Do you know difference between planning and scheduling? Planning is deciding WHAT needs to be done and scheduling is deciding WHEN to do it. Planning without scheduling is nothing more than listing a lot of things that never get accomplished, and you can?t schedule tasks that you haven?t decided to do, so two go hand in hand.

Planning is done with a master list. The master list contains tasks, large and small, short range and long range, in no particular order. Your master list is merely a place to write down all things you want to do ?sometime?. It?s a general place to keep an inventory of all things you?d like to complete so you don?t have to store them all in your head.

?By year 2000, we?ll have paperless offices.? Isn?t that what many people were thinking and saying thirty years ago? Electronic mail came along and prediction threatened to come true of messages whizzing back and forth with no paper involved. It was a technological dream come true. However, we?ve traded one problem for another.

The ease of e-mail communication has created a new monster in form of e-mail overwhelm. Seventy-four new messages today, and it?s not even lunch time! Chain letters which promise sure doom if you break them! Urban legends and virus hoaxes ?til cows come home. It?s a never-ending stream of messages, which can be hard to manage. Plus, adding insult to injury, turn of new century has come and gone and we?re more inundated with paper than ever. How can this be? What of high tech, paperless workplace of our dreams?

Paper is a tried and true means of conveying information from one person to another, and it often feels ?safer? to rely on paper systems than to rely on technology. This security blanket effect is cause of e-mail paper clutter. One reason so many people print e-mail is because they?re afraid if they don?t, that they?ll never be able to find original message again. Using steps outlined here, you should be able to rest easy knowing that you can locate a specific e-mail any time you need it, without worrying about printing it off and adding it to pile on your desk.

The first logical first step to combating e-mail overwhelm is to have faith in your technology and stop feeling compelled to print your e-mails. A good rule of thumb is to only print an e-mail if it contains information that is absolutely necessary to have with you in hard copy when you leave office.

Consider fact that when you print out your e-mails, you are defeating entire purpose of having electronic mail in first place.