Today's Chefs are feeling the squeeze; that is, the time squeeze.  The pressure is so intense that we listed "time management" as one of the top five challenges we face in our day to day jobs.  While the absence of good time management skills and the accompanying mental and physical clutter can be, at best, frustrating and at worse, debilitating, it is as curable as a headache.

Astute professionals (look at, of all people, me talk about astute!) begin to look carefully and take note of time mismanagement we become overwhelmed & pressured by our daily chores and we respond to our responsibilities in a more focused and judicious manner.  We start to realize that this maybe runs deeper than:  I'm just a little bit disorganizes.
Time management is a science, believe it or not, and we have to learn how to do it.  Some people are really great at it, they have an innate sense of organization (don't you hate them?)  But not everyone has it. me included, and thus we have to learn how to do it.
Time management "experts" note that the first sign is being overwhelmed and that time is getting away and work is slowing causing stress.  It is noticeable also when one begins constant complaining about their job.  Missed deadlines and poor kitchen production schedules become overwhelming and the chef feels driven to the limit.  One solution I have found is consolidation.  One can consolidate various notes, scraps of paper, scribbled schedules or no schedules at all.  Consolidate all the bits and pieces into one BIG list and see how it helps you minimize clutter and mental stress.  If you have papers all over the place, numbers written every which way you could be creating a lot of unnecessary pressure for yourself.
Of all the tools available to you for planning and scheduling one needs to be cautioned against using the human brain!  Honest, our brains and not "reliable tools."  I believe one can hold just so much stuff in their head at once.  If you keep trying to add things, there is no other avenue but to forget some of it.  Try a hand held electronic note book or a bound paper note book…but no scraps of paper.
Time management is the most important element and the most difficult this to achieve.  In our business things happen on an hourly basis and the customer has no concept of what it takes to produce their breakfast, lunch or dinner.  It is so important that managed time is in focus but also understand that there will always be four or five "evils" that will try to destroy your plan.  "Evils" can be things like, and we all know them intimately, traffic tie ups, late deliveries, stock outs, mis-picked products from store rooms, errors in ordering….you know all the evil stuff that cab rear it's ugly head.
A little trick to successful time management is not simply to write down your schedule, but to organize it so that the same activities are in the same locations on the sheet every time!  Try it, you'll like it and it works.