If you see a gift or card that you think is just perfect for someone in your life, buy it. When the time comes that you needto buy something for that person, you won’t have to race around looking for something inspiring.
Author Archive for Carolyn – Page 12
Many of us are planning for the holidays and looking forward to some downtime after a busy fall. Great idea. What’s top of your list when you get back to the office in January?
With a little forward planning, by the time you get to April, you’ll be focussed on those new clients having signed off and sent off your annual tax return. If you are still working on a paper-based system, consider booking time with yourself in your 2012 calendar, before it gets booked with client appointments, to sort the receipts.
An accordion file makes a great receptacle. With 13 pockets it can stand on a shelf, in a file drawer and be labelled by month to receive receipts, invoices and any other relevant paperwork.
Happy New Year
Best wishes to all our readers for a healthy, happy and prosperous coming year. May all your goals for the year be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and accomplished by this time next year!
Resolutions?
Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions? How about a few key items on your To Do List for this year.
My suggestion is to stick to no more than 3 items and if you can, just put one item on your resolutions list. Set yourself up for success. This allows you to keep your attention to the one thing you want to accomplish. It reminds you that you have one key priority in addition the routine day to day priorities of life.
Have fun and good luck.
To all of our readers who celebrate Christmas, we wish you a very joyful and peaceful time with family and friends. Merry Christmas.
To all of our readers who celebrate Hanukkah, we wish you a peaceful and joyful time with family and friends.
Many of you are opening up the holiday decorations, unpacking boxes and bins and joining in festivities with lights, wreaths, Christmas tree ornaments and those special holiday decorations that live on the mantel. Problem is, every year there are a few more to add to the mix. Can anyone remember how to get them all back in the box? Packing up those boxes in January can be worse than that 1,000 piece puzzle at the cottage, full of sky and water, that no one has ever finished.
Taking a picture before everything comes out of the box can be helpful. Take a quick photo, print and tape to the top of the box. Letter the photo be the memory. Now you can enjoy the festivities.
For individuals managing ADD, learning to manage time can be an ongoing challenge. Professional organizers and ADD coaches often encourage the use of timers to make sure hyper-focus doesn’t cause the swallowing of hours and hours of time scheduled for something else.
Here’s an idea I created for a young client whose tremendous creativity sent me searching for an alternate timing device. Create a set of playlists for yourself on your mp3 player for various lengths of time. One might be 5 Min Playlist, another 10 Min Playlist etc. When you have a task to complete or a job that you need to focus for a designated time, plug in and turn on your playlist that matches that period of time. It may take a couple of attempts before you figure out the genre of music that works for a 10 minute end-of-day-get-stuff-off-the-floor task versus a 30 minute I-really-have-to-enter-in-my-expenses-today-if-i-want-to-be-reimbursed-this-month type task.
Have fun with it – its a perfect personalized tool to support your time management.
With the new year looming, most people have already picked up their calendar for next year. Some of you are die hard e-calendar types and just keep scrolling on down the screen while 2012 comes up to great you.
The rest of us are not and still prefer the paper version. It has been my experience that many individuals with a strong kinesthetic preference for learning and digesting information, still benefit from the writing and page turning of a paper calendar to anchor schedules and time frames in their minds. If you fall into this category, it is important to understand that you are using a modality that works for you. It may be necessary to use a second e-calendar for work if your company business practices require one.
On the other hand if you are cyber-savvy and tied to your electronic phone/tablet/laptop you may be a good candidate to consider moving to an e-calendar. Individuals in this category likely email appointments to colleagues and family members including teacher interviews. Some even share common calendars on cyberspace through email providers.
Whichever you choose, the most important criteria, is that it works for you. There is no point in using an e-calendar if you don’t have a devise with you all the time or perhaps can’t share with your co-workers, colleagues or family calender information they also need.
Dale Carnegie first penned his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, in 1936. I’m reading it as part of my Program Mentor training with the Institute for Challenging Disorganization. Imagine my surprise when I sourced a copy at the Toronto Public Library, I found there were 17 copies and all were on loan or on reserve.
I highly recommend this read. It is easy to get through with short, succinct chapters. The material is as relevant today as I think it must have been over 75 years ago. The behaviour Carnegie recommends of us does not take a university course to apply and could be initiated by anyone immediately. A surprising amount of his directives are good common sense that we fail to remember and therefore neglect to apply with authenticity and sincerity.
Happy Birthday “How to Win Friends…”
To our American readers best wishes for a health, happy and joyful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.
