Do you frequently feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to do?  Do all your orders make for a constant barrage of looming deadlines? Do you sometimes just forget to do something important and then have to spend time making it all better? All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper Activity List. Activity Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that

By keeping an Activity List, you make sure that you capture all of the tasks you have to complete in one place. This is essential so you do not forget things. By prioritizing work, you plan the order in which you'll do things, so you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can quietly forget about until much, much later. This is essential if you're going to beat work overload.

Start by entering all of the activities that you need to complete.  If the activities seem large and complex break them down into smaller steps. Many time management experts recommend that items in an activity list should take less than 2 hours to complete. This may be a huge and intimidating list, but our next step makes it manageable!

Next, run through these activities setting up when they are due.   Many activities have a set time they must be accomplished and keeping track of these deadlines can make the difference between success and failure for an order. 

Different people use Activity Lists in different ways in different situations: if you are in a sales-type role, a good way of motivating yourself is to keep your list relatively short and aim to complete it every day.

In an operational role, or if activities are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to keep one list and 'chip away' at it.

If you have not used Activity Lists before, try them now:  They are one of the keys to being really productive and efficient.

ProfitMAKER has a built in Activity Manager that will help you track all the tasks from entering orders to depositing checks.  You can reach activity manager from the graphics menu of ProfitMAKER by clicking on the Activities button or from the default Shortcuts list.

Activity Manager allows you to schedule and manage your daily activities, including your phone calls, emails, faxes and letters.  Add an activity and send to your Outlook Calendar or create as an Outlook Task with a single click.

As a manager, you will be able to assign activities to your employees and monitor their progress. Activities can also be associated with your customers, allowing your sales staff to create a tickler file for customer relations management.

Click here for documentation about how to use the Activity Manager.

Click here to see an overview video on how to use the Activity Manager.