individual team player's work.
• Don't limit yourself to negative feedback. Be fare. Whenever there is an
opportunity, give positive feedback as well.

Finally, though team work and team building can offer many challenges, the pay off
from a high performance team is well worth it.

8.prevent burnout,
Are you at risk of burnout syndrome?
Burnout is a problem that many people either face or come very close to at some
point of their life or career. If your job or some other commitment keeps you
completely drained physically or emotionally, and if this situation goes on for years,
months, or maybe just weeks, you may finally reach the breaking point and fall a
victim of burn out syndrome.

Burnout is a chronic condition that happens when your body or mind can no
longer cope with overwhelmingly high demands. You are trapped in a state of
emotional exhaustion, and it is hard to get out of that state. You stop caring about
what you do, even though you may feel guilty about that fact. Even if you still

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continue working, it seems to be hard to make progress. You hardly accomplish
anything significant, just go through the motions.

Burning out is not just stress, it is much more than that. There are people who may
experience high stress at their job time after time. But job stress does not
necessarily mean that they are at risk of job burnout.

Certain categories of people and professions are particularly susceptible to job

burnout. Most often these are people who are highly committed and motivated, who
have high standards and idealistic dedication to their jobs. This condition more
commonly occurs for such professions as entrepreneurs, managers (in business,
education, health care, and many other field), teachers and social workers, athletes.

There are many different situations that could lead to burning out. Common burnout
causes include:

• An overwhelming workload. Could be due to insufficient time management

skills, especially lack of planning, prioritizing, or delegation skills.
• Hard work with no clear goals. You work hard and hard, but no matter how
long you keep at it, you cannot see any progress. But how could you see that
you have got closer if you don't know your destination?
• Powerlessness to change something important to you. Something that you
are very much emotionally attached too, but that is at the same time beyond
your control.
• Forcing yourself to make the impossible happen. For example, solving
problems without having the necessary resources.
• A conflict between your personal values and the values of the company your
working for. You don't believe in or disagree with what your are doing, but
you feel the circumstances force you to keep doing it anyway.
• Hitting the invisible ceiling. No matter how good or competent you become,
there is hardly any chance of recognition or promotional opportunities.

For all of those burnout causes what is important is not as much the external factors
that fall on you, but how you interpret them, what you say to yourself, and what
actions you take in response.

Finally, it is important to understand the risks of burnout in your personal or job

situations. Once you are its victim, it may not be easy to get things back on track.
That condition does not go away in a day. You may not be able to recover by
yourself, and you may need to have drastic changes in your attitudes and life style.
You are much better off preventing it now than putting your life back together later.

Burnout symptoms
Being aware of commonly observed burnout symptoms could help you notice the
problem at an earlier stage, hopefully before it gets really bad.

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Time management tips
What is the point of time management tips?
Changing time management habits takes time and
effort, and it is always much easier when you have
a simple system of practical rules and hints that are
easy to keep in mind. That is exactly what the tips
below are for.

Know what you want from your time

The proven way to do it is to set goals, and to set them SMART. The rest of the time
management tips below will help you be effective in achieving your goals and making
time management decisions.

Learn to see the difference between urgent and important

The important tasks are those that lead you to your goals, and give
you most of the long term progress and reward. Those tasks are very
often not urgent. Many urgent tasks are not really important.

Know and respect your priorities

Aim to do the important things first. Remember the 80-20 rule: 80 percent of reward
comes from 20 percent of effort. One of the aims of time management tips is to help
you refocus your mind to give more attention and time to those most important 20
percent.

Plan your actions for achieving your goals

Convert your goals into a system of specific actions to be done. The first significant
point of planning is the planning process itself. It is a known fact, and you will see it
for yourself, that the planning process stimulates your brain to come up with new
efficient solutions. It programs your subconscious mind to search for shortcuts. It
makes you much more prepared for each specific action. Besides, planning will help
you to identify potential conflicts and crises, minimizing the number of urgent tasks.

Planning can also significantly lower the time spent on routine maintenance tasks,
leaving you more time on what you like to do or for what you think is important for
your long term success.

Also remember that planning and related time management tips work best when you
review your plans regularly.

Schedule time for your tasks

Your concentration can be easily lost in the sea of many boring or less important
things waiting to be done in your head. Undone things circulating in your mind are
also a big drain of your mental energy. Most often, there is no way to get those
things out of your mind except of either doing them or scheduling them in a trustable
system, convincing your mind that they will be done in due time.

