If you suffer from ADD you may be all to well aware of the dangers of hyperfocus when you get into a project. Four hours after starting, you pull your head out of the project to find that your family will be home for dinner in 5 minutes and you were planning to shop for groceries before the end of the day. Meanwhile, the project at hand is spread across the dining room table. Sound familiar?
Consider keeping a time tamer alarm close at hand for these situations. Set the alarm for 45 minutes to an hour. When the alarm goes off, get up from where you are working, walk around, get a drink to stay hydrated. After 5 minutes or so return to the task at hand and reassess the degree of focus you have given based on your objectives for the time you have to work.
Remember to reset the alarm before you return to work.
Archive for Organizing Time – Page 4
Having trouble managing or organizing time?
Do you feel as if you are always busy but get nothing done?
Take a look at what you spent the majority of yesterday – or even this week – doing. Now reflect on what you did not do.
Time management is a challenge most of us face most of the time. All too often, we spend our time busy, busy on things that come up and convince us they are urgent in nature. At the end of the day, those things rob us of the time we need to accomplish things in our life which are really important to the values and goals we hold most dear.
Try this time management tip: allocate your time such that at least 50% is spent on those tasks or projects which are directly related to your highest values and greatest goals. Now book the time and protect it from unimportant intruders.
Enjoy achieving your goals.
Having trouble managing your time?
Are you feeling as if you are always busy but get nothing done?
Check out your daytimer and see what is scheduled. Now take a look and notice what is not scheduled.
Time management is a challenge most of us face most of the time. Organizing time can be harder than the paper!
Too often we book time for those things in our business which is urgent but at the end of the day not very important to the goals and objectives of our organization.
Manage your time – don’t let time clutter manage you. Try this time management tip: allocate at least 50% of your day for those things which are most important, but not urgent, and directly target achievement with the goals and objectives of your organization.
Now watch your productivity soar and your business take off.
So you think everyone has a better grip on their time than you, right?
You wonder why you can never show up on time for meetings, why you are always running late for everything and whether you will be late for your own funeral. Organizing time is not “rocket science” ( or brain surgery, pick the metaphor you like best) but most of us struggle with it. Even professional organizers show up late for meetings with the wrong or no files.
When it comes to time management, there is nothing more valuable than the ability to anticipate an event or events. Isn’t that what our organizers, calendars, day timers, and PDA’s are all about. The multi million dollar industry of calendars is based on the notion that we like to anticipate what is coming in our lives. With anticipation comes the ability to schedule both our time and our resources – like the car for example. When you look to next Tuesday and see that you have four reports due on the same day, having a whole week to get them done is very, very helpful.
Here’s a primer on organizing your time that will help you to anticipate what’s coming up.
1. Find a calendar that works for you: electronic, PDA, puppy dogs, whatever. The size, style and platform are really only relevant in terms of what works and what looks good.
2. Enter in all the fixed dates over which you have no control: meetings with the CEO, annual meetings, sales travel, interviews with childrens’ teachers, your piece of the car pool. Put them in for the whole term or year until the known completion date.
3. Enter in all the regularly scheduled flexible time such as gym time, squash night, book club, time with spouse. If it is scheduled, the intention moves from a 1 (would like to do) to an 8 (really intend to do) and has half a chance to get to 10 (will absolutely make sure this happens) at which point after 28 days it becomes a habit.
4. Enter into the calendar the activities that lead to what you would like to accomplish by year’s, month’s, week’s, day’s end e.g. I will read one chapter of an organizing book three times a week until I can get to meetings on time.
Have fun anticipating your wonderful life!
When it comes to time management, there is nothing more valuable than the ability to anticipate an event or events. Isn’t that what our organizers, calendars, day timers, and PDA’s are all about. The multi million dollar industry of calendars is based on the notion that we like to anticipate what is coming in our lives. With anticipation comes the ability to schedule both our time and our resources – like the car for example. When you look to next Tuesday and see that you have four family members going in four different directions at the same time by 4:30 in the afternoon, having a whole week to work on those back up resources like a car pool is very, very helpful.
Children learn to anticipate at a very young age – does birthday party excitement for a whole week sound familiar to you? Young students are now learning in school to use their school issue “agenda” to record their homework.
By the time the kids hit their teens, they have learned to anticipate excitement, record their homework and use their lockers. Unfortunately as adults, we don’t teach them the time planning that goes along with being able to anticipate events. Even as a professional organizer, I have been slow to teach my own teenager how to use her time wisely. Here’s the process that I went through with her to get her back on track with time. It’s a relatively easy organizing task and they will thank you for the time management skill later in life.
1. Find a calendar that works for you: electronic, PDA, puppy dogs, whatever. The size, style and platform are really only relevant in terms of what works and what looks good.
2. Enter in all the fixed dates over which you have no control: music lessons, swim practice, band practice, year book committee etc. Put them in for the whole term or year until the known completion date.
3. Enter in all the regularly scheduled flexible time such as piano/instrumental/voice practicing time. If it is scheduled, the intention moves from a 1 (would like to do) to an 8 (really intend to do) and has half a chance to get to 10 (will absolutely make sure this happens) at which point after 28 days it becomes a habit.
4. Enter into the calendar the activities that lead to what you would like to accomplish by year’s, month’s, week’s, day’s end e.g. On Saturday afternoons I will go to the library so that I have books for my English class on Monday.
Have fun anticipating your wonderful life!
It’s one week into November. Is your family calendar up to date? Is it posted where everyone can see it? After four days away at the Professional Organizers in Canada national conference last week, I have only just got ours up to date today. For our family, it’s a four month white board posted in the kitchen. Each family member is a different colour white board marker with black for family events. We can all see it and any one of us can refer to it while trying to book an event.
What does your families’ look like? Does it work?
