Archive for June, 2007

by Shafir Ahmad
With our busy lives and mounting responsibilities we think that the faster we work, or the harder we work, the more we will accomplish. While this sounds good in theory, it is just not true. When we try to work faster, we may lose focus and this results in taking longer to complete a project. The following tips will help you to work smarter and accomplish more without having to work faster.

* The most important thing to remember is that you do not have a million things to do: you have one thing to do at a time.
* Prioritize your goals. Then make a list of steps that you need to take to reach those goals. Make sure that each step or action on your list is vitally important to reaching that goal.
* Set aside work that can be done at home. Take that work home and work on it at night. Just make sure that you save some time for yourself and your family.
* Do your most important projects in your peak energy times. Everyone has a time of day in which they work better. Identify this time and schedule your most important projects then focus on what matters most and less on staying caught up.
* Use an appointment calendar and avoid letting people just drop in. If people do drop in for something important, see if you can put them in your appointment schedule at a later time.
* Resist the urge to multi task. Trying to do too many things at once just results in a loss of concentration and getting off track.
* Get rid of distractions. Close you email program and your instant messages. You can live without them for the time it takes you to accomplish something on your task list.
* Start each project by asking yourself “Just what do I need to accomplish here?” This question will help you focus and allow you to map out steps to finish the project in the fastest time possible.
* Set a standard for the outcome of each project and stop when you reach that standard. Far too much time is wasted trying to achieve perfection.
* Admit when you are overloaded and seek help when needed. You do no one any favors by keeping an excessive work load that cannot be completed in a timely manner. If you need help ask for it or ask for an extension on a deadline.
* Use email and direct voice messaging as much as possible to communicate throughout the day.
* Use email instead of phone conversations to help insure clarity. You will have the details in black and white instead of trying to remember a phone conversation.
* Go to work 30 to 60 minutes earlier so that you have quiet time to devote to important projects. This will also give you time to plan your day and gather any necessary documents or information that you might need.

These tips will help you to become more efficient without having to work faster or harder. The person who works smarter will be the person that moves ahead in any business.

Shafir Ahmad is the author of “The Experts Guide to Managing Your Time”. If you are not managing your time, then you are wasting it. Don’t waste time! Get your 7-Part eCourse on Secrets To Better Time Management at http://www.PlanYourTimeNow.com

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by Diana Long M.S.ACC
It’s the wonderful, beautiful month of May! Our environment suddenly “wakes up”— trees pop their leaves, plants push themselves up and out of the ground, flowers bloom. Our “grey” landscape has become colorful, alive and vibrant. I have noticed in conversations with clients, colleagues, fellow parents and friends that our lives have suddenly “popped” too! Opportunities and events to attend are abundant. Some focus may find ourselves a bit overwhelmed with the sudden increase of activity. Aided by the increase of daylight, we cram even more then ever into our already crowded schedules fearing we may miss out if we don’t do it all as it comes to us. As a wife, parents, and owner of a business, I experience this challenge firsthand. I am also committed to living my life fully yet sanely! When I experience this challenge in my life, I immediately research and seek a great solution that is practical, effective, and life enhancing. One of my new mantras is “work smarter, not harder!” Here are some excellent strategies gleaned and adapted from Robert Allen, author of “Multiple Streams of Income.”

#1 Time is Money
Time management is really a myth. Time management is really self-management. How do you manage precious resources of your time? Invest your time into the actions that yield the greatest result. An hour in front of the TV could have been the hour spent enriching your relationship with your child. Determine which activities yield the desired results in your life.

#2 Feared Things First
Our to-do lists are made up of easy and difficult tasks. The tendency for many of us is to tackle the easy tings first. We feel good about ourselves as we happily check off these tasks from our list. We think that we are being efficient; the truth is that we’re not! The leftover tasks that are more important, more critical, and that will give us the greatest long term results are tackled last, if at all. Exciting, important projects such as writing a book or developing your web site become a burden. These projects take more time, are more complicated, and frankly, are intimidating! It is perfectly natural to experience resistance to going out of our comfort zone. However, the real question is do you want to keep shuffling those dreams and goals from to-do list to to-do list or are you willing to do what you “fear the most” to gain the greatest benefit?

#3 Reward Yourself
Steven Covey says that our to-do lists are composed of a ratio of 80% trivial and 20% very important items. A way to create a pattern of accomplishing the “more challenging” items is to reward yourself for doing the “hard stuff” first. In psychology 101 this is referred to as “positive reinforcement.” Rewarding a desired behavior creates more of the desired behavior. Very simple. I witnessed this concept with my daughter when we participated in an exhilarating, interactive experience with dolphins during our stay in Mexico. The dolphins were “coached” by their trainers and rewarded with treats of fish as they interacted with us. The dolphins were receptive and engaged in playing with us. We human participants also demonstrated this principal. Like several of us in our small group, I was a bit hesitant to interact with the dolphins. The reinforcement that kept me and the others in our group to participate fully was the absolute thrill of being with these amazing creatures. The bottom line is this: to acknowledge and reward yourself well for accomplishing those critical, important tasks will prompt you to continue the activities that give you the best long term result. A great idea, don’t you think?

