This is the first full week of the New Year, and chances are this is the first week you’ll start to implement those new year’s resoliutions. In the spirit of this stepped up dedication to discipline, I thought I’d post one article per day on one of the most common resolutions: “become more organized,” one theme each morning.

Today, the subject is on utilizing “little minutes,” those small snippets of time that inevitably pop up during the day — times when we’re either waiting on someone or something before we begin the “next thing” on our to do list. Those small blocks of time can be your best friend  — it’s amazing how much you can accomplish  just a few minutes.  You can even utilize them while watching television during commercial breaks. Even if I’ve DVR’d something, I still play the commercials, because it’s during those that I perform tasks to get ready for the following day. Did you know that television breaks can last up to 4 1/2 minutes? You can do a lot in 4 minutes — For every one hour of television programming there are roughly 16- 20 minutes of commercial time.  Here’s some of what you can accomplish during one break:

• Unload the dishwasher
• Load the dishwasher
• Put away every thing on your counters
• Pick up an entire room
• Sort the mail

During the workday, little minutes are just as effective as they are at home. You can use them to:

• Answer 1 or 2 emails
• Look over your schedule for the following day,  making adjustments where necessary
• Get rid of the clutter on your desk
• Get up and move around — fitness experts tell us that having an exercise program isn’t enough — we need to  move around throughout the day. Use five minutes an hour to walk around, do squats and curls, and other calisthenics. You’ll likely hreturn to yiour desk more energized. If I don’t move some during every hour, my mind gets stale and foggy. Simply changing pace for just a few minutes makes a huge difference.