The weather gets colder as the economic forcast gets bleaker. Does anyone have any great stew recipes to warm the harth and keep the shopping list light? What’s on your menu this week?
Monday – Fish, salad, potatoes, peas
Tuesday – ( One away, possibly one extra) Pasta, salad, home made bread
Wednesday – Omelettes, bacon, salad
Thursday – (Swim meet) BBQ chicken & grilled vegetables
Friday – Pasta with chicken & vegetables
Saturday – (Swim meet) Tacos
Sunday – (Swim meet) Roast beef, potatoes, brocoli
Archive for November 2008
A very peaceful and joyful Thanksgiving to all our American readers.
Here’s an interesting site for those of you living in small spaces. What’s not to love about a site named Loving. Living. Small?
Do you have current policies and procedures for your company?
Do you know where they are?
Do your employees know where they are?
Do they know what they say?
Do you have document retention policies?
Do you know what the means?
Do you know what the law in your jurisdiction says about retaining documents?
Do your employees know what the law in your jurisdiction says about retaining documents?
Do your employees know what your company mission is?
Do they share the vision?
Are your mission, vision and values reflected in your policies and procedures?
Do you know where your critical documents are?
Do you know what that means?
If your house were on fire, could you get them in less than 30 seconds?
Is there a copy off site safe?
Where is your passport, immigration papers, citizenship documents, birth certificate?
Where is your marriage certificate, divorce papers, name change confirmation?
If anything happend to you, could your Power of Attorney (Finance) find enough information in a short enough time to take care of your affairs the way you would want them handled?
Do you have a Power of Attorney for Finance?
Do you have a Power of Attorney for Health?
Do you have a Will?
Do you have a Living Will?
Do your executors know how to get copies of the Will?
Do you have guardians for your children in the event anything happens to you?
And you thought you could duck under the radar screen! Sorry my friend, upon review of the posts this year I realized it has been a long time since I confronted the big, ugly enemy of procrastination. Are you a procrastinator? (“Oh yeah” – I can hear you whisper under your breath.)
You are wondering why and what you can do about it? The following list is an adaptation from the book Making Time Work for You, by the Time Guru himself, Harold L. Taylor.
- A procrastinator’s view of time is distorted. With 2 weeks before the due date, you think yo have lots of time to get that report finished. The reality is, no where in those two weeks do you have the 9 hours of time free to actually finish the report. The solution: as soon as you know the report is due – book in the time to complete it. Now book in extra time since we both know it will take twice as long as you think it will.
- A procrastinator is often a perfectionist. The perfectionist is often afraid to start something for fear it won’t be perfect. The solution: get started to that you have lots of time to make it good enough which is much closer to perfect than not done at all.
- A procrastinator often sees tasks as overwhelming. Solution: just do it. Start with any small piece of the project even if it is just five minutes. Break the rest of the project down into bite size pieces that you can manage.
- A procrastinator is often someone who thrives on the adrenaline of crisis and deadlines. If you work in the publishing industry you likely have a busy, rewarding life. For the rest of us, it is important to understand that always running late is inefficient, disorganized and often problematic for everyone else around you. Solution: learn to get your adrenaline kick by getting the project done early.
- A procrastinator is often just plain disorganized. Some individuals avoid starting projects because they are too disorganized to arrange the information and material they need to get it done. In the meantime, they are still scrambling to find the information and material for the previous project or report which is late. Solution: plan ahead. Plan your year, months, weeks and days by blocking time to accomplish your goals and projects.
And you thought you could duck under the radar screen! Sorry my friend, upon review of the posts this year I realized it has been a long time since I confronted the big, ugly enemy of procrastination.
Are you a procrastinator? (“Oh yeah” – I can hear you whisper under your breath.) You are wondering why and what you can do about it? The following list is an adaptation from the book Making Time Work for You, by the Time Guru himself, Harold L. Taylor.
- A procrastinator’s view of time is distorted. With 2 weeks before the due date, you think yo have lots of time to get that report finished. The reality is, no where in those two weeks do you have the 9 hours of time free to actually finish the report. The solution: as soon as you know the report is due – book in the time to complete it. Now book in extra time since we both know it will take twice as long as you think it will.
- A procrastinator is often a perfectionist. The perfectionist is often afraid to start something for fear it won’t be perfect. The solution: get started to that you have lots of time to make it good enough which is much closer to perfect than not done at all.
- A procrastinator often sees tasks as overwhelming. Solution: just do it. Start with any small piece of the project even if it is just five minutes. Break the rest of the project down into bite size pieces that you can manage.
- A procrastinator is often someone who thrives on the adrenaline of crisis and deadlines. If you work in the publishing industry you likely have a busy, rewarding life. For the rest of us, it is important to understand that always running late is inefficient, disorganized and often problematic for everyone else around you. Solution: learn to get your adrenaline kick by getting the project done early.
- A procrastinator is often just plain disorganized. Some individuals avoid starting projects because they are too disorganized to arrange the information and material they need to get it done. In the meantime, they are still scrambling to find the information and material for the previous project or report which is late. Solution: plan ahead. Plan your year, months, weeks and days by blocking time to accomplish your goals and projects.
This is a follow up from my earlier post on Organizing with Depression. Holiday time can be, for many, many people far from a joyful celebration of anything. For many people it becomes an overwhelming time of year that they learn to dread and fear. Celebrating holidays both and home and in the business environment comes with many expectations that some people simply can not meet. Does this sound familiar and contribute to your feelings of overwhelm? Hlidays come with:
- extra food that maybe you have been trying to avoid all year to loose weight
- expectations of gift giving that maybe you can’t afford or don’t have the energy to arrange
- visits with family that perhaps aren’t your favourite friends
- multiple distractions (lunch/parties/people collecting for gifts) at the office interrupting attempts to put together projections for next year
Whatever contributes to your blue mood and feelings of overwhelm, the first step is to acknowledge the problem. Next take a good look at what you can control and what you can’t. Can’t avoid the office party? Can you control the length of time you are there or whether or not you nap before hand to ward off fatigue and frustration. With the downturn in the global economy, gift giving is going to be a very serious financial trial for many, many people. Can you pear down your list? Consider making a contribution to a charity in lieu of sending gifts to clients – then send them a card that discribes your gift on their behalf.
Take back control of what you can. It will help that blue be a little more rosy.
In you live in the northern hemisphere, north of about 60 degrees, you have contemplated at some point putting snow tires on your car. If you live in the southern hemisphere, south of about the same latitude or in the mountain ranges of other continents, you have also contemplated snow tires and maybe have chains to go with them.
Now since changing tires, like checking the oil, is a regularly occurring event, why is it that many of us end up in the “tire queue”, with coffee and newspaper – for several hours – after the first snow fall each year to get those tires put on?. You would think we didn’t know that winter was coming!
Ok, now for everyone in any hemisphere who owns a car – snow tires or otherwise:
- Open your calendar.
- Mark in the next date your car service is due.
- Mark in the date your car service is due after that and every date to the end of the year (2009).
- Go to November 7 (May for the folks down under)
- Mark down “Change car tires”.
- Close calendar.
- Smile!
Adjust the dates if you are a little farther north. The point is that next year you will be in a short queue and have the tires changed before the snow. You will be organized, smiling and taking that coffee and newspaper to your son’s hockey rink/daughter’s dance class and enjoy his/her game/practice. Enjoy!