The Coaching Challenge:
1.How many ways can you leverage your time this week? Resolve to get the most of the time and energy you spend.
2.Be “fearless” Do the most challenging item on your to-do list first today.
3.Reward yourself well for doing the more challenging projects. Reinforce this great strategy often. It works!

“We spend, I am certain, half of our time among people we do not particularly like and on things that do not particularly amuse us, and consequently have no time for the people and things that really do matter to us.” Alec Waugh author of “Doing What One Likes”

Success Coach and Speaker, Diana Long, is the President of the Life Design Institute. Diana can help you transform your dreams into reality and give you the shortcuts to success with her variety of life-changing programs and products.Learn more about Diana and receive your FREE Report,” 3 Huge Mistakes People Like You Make to Sabotoge Their Success & How You Can Completely Avoid Them!” and Free subscription to “Life Design Secrets” e-newsletter, please visit www.DianaLong.com

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by Amanda Young -
Are you working from home? More people are working from home today. Whether it is though their career or running a business. When you are working from home, you can have more distractions. There is more demand on your time. Many people struggle on maximizing the advantages from working from home. People struggle with productivity of working from home. One important aspect of working from home is to make a decision on where you will put your home office. You can put an office in a spare bedroom, attic, basement, kitchen, or garage. Even in a closet, if the space is available. You must make a decision on where you will put your office. This separates the everyday stuff like laundry, visitors, cleaning etc. that goes on in a household. Pick an area that is not a noisy, high traffic area. If you live with a spouse, children, or roommate, it can be a challenge. You need to set boundaries. You must treat your office as a “real” office. Everyone in your house needs to know that when you are in your office, you are working. This is the time that the people you live with needs to know that, you are not to be disturbed. You also need your privacy. This is your time to be productive in your work.

When you work from home there are two things that are critical to being productive, getting your work complete, and getting the results. You need to be organized. You need first is some sort of a day planner. There are many out there today. Find one that work for your needs. You must plan your day. Set your “ store hours.” This is the time that you will be working. When you plan your store hours, you can let others in your household know the hours. This helps from being disturbed. This helps them to know in advance. If you have employees either in your office or virtual, this helps them also.

The second most critical aspect of working from home is that you need a good follow-up system. What I mean by a follow-up system is that you need a system in place for unfinished work, tasks, and projects. This will help you stay on top of everything that is going on in your work. If you don’t have a system in place, important items in your work can slip through the cracks. Therefore can lead you into a mess that you will need to clean up later. It is also very time consuming to clean messes. It could be easily avoided.

Organization and having a follow-up system in place will make your life easier. It will help make everyone around you too. You will be more productive with your work and time.

Amanda Young, founder of The Time Mastery, specializes in training people to get more done in less time and gain more balance in business and personal life. To learn more on how to get more done and balance your life today, Grab your free Simpleology course at http://www.thetimemastery.com

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by Penny Phang
Here is a little strategy that can make a big difference in your life. It calls for a small shift in your behavior that is worth its weight in gold. I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying, “Put first things first.” Well, it is this simple concept that helped all successful people to achieve their goals. You might feel like dismissing this as overly simplistic advice, but before you do that, take a moment and consider what most of us do instead.

There are those of us who tackle things as they come in, regardless of time-sensitivity or importance. The task might be potentially significant, such as following up on a potential sale, or it might be mundane, such as returning a phone call. Those of us who work this way are just trying to stay on top of things. You can probably agree that demands come at us during any given day or week in a somewhat random way. When we handle work in the order that they come, we spend our time on tasks that are most likely not priorities. Instead of consciously making choices and prioritizing, we let the outside world randomly dictate what we do in our day-to-day work.

There are many other ways in which we prioritize our workloads. Some of us have a huge to-do list that when we look at it, we decide to tackle only those tasks that seem most urgent. But the problem is that they may seem urgent, but it may or may not have much to do with what’s truly important to our goals. For example, in my business I could spend lots of time answering calls and emails, but if I never got round to the more challenging task of preparing business proposals, there wouldn’t be any phone calls and emails to respond to.

Then, there are those of us who choose to do what appears to be easiest or least stressful, first. For example, if you’re this kind of person, you may have an uncomfortable phone call to make that could secure a sale, as well as a couple of flyers or direct-mail pieces to send out. One task is simple and mindless, whereas the other is difficult and uncomfortable. Guess which you do first?

Furthermore, there are also those of us who waste time with simple distractions. If you’re this kind of person, you may spend a lot of time straightening your desk, making lists, returning less than productive phone calls, or playing with your cellular phone to see what other features it might have. If your work style fits into any of the examples mentioned thus far—don’t worry— let’s make today the day you start “putting first things first.”

You see, subconsciously, most people avoid doing what really matters because of fear. Fear causes the mind to worry—worry about getting rejected, or not succeeding. When you worry, your mind spins off in a downward spiral, and for nothing, because it’s all in the mind. You start judging everything as right, wrong, good, or bad, and you imagine the worst case scenarios, you make assumptions, and as a result, you indirectly self-sabotage—saying things, and making decisions that aren’t serving your ultimate goals.

