Simple concept isn’t it: be prepared. If you were a Boy Scout or Girl Guide, you would have memorized this motto along the way somewhere.
In application to business and time organization, the concept is no different. The more you can prepare ahead of time, the more relaxed, organized, polished and professional will be your presentation and performance. By preparing your material ahead of time, and confirming everything is ready in advance, you will also be able to avoid most technical hangups, forgetting things, or other people forgetting things.
Because you are a professional business person, your dates are already carefully mapped out on your daytimer right? Good. Now schedule in preparation time well in advance. Finally, follow up by scheduling in time, no later than the day before, to confirm that everything and everyone is in place. Now you can relax.
Archive for Time Management – Page 6
So often we struggle with those not-so-fun tasks that every job, business, company can claim. If you work in a SOHO it might be organizing your receipts to send to the book keeper. Oh, you do your own book keeping and the receipts are still in a box/envelop/pile on the desk?
Here’s a strategy for tackling that not-so-fun chore: schedule, subdivide into bites, conquer.
Start by scheduling some time to tackle the job. Without a Level 10 Intention, its not going to happen. By scheduling time on the calendar, you can at least get your intention close to 10.
Next divide the project into bites, something you can chew without choking. Maybe start by sorting the receipts into months and filing them into separate envelopes one for each month. Already separated? Try dividing or labelling them into your expense categories. Can’t find the receipts? There’s you first bite: spend the scheduled time collecting all the receipts you can find in your office and put them into envelopes, one for each month of the year. (Try an accordian file and you don’t need to worry about labelling the envelopes!).
Too often we fail to accomplish a task because it never gets scheduled into our calendars. Other bits and pieces of our business gobble up the day, the week, the month. If the task is an unpleasant or difficult one and you are procrastinating as a result, you probably find yourself doing almost anything else than sitting down to tackle it. Schedule a date with yourself to take it down.
To review development of your goals click here.
To review measurement of your goals click here.
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.
Are you a procrastinator? Are you overwhelmed with the tasks at hand and would rather just avoid them?
Here is an excellent, short discussion around procrastination at the office and what to do about it:
http://www.lifeorganizers.com/office/procrastination-at-work.htm
It’s back to school time. If you have children in elementary school who stay at the school for lunch, you have likely had at least on lunch bag go missing.
Today’s tip is so simple and often repeated it will soon be wearing as thin as the nylon on my own favourite lunch bag. But it works:
Write your child’s name on the Outside of the lunch bag.
Even if your own son or daughter can’t remember to pick it up or doesn’t notice it got left behind, chances are pretty good someone else will and the bag will make it back to the owner.
Just like the rest of us teenagers need to be able to anticipate the next step in theirs lives if they are expected to be prepared.
Avoid changing plans too quickly without giving your teenager time to shift gears. Help them use their agenda, day planner to other organizer to keep track of their upcoming activities, obligations and events. If you have to change/make new family plans, try and give them warning and give them the courtesy of asking what impact these changes/plans will have on their existing schedule.
This approach will assist your teen in learning to anticipate, plan and be prepare for whatever is coming down the pipe.
Overwhelmed with email? Many of us are. Many of us are also concerned with the amount of time it can consume. Have you ever found yourself still clearing email several hours after you started, not having realized the time that was eaten up?
To begin taking back control, turn off the email alert on your screen. Very few of us really need to know when emails are coming in unless we have a time-sensitive message for which we are waiting.
Avoid clearing email first thing in the morning. Having planned your list of things to do the night before, you know what your top priorities are: let those have your best hours first thing in the day. Schedule time to clear email towards the middle of the day and again later in the day. Allocate a certain amount of time and stick to it.
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.
