We all get the same twenty-four hours in a day. How we use them is key to being more productive, checking things off our list and having a balanced personal life. It's not surprising that managing time is something many of us struggle with these days. Here are a few ideas that can help you be more in control of your time and your life:

Plan your week. Take half an hour once a week (Sunday evening is an ideal time) to sit in front of your calendar and plan your week. Besides scheduling business appointments, look for blocks of time that you can spend on the other important things like exercising, family time, and recreation. Reality is: If it doesn't end up on a calendar; it usually doesn't happen.

Identify your power hours. Pay attention to the time of the day when you are most energetic and productive, and start planning your days around that energy cell. Some people experience a greater mental clarity in the first couple of hours of the working day; other people think more freely later in the day. I pay attention to the type of activities I do better based on the time of day and my energy level. For example, I only see clients in the late morning or early afternoon, I write best at night and I prefer to exercise early mornings. 

Control email or it will control you. I get about 120 emails per day. That seems like a lot to me, but from what I understand, it's below average. The best way for me to deal with this volume of incoming to-do's is to get into email mode and batch through them in one go. Unless it is urgent and needs immediate attention, mark it "important" and file it away in a folder you can get to at a time when you can focus on it. And guess what? You don't have to respond to every email in your inbox.

Use an assistant. Time is money and if you know how much your time is worth (and I hope you all do!) you need to make smarter decisions about which tasks it makes sense for you to spend time on. Hiring an assistant can free you to focus on more profitable, tasks. I have two assistants: one that comes in person to help me with ongoing office tasks and a virtual assistant who helps with important but not urgent tasks. She lives in Dublin, so I send her tasks at the end of my day and she works on them when I'm sleeping!

This article has been contributed by business development mentor and design industry veteran, Peleg Top.