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It isn’t always easy to organize your day in an effective manner. The busier your schedule gets, the more you will start to panic and feel overwhelmed. This is a big problem for many, especially those who have to balance a career, a family and a social life. But learning to cope with it and eliminate most obstacles is as easy as discovering how to better manage your time.

Time management is an important skill that we are sadly often lacking in. It isn’t a natural process that we learn in school, and if our parents weren’t that good at it than it can be assumed that we never learned it at home, either. But it is never too late to discover the in’s and out’s of organizing your day, week and month.

Here are five easy ways that you can better manage your time and improve your life in the process.

• Learn to prioritize your tasks. It may seem overly simplistic, but just knowing what you can put off and what needs to be completed immediately is a big step towards your ultimate time management goal. After all, if you panic about a task that isn’t due to be done for a week, you are wasting time that can be applied to what needs to be done by the end of the day. Not to mention, putting a lot of unneeded stress on yourself.
• Use a day planner or list. Whether you get a PDA or you scribble it down on a piece of paper, having your day planned out and tasks listed is a great way to get them done quickly and without hassle. It will also keep you from forgetting anything, and so wasting more time having to make it up, or adding to your responsibilities the next day. Plus, seeing it all categorized can be soothing, as you see it is doable.
• Combine tasks. You don’t have to do one thing at a time. You can bunch tasks together to save minutes or even hours of your day. For example, if you need to get your oil changed and do the shopping, why not go to a grocery store right near the mechanics and buy what you need while they take care of your car? This can be applied to pleasurable tasks, too…if you have been wanting to read a new book, but you have housework to do, why not get the audiobook and listen on your media player while you clean?
• Plan ahead. Every Sunday, I like to sit down for ten or fifteen minutes and plan the next week of my work and activity schedule. I write down what projects I will work on during each day, when I will do the cleaning, when I will take my children to the park, when I will run errands and when I will workout. The times in between scheduled activities are down time for me to regroup and relax. This gives me a clear blueprint for the next five work days, which ends up saving me time.
• Be honest about what you can do. Sometimes we all take on more than we can handle. Be honest about what you can cope with, and if you are stretching yourself too thin, don’t wait to burn out. Instead, take some time away, give up an activity, or delegate some work to someone else. Don’t try to do it all on your own, or you can be sure that you will end up wasting much more time playing catchup than you have to.