Most Americans today live very busy lives and never seem to catch up with all of their obligations. With so many things going on at the same time, it's easy to lose sight of the most important goals in your life. You can easily spend a day working on unimportant tasks, answering trivial phone calls, chatting with coworkers, or even watching TV. Before you know it, the day is over, and your most important tasks were left undone.

In order to avoid this as much as possible, it's important to manage your time well. Actually, the truth is that you can't manage time so much, because everyone has the same amount of time in the day. What you are really doing is managing yourself by creating a sense of discipline in your life so you can accomplish what really matters most to you at this particular moment.

Here are five tips to help you manage your day more effectively. Notice that this process begins with identifying your long-term goals. This is because your daily activities should be moving you towards your most important goals.

1. Make a long list of everything you think you would like to accomplish in the coming months and even years.You can spend a couple hours doing this, and then come back to the list a few days later so you can add any items that you accidentally left off. After you're done with the list, you should evaluate the items carefully by asking yourself if these are serious goals that you would like to accomplish and not just whims. You should also make sure that these are goals that you really want to accomplish for yourself instead of simply copying someone else's priorities.

You can then decide which of the goals are most important for you at this time by asking yourself a simple question. Which of these items would have the greatest benefits for your life at this time?

2. Once you have established your most important goals, you should break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily objectives. Before you go to bed, make a list of the top items that you need to accomplish the next day. This can help your subconscious mind dwell on the list and perhaps even give you some ideas the next morning.

3. Organize your daily list and decide which ones are most important for any given day.You can use a system like the ABCD method. In this simple but powerful technique, you label each item on your daily to-do list with a letter and a number. The letter establishes how important the item is, with an "A" being mandatory and a "D" being optional or inconsequential. The numbers next to the letters help you to determine the order in which the items should be completed.

The point of this simple exercise is to distinguish between the important and unimportant tasks in any given day. Complete your top priorities first.

4. Decide which task is the most important task for the day.Which one would have the biggest consequences? If ignoring this task would have very bad consequences for you in your work or personal life, then this task is your first priority (your A-1 task).

5. Lastly, start working on this most important task right away.You must have the discipline to work on this task until you have completed the job. This habit can make you several times as productive as you have ever been.