Nothing hurts office productivity like unplanned absences of colleagues and key staff members. When they are not present, you may be stalled on a project. Your may have to take on additional work to cover their tasks. Your time management efforts for that day are shot.

In winter, with cold and flu season, the frequency of illness increases. The reminders are constant: wash your hands, keep your hands aways from nose and eyes, get plenty of sleep, etc. We cringe when sitting next to a cougher on the airplane, and we use our elbows to pull down the paper towel handle in public restrooms.

For all of your awareness, you may be completely ignoring your biggest germ zone, which is your desk area. In a study by Charles Gerba, an environmental virologist with the University of Arizona, your work space may have 400 more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

This study had one group of office staff cleaning their desk with disinfecting towelettes every day while the other group did nothing. For the desks that were wiped off, bacteria levels dropped 99.9%. On the other desks, bacteria levels increased from 19% to 31% every day.

The primary culprit was the telephone, followed by the desk, water cooler handle, microwave door handle, and keyboards. Coming in with the lowest score was that toilet seat.

When struggling every day to keep up with tasks and be as productive as possible, a top time management technique for this season could be daily disinfecting.