5 Result-Getting Time Management Tips
August 10, 2010
How often have you tried to manage your time in more productive ways, and found the process to be difficult and confusing? Perhaps you simply gave up on the idea. As one friend said, “Time management takes too much time!”
These tips will simplify time management with five important steps that can bring remarkable changes. They will allow you to easily customize a plan that will fit your specific objectives. Each action in your plan should support one of these five steps.
1. Prioritize Objectives and Actions.
Place a level of importance on each project or goal. Decide which actions are the most important for reaching your top-level objectives. Then spend the necessary time on those objectives first. That might seem obvious, but it requires thoughtful planning to prioritize time expenditures. It requires discipline to stick with the schedule.
Setting priorities also allows the mind to focus on desired outcomes. Time spent prioritizing projects, actions, and time expenditures is a wise investment of time.
2. Balance Time Expenditures.
Balancing time expenditures reduces stress. It brings success and fulfillment to careers and personal lives. Consider all the important areas in your life, and your values for each of them.
Top Ten Motivators
July 3, 2010
Setting goals is the easy part — but sticking with them over the long run can be a major challenge! Some people think that motivation requires will-power and dedication. Actually, staying motivated is all about setting up an environment that is conducive to you accomplishing your goals. Here are ten "tricks" for giving your goals staying power past January 31st:
BREAK YOUR GOALS DOWN
Do you know why 90% of us don’t keep our New Year’s resolutions? Because our goals are too big and too vague. Instead of telling yourself that you want to "get organized," try breaking that goal down into something smaller and more concrete. "Clean out all clothes that haven’t been worn in a year" or "move all of the sports equipment to the garage" gives you a solid place to start — then you can move on to another small goal that will take you one step closer to "getting organized."
PUT IN 15 MINUTES A DAY
TIME, The Undervalued Resource
May 28, 2010
We are all born equal! We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Oprah Winfrey has the difference is how we choose to spend our time. No matter how you dissect this concept, there could only be 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds at any given 24.
We’ve all been there and continue to get caught up in last minute rushes to meet deadlines, meetings that are double booked or achieve absolutely nothing, days that seem unproductive and crisis that spring unexpectedly from nowhere and destroy the most carefully planned day.
Somewhere in our education program, we all learned about the mathematical term “transition property” where if:
A=B and B=C, then A=C
Let’s try to apply this formula to what we’ve read so far.
?Time Management (A) = Planning & Prioritization (B)
?Planning & Prioritization (B) = Productivity & Success (C)
Therefore…
? Time Management (A) = Productivity & Success (C)
What Are You Thinking?
April 19, 2010
What would be your reaction if someone said to you "In the next 24 hours you will be given $10,000 for every chair you sell like the one you are sitting on right now?"
How many time management issues will you have? How hard will it be to set priorities for your day? How long would you wait before contacting your first prospect? How much time would you waist chatting on the phone or exchanging emails with friends? Probably will not take the time to be staring out the window or watching the grass grow!
Seriously, in that situation would time management be an issue for you? How much of your 24 hour time frame would you spend sitting on that chair instead of talking to people about it? The excitement of getting lots of $10,000 checks would probably motivate you to see as many people as humanly possible in the next 24 hours, right? Most, if not all, of your time management problems would be resolved immediately!
Think about this little example, and you will discover the key to success in many areas of your life — time management, selling, managing, self motivation. One single ingredient determines the success or failure of just about anything you pursue in life. Mental Attitude.
Time Management Mastery
March 15, 2010
From Potential to Performance
One of the great things about life is that we can realistically be or do anything we choose to. This includes being a good time manager! We must believe that we can be a good time manager - that we have the potential. Unfortunately, many people say, “Well, I am just a poor time manager,” as if it was ingrained in their DNA. The truth is that anyone can be a great time manager, if they choose to go from potential to performance.
So, how do we do this? Here is a simple 7 part process:
1. Believe that you can become a good time manager
2. Inventory where your time is currently being spent
3. Determine what your life values are - what do you view as important, what do you want to accomplish?
4. Set time priorities that will move you toward living out your values
5. Develop a system of scheduling that works best for you, not a time management conglomerate
6. Learn to say “no” to things that are not part of your priorities moving you toward your values - exercise your power to choose
Spend Less Time at Work and Get More Done
February 7, 2010
Sounds too good to be true?