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Know how you spend your time
Keep a time log during some time interval, like a week, and then analyze it to see
where your time goes. For example, what percentage of time you spend on urgent
and on important activities, what people you devote most time to. You are likely to
be surprised, and you will see much better if you could use more time management
tips. This is also an effective way to get a feedback on how well time management
tips and techniques are working for you, and where you need some adjustments.

Effective meeting basics

An effective meeting is a business meeting that serves certain desired purposes in an
optimal way. While meetings are among the core tools for making things happen in
any organizations, they often consume too much time and resources. The two
natural benefits of more effective meetings are:

• Better desired outcomes for you and your organization, including higher
quality and quantity of the results from your projects, better decisions,
motivation of the people involved, and so on.
• Lower costs in time, energy, and other resources for you and your people,
leaving more of those resources to other mission critical tasks.

To ensure higher effectiveness for your corporate or other business meetings you will
need to reevaluate and possibly improve your actions in the following two main
areas:

• Meeting planning and preparation, covering such critical elements as clarifying

the desired outcomes in an agenda, communicating those objectives to the
people involved, inviting the right people, allowing people to prepare,
choosing the proper time and place, and arranging the necessary technical
support.
• Conducting meetings, including such meeting management aspects as
keeping the meeting focused, using an effective meeting chair, maintaining
atmosphere when all participants can contribute most effectively, and making
sure that all valuable points are properly captured (in the meeting minutes).

Finally, if you want to improve just one thing this time, then start from being more
selective. Before another meeting is called, ask yourself wether this meeting is worth
everyone's time. Does it really surve any worthwhile purpose? Probably the least
effective meeting to have is the one that has a hidden agenda to simply make an
impression of activity. To create an excuse to procrastinate on or escape from taking
the necessary actions. To substitute activities for accomplishments.

Introduction to stress management

Continuously growing pace of the modern life puts more demands on our
stress management skills. You may already be in a situation when you feel pressured
to accomplish more and more every year with less resources and shorter deadlines.

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Or you may feel overwhelmed by the challenges in maintaining balance between
your work and family life.

Whichever sources your stress is coming from, if you just let it build up for too long,
you will eventually pay the price and face sad consequences. And unless you improve
your stress management abilities, this may happen much sooner than you expected.

How much can poor stress management cost you? Stress has been linked to a major
portion of health problems, from premature aging to heart attacks. Even when stress
does not causes the illness directly, it can accelerate development of existing
conditions or make you more vulnerable to health problems, as well as to threats
from your home or office environment. And even if you don't count physical health
damage and premature death, overwhelming stress may also waste a significant
portion of your life. Just by keeping you in a state of fatigue, unhappiness, and
depression.

Stress management goes hand in hand with time

management
On the one hand, good time management is a critical element of effective stress
management. Time management is probably the number one tool for managing
stress at its sources. If you get organized, plan ahead, stop procrastinating, clarify
your priorities, and delegate effectively you are much less likely to be overwhelmed
by the pre-deadline stress. Even without advanced relaxation techniques. And you
are more likely to get ahead in balancing your work and family life.

On the other hand, stress management is an essential component of effective time

management. Many people cannot completely avoid the sources of their stress, and
an overwhelming stress can block their ability to think and perform. In such
situations stress management techniques, including relaxation techniques, can be
critical for getting unstuck and staying effective.

You also need to be well aware of stress symptoms in order to wisely manage your
pace in moving to your goals. If you try to move too fast in short term and don't
take adequate breaks, your may damage your abilities and motivation, hurting your
longer term progress.

And it is certainly not good time management if you become disabled, miserable, or
die prematurely from the effects of excessive stress.

Student time management tips

Well-developed student time management skills is a foundation of good study habits.
Here are a few recommended articles on time management for students.

Struggling to find time to learn time management?

Just using your commute time smarter may be enough to learn all the time
management principles and techniques you ever need. Especially with your ipod.

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How to avoid procrastination
Ability to beat procrastination and laziness is among the most important time
management skills to learn. Identify your causes of procrastination and start fighting
it now.

Time Management for University Students

Quite a good personal time management guide. Well written and illustrated. Among
the key issues covered are goal setting, urgency versus importance, effectiveness
versus efficiency, together with advice on monthly, weekly, and daily planning. Can
be recommended not only for students.

Tips on making a daily things to do list

Time management tips for organizing your days with a prioritized things to do list.

