When planning your schedule for the day, allow time to get from one place to the next: anticipate traffic delays.
Archive for Time Tamers – Page 2
Headed for a workout in the morning? Whether you go to the gym or hit the pavement/park for a run or bike, lay out your gear the night before – all of it including clothes, socks, shoes, gloves, keys, phone, shower gear, work clothes and anything else you need to take. You’ll be primed when you wake up and can go on autopilot until the endorphins kick in.
Take advantage of the time delay features on dishwashers and washing machines to get chores done when hydro rates are low, but you’re busy with more pressing matters — like homework, bedtime, or reading a good book.
Struggling to find time to weed the garden? Try using 15 minutes a day to tackle whatever weeds you can pull in a quarter hour. By the end of the week you will have invested over an hour of weed pulling!
If you have to drop something off somewhere, leave it in your car. It’s so much easier to drop something off when you’re in the neighbourhood, instead of making a special trip.
At the end of the day, spend 15 minutes writing down the top 3 things you want to accomplish tomorrow. You’ll wake up with purpose and focus.
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.
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.
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.
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.