It really isn’t!
In fact, studies show that after a certain amount of hours at work each week, the average worker hits diminishing returns for their labor.
Here are a couple of reasons this is true.
Family drain.
Does your spouse or family complain that you work too much? This puts strain on you when you’re at work and limits your effectiveness. Cutting out five or more hours a week and spending it with your family will make them happier and that will make you happier too, enabling you to enjoy your work more and get more done.
A healthy home life helps ensure a happy work life.
Mental fatigue.
Remember the old saying, “All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy”?
After a certain amount of time at work, your brain goes on auto-pilot and begins to work ineffectively. Taking some more time to relax and recreate will put you at a higher level of performance when you do go to the office.
Get some exercise, take up a hobby, but take some more time off. It will help your work become more effective!
Six Foundational Reasons for Managing Your Time
December 31, 2009
Most of us know how to manage our time. It is pretty simple really. What most of us miss are compelling reasons to manage our time. We know the “how” but miss the “why.” Here are six foundational reasons I have that motivate me to manage my time and myself properly.
It is a matter of stewardship. I view my life as not my own. I am merely a steward of it. I am given control over it for some 70 years and I should make wise decisions with it! This is a great sense of responsibility that compels me to manage my time.
It is a matter of personal fulfillment. When I get to the end of my life I want to be able to feel a sense of pride and satisfaction that I have lived well, helped others, and achieved much. This drives me to not waste time but to use it wisely.
It is a matter of providing for and being responsible to your friends and family. I owe some of my time - serious amounts - to my friends and family. If I let myself get out of control, they suffer the loss and that is something I do not want for them. I manage myself and my time so that I can give valuable portions of it to those who matter most.
The Myth of What We Manage
November 25, 2009
Perhaps it is merely semantics, but an underlying problem I find that people have as it relates to the success in their life lies in a proper understanding of what exactly it is that we manage. Think about it. We have time management (In fact I have a seminar on this very topic, some of which is excerpted below), and financial management, and relational management, weight management, career management, and many, many more.
The fact is though, that we don’t manage any of those things. What we do manage is ourselves, as they relate to those things. We don’t manage time. Time clicks by, second by second, whether we do anything or not. What we do is manage ourselves, and our activities, as the time passes. We make choices as to what we will do and be involved in. The problem as well as the solution lies not with time, but with us.
We don’t manage money. A pile of money will sit there forever if left alone. It won’t grow or shrink. What we manage is ourselves and the decisions we make in regard to how we will spend the money. Getting the idea?
Beyond Time Management ? Seven Ways to Leverage Your Time for Greater Results
October 20, 2009
Most of us have a to-do list ? some of us have a very long one! While a to-do list is a valuable tool to help us stay on track for the urgent tasks of the day (and while there are many ways to improve your production and use of this list), that isn’t the focus of this article.
This article isn’t about managing your time. It is about taking the limited time resources we have and determining how to leverage that time for greater results in our lives. When we use a lever we use specific, correct actions to create great results. That is what we all want to do with our time –find the activities that will create greater results — personal, professional, business, financial, or others in our lives.
To use this lever we have to go beyond our daily to-do list. This lever will require 30 or preferably 60 minutes of your time each day. Considering the returns (leverage) you will get on this investment, it will be time well spent.
Time Management: How To Get More Done
September 13, 2009
If you can regularly ask yourself “Am I regularly and consistently working on those items that will move me towards my clearly defined goals?” and honestly answer “Yes” then you are probably doing ok.
If not, here are a few time wasters to be aware of and some strategies for protecting your time (priorities).
MAIL: Don’t waste your time on junk mail (unless you are specifically looking for good marketing ideas to borrow) - if possible get someone else to go through your mail and sort out the junk and take care of the routine items.
If you do want to save the junk mail have it placed in a box or file that you can go through when you are brainstorming for new ideas. (This is commonly called a “Swipe File” by most writers - a resource to generate good ideas that you can swipe and adapt to your own use.)
MEETINGS: Scheduled and unscheduled meetings can be a terrible waste of time. Don’t allow people to just drop in on you without an appointment and a purpose. Avoid any scheduled meetings that you possibly can.
