The Law of Colour, Systems and Keeping a Diary

Research has shown that 60 percent of people still use book diaries, as opposed to modern technology to plan their day. If you use a book diary or find that you have trouble with your daily planning or managing your time, here's a trick you can use that will help you to be more organised and therefore much more productive.

Those who keep structured diaries are inevitably better at time management, note-taking and following up on discussion points.

With the use of colour and structure in your diary you not only improve its appearance and make it more enticing to work with, you can also save a lot of time by knowing which colours and symbols represent which aspects of your business.

Highlighters work really well as a way to quickly identify each client or each project that you are working on. Simply allocate a colour per client or project. When you are going through your diary seeking contact details, meeting dates or pertinent information related to that client or project, you can very quickly scan your diary to locate all the entries with that specific highlight.

A different technique used by some is to highlight certain types of tasks in certain colours. You could for instance allocate a colour to admin tasks, another to meetings, another to marketing, and so on. That way you can look at the week ahead and see exactly how many meetings you need to prepare for, or recognise when your admin is falling behind.

Another trick you can use is to allocate a number next to each appointment, depending on whether it is the first, second or third time you are seeing someone. That way you can quickly know which part of the process you are at with each of the clients you are seeing that day.

And yet another idea is to block out the time it will take you to complete each task and appointment scheduled for the day. In other words, don't merely write down what you need to do, block out the time it will take, so that you can see if you are scheduling in more work than there are hours in the day. This is the downfall of many a great business person!

You can either use these systems or even better - create a colour and structural system of your own, that works best for you and the type of work you do.

Once you are used to your colour system, it will become very easy to identify your meeting and appointment information and find information at a glance.

Using colour and structure in your diary is a magic process that can have real positive effects on your time management skills. You will find you are more relaxed; confident and prepared for your meetings. You will also never be embarrassed to open up your diary in front of your appointment.