You may have noticed that "On Links and Needles" has just so recently disappeared for over a week. I've been having some temporal difficulties; now before you accuse my poor temporal lobe of cutting off my language functions, I'm referring to my occasionally poor grasp of time management and my unfortunate capacity for "Productive Procrastination" when faced with more work than I can comfortably complete or tasks that look incredibly difficult. I'd like to help you avoid the same predicaments I've found myself in by sharing what I've learned in this latest spate of deadline dilemmas.

First, let me define the one new term I've introduced: Productive Procrastination. Productive Procrastination refers to the tendency, when faced with a particularly difficult or time-consuming task or an unusually large number of critical tasks, to take on other less challenging, less critical, and/or less time-sensitive tasks to avoid starting the daunting project that should take precedence. Dry, isn't it? Still, it does sound better than saying, "You, know – like when you sort your e-mail, digitize a simple design that's two weeks from being due, or clean your desk when you know you should put together that big presentation, right?" I thought it did, at least.

I'm sure we can all own up to our own pencil-sharpening procrastination fits, but what can we do to deal with both a full schedule and projects that make us cringe? Well, here are some tips that have helped me beat those scheduling blues.

• Prioritize.
  This is absolutely key. Get out a calendar, or better yet, utilize one that lives online in the cloud so that you can change it and consult it wherever you may be, and pin down the dates when tasks must be done. Put things in order coldly, taking into account the time they take to complete and the effect stalling any of the tasks may have. Even though this schedule won't be set in stone, act like it is for the purpose of this exercise. Don't rely on simple due dates, be serious about when things need to be done and take into account all special circumstances to the best of your knowledge. You will likely be forced by circumstances out of your control to add to and change this hierarchy of tasks, but the best way to cope is to be aware of what is expected of you.
  
  Sounds scary, right? Well, it's a lot like budgeting when times are lean – it may be frightening to know how close to the red you are, but you have no idea what assets you have to work with until you check that balance. Budget your time as carefully as your money, because in business they are one and the same.

• Attack very small tasks immediately.
  Now, I can hear you saying that this sounds a lot like Productive Procrastination, but there are simple criteria by which one can judge these tasks, and very good reasons to get them out of the way.
  
  If a task is critical to someone else's ability to work in your company and can be completed in a very short period of time, do it now. Not only will it relieve your mind of the weight of an additional line on your to-do list, it will save you from the interruptions that your coworkers will perpetrate as they become more and more annoyed with their needs being unmet.
  
  There is one more situation that makes these easily-tackled tasks valuable. When you find yourself stuck on a problem, in the doldrums during a long stretch of work, or simply feeling unwilling to start, taking on one or two of these tasks, without descending entirely into Productive Procrastination, may jump-start your engine; they let you feel a sense of accomplishment and may well let your mind relax and work in the background on the larger problems at hand. Many a solution has come to me while working on a mindless (but necessary) task.

• Know when to delegate.
  Sometimes we find ourselves mired in tasks that, despite the best of intentions, we've either taken on or been assigned erroneously. Recently, when faced with a stack of business cards from a recent trade show from which we needed to construct a spreadsheet, a task that I had handled in years past, I finally figured out how to let go. With furrowed brow I asked my employer if anyone else on staff had time to do the data entry, seeing as it was not a task that required any special expertise. Knowing my workload, he agreed that it wasn't the best use of my time, and one of our office staffers who had ample spare time at present took the task on willingly, if not gleefully. If you are a worker-bee like myself and always offer to help, it's hard to say no, but when it comes to tasks that simply don't require your attention or may even harm a profitable project's timeline, delegating is the only reasonable way to go.

Having shared these tips, let me say this: There are few of us who can perfectly manage our time. As you who read my blog frequently and have noticed the odd gap in posting can attest, I'm not among those few by any means. The good news is that perfection is not the real goal here – schedules change and prioritized lists sometimes have to be thrown away in favor of the emergency that arrives on your doorstep. The goal here is awareness – by being aware of how you prioritize, why you procrastinate and what you really need to do, the decision-making process by which you govern your to-do list will come more naturally and be more informed, meaning you spend less of your time deciding how it should be spent.