Time management articles and courses

Time management articles contain more detailed information on various particular
aspects of effective time management. To save your time of browsing articles and
other resources, it is recommended to start from a concise review of personal time
management skills . It is then easier to see which time management articles,
courses or seminars are of most relevance for your situation.

Time management and goal setting

quotes

Never
Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com
Below you can find a selection of famous inspirational and motivational quotes, which
are most relevant for time management and goal setting guidelines of this personal
time management guide.

Inspirational quotes on time management

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours
per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa,
Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."
-- H. Jackson Brown

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot."
-- Michael Altshuler

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"A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only
at different times."
-- Baltasar Gracian

"Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in
other areas. But can it really?...True effectiveness requires balance."
-- Stephen Covey

"Never let yesterday use up today."

-- Richard H. Nelson

Motivational quotes on goal setting and achieving

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

-- Henry Ford

"Heaven on Earth is a choice you must make, not a place we must find."
-- Dr. Wayne Dyer

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than
any other one thing."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

-- George Eliot

"No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent."

-- Billy Sunday

Success driving motivational posters

Keep your vision of success in your sight with specially selected motivational posters
and artworks.

Quotes on procrastination

"One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-

finished tasks."
-- Malcolm S. Forbes

"To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing."
-- Eva Young

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"A year from now you will wish you had started today."
-- Karen Lamb

"The surest way to be late is to have plenty of time."

-- Leo Kennedy

Advantages of a personal digital assistant

( PDA )
A personal digital assistant ( PDA ) allows you to efficiently access, organize, collect,
store, and process various kinds of information, and work with it on the run. It is
small in size, like a pocket calculator or a pocket address book. Being a hand-held
electronic device, it is designed to fit your palm as easily as your pocket. Unlike an
ordinary computer, it is always with you.

Yet, a handheld PDA is much smarter than most pocket electronic devices and time
management tools. It is a computer with a powerful processor and quite a large
chunk of memory, like 8-128 Mb. A PDA allows you to run any of thousands of
various kinds of software applications currently available for it.

You can easily communicate with a PDA via its oversized interactive screen area,
its special pen (the stylus) for touching that screen, and support of a few extra
buttons at its bottom. A PDA often can recognize your hand writing.

Basic functionality of a PDA is to store and retrieve phone numbers and addresses,
maintain a to do list and a calendar. It is also a memo pad for taking notes at
meetings, as well as for capturing ideas, observations, and personal comments.

There are two main features that put a hand-held PDA much above a basic personal
organizer. One is its ability to be connected and communicate with many other
electronic devices, like a PC or digital camera. The other is the extensive abilities of
the pda software. Together with the third, the "always with you" feature, all this
combines into a powerful and versatile personal assistant.

So, the first important point is that you can connect a PDA to other electronic
devices, though sometimes it may require additional PDA accessories. That allows
you to work with a larger variety of data, much beyond of what you can just type in
into a basic personal organizer. In particular, many PDAs can be connected to
your PC for a data or file exchange. You can add the information you've collected
with a PDA to some central database or to a report that you do on your PC. You can
also get more information into your PDA from your PC, for example, from internet
downloads (e-books or newspaper files) or other files. Another common situation is
to get into your PDA images from your digital camera.

It is also important that two PDAs can talk directly to each other via infrared
signals ("beaming"), which allows an easy exchange of information, for example,
exchange of business cards, without typing anything in. This is particularly
convenient when working in a team. For example, if one of the team members has
collected certain important data and made updates for himself or herself, those

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updates can be distributed among all team members via beaming. This is one of the
reasons why many business owners buy PDAs for their employees.

As for PDA software applications, they include word processing, spreadsheets,

games, money management, weight or fitness monitoring, electronic book
reading programs, street map PDA software, bible software, a Power Point
presenter and many more. Some for general users, some for more specialized
professional groups, like car salespeople, real estate agents, medical doctors, or
lawyers. Some PDAs allow e-mail and internet access, while on many others you
can prepare e-mails on a PDA but send them later, when you connect to your PC.
Some of that software may already be installed on your PDA when you by it. Often
you need to buy or download it from the internet, sometimes for free.

Note that, in combination, all those possibilities of exchanging information and

keeping electronic files and software on your PDA greatly reduce the amount of
paper (document and reference printouts, various notes) you need to shuffle and
carry around.

What about security concerns? With a PDA you can do a regular backup of your
PDA held data onto your PC. So, security-wise, a PDA still beats paper systems.

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