File this in the "Physician, heal thyself" category.
I am a big fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done approach to productivity and time management. I don't always follow his rules (typically to my own detriment), but I know I should. One of the concepts from Getting Things Done (or GTD, for short) that I believe in and try to follow is limiting your number of in-boxes.
Defined broadly, an in-box is any receptacle through which information enters your life. Your voicemail, email in-box, your mailbox at home, the seat of your chair (if your colleagues place documents for your review on it), sticky notes on your computer monitor, etc -- these are all in-boxes. The more of 'em you have, the more places there are for you miss critical incoming information. Personally, I do reasonably well at limiting my number of in-boxes, and it does work to reduce my anxiety about missing something important coming in.
On a related note -- and a place where I have been a complete disaster lately -- is in calendar management. Your calendar is really nothing more than an in-box for appointments and meetings. GTD has lots of good suggestions about how to effectively manage a calendar (if you have not yet read the book, it really is worth a read). There are no rules about calendar management more important, however, than this: only keep one calendar.
It makes sense: you only have one set of 24 hours each day, why would you have multiple places to store appointments, potentially double or triple booking your time? Not to mention the possibility of missing an appointment because you are looking at the wrong calendar.
For the past few months, I have been the poster boy for doing this wrong. I had not one, not two, but three calendars that I have been using. My Outlook calendar at work, my Google calendar online, and my iCal calendar on my MacBook and iPhone. I'm always looking in three different places to try to make sure I am not missing anything because of this ridiculous technological pile of calendar craziness I've gotten myself into and it is freaking me out. Just too many in-boxes.
So today was D-Day, or maybe C-Day. No more Google Calendar, no more iCal. I have to use my Outlook calendar at work, so that is my one repository, my one calendar in-box for my day. I don't like it as well as Google calendar, or even iCal, but using those other technologies are just not worth the trouble of managing multiple calendars.
I feel better already. If you are managing your time across multiple calendars, too, give yourself a break and consolidate them into one master calendar. You'll be glad you did.