The small change you must make is to alter your mind-set when it comes to work life, and put first things first. To do this, you have to know your goals, and be really honest with yourself about your habits. Then you have to work to change the habits that aren’t serving your goals. It’s easy to run into obstacles at work, and in your mind, create scenarios that cause you to worry. But these scenarios don’t often pan out the way you’ve pictured them. Then, in hindsight, you wonder why you wasted time and energy on thoughts that served no greater purpose to your ultimate goals. It would have served you better if you’d only made a conscious effort to focus your time and energy on what is most productive and potentially profitable.

Your time is the most valuable resource. So before you spend it, think about whether what you’re about to spend time on is contributing to your goals—or not. The more you do this consciously, the more it will become an automatic subconscious action, and it is here in the automatic thinking that you’ll find your behavior created and controlled.

Know your priorities, and be sure your decisions are purpose-driven. When you catch yourself answering emails instead of starting that business proposal, returning that less than productive phone call instead of that uncomfortable phone call that could secure a sale, remind yourself to “put first things first!” No matter what kind of unproductive or unprofitable situation you may be in at that moment, this will prompt you to ask yourself what you should really be doing instead. You may find you truly need to take a break and return with a clear mind to start that proposal, or return a few more calls to warm up to that potential sales call. This is all very healthy because now you have a purpose even if you’re not jumping straight into what you “should” be doing. But you’re aware and respecting the process you deserve, while putting yourself on the path to achieving your goals.

© 2007 Penny Phang Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinting or republishing of this article is permitted, provided the author’s information including copyright and live link is retained to accompany the article.

Penny Phang is one of Canada’s nominated Top 40 Under 40 business leaders recognized for her commitment to provide strategic marketing and communication services, with inspiring creativity and innovation. She is also well known as the former Playboy Special Editions Producer for Western Canada, and Founder of Penny Best Jewelry. In addition, she serves as one of the Board of Directors for Global Reach Organization, and continues to write for her monthly inspirational lifestyle column, Moments of Inspiration with Penny at Penny Phang.com.

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by Kelli Smith
It’s one of those mornings when you hit snooze too many times and as a result wake up late. Since you’re running late, on a whim you decide to skip breakfast, grab a quick shower, hastily dress, and run out your door hungry, irritable, and somewhat ready for another day of work. On your drive to work, you realize that you left your cell phone at home along with your daily vitamin. In this frustration, you decide to reflect on last night when you sat in rush-hour traffic on your way home, finished your weekly proposals, cooked dinner, went to the gym, bought groceries, and took your daughter to her daily gymnastics class. All of these after-work activities stressed you out and produced an unwanted headache that kept you up for most of the night. You sigh and think, “If I only had more time.”

Does this sound familiar? If it does, don’t worry because you’re not alone. In the last 25 years, our leisure time has been reduced by 37 percent, while our work week has increased by a full day. Most of us lead busy lives that cause unwanted stress, which can produce long-term health consequences such as heart disease, stroke, and gastrointestinal problems.

Do you want to reduce stress and have more time for relaxation, family, and leisure activities? If so, time management is your answer. Time management is a set of skills, tools, and systems that work together to help you get more value out of your time while improving your quality of life. The following steps will help you manage your responsibilities and relieve you of unhealthy tension so that you can enjoy your day-to-day routine and lead a healthier life.

Organize Your Space

Before you do anything else, you’re going to have to organize your space. As a whole, Americans waste more than 9 million hours each day looking for misplaced and lost items. If you organize your home and office, think of how much time you’ll save looking for things. You’ll have fewer interruptions, experience less frustration, and will be able to locate important articles, documents, and files in a timely manner so that you can continue finishing what needs to be completed.

Plan and Schedule

It’s important to remember that calendars, appointment books, and to-do lists will serve as reminders and help you identify deadlines. Spending 15 minutes every morning to update these tools can save you up to 6 hours a week and you’ll be able to successfully make use of your schedule. Additionally, by having a thoughtfully planned out schedule you’ll be able to:
• Understand what is achievable with your time
• Make the best use of the available time
• Leave enough time for tasks that you must do
• Have time to handle the unexpected
• Avoid over-working yourself

Prioritize and Set Goals

It’s essential that you prioritize your activities on a daily basis and set attainable goals. Focusing on the results that are most important to you will help you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available.

If you are confused by what your priorities are or have many different priorities, look over your to-do list and choose the most important things and do these first. By realizing goals, you’ll feel accomplished and be motivated to continue finishing lots of things on your to-do list. This will result in completing work and having more free time.

Beat Procrastination

Procrastination is one of time management’s biggest enemies. Procrastination is a destructive habit that impulses you to put off important tasks over and over again. You are procrastinating when you do something more enjoyable or comfortable than what you should be carrying out. Some people are so strongly affected by procrastination that it negatively impacts their careers and personal lives.

Here are tips that will help you overcome procrastination and allow you to successfully manage your life:

• Develop good organizational and personal effectiveness habits such as establishing the right priorities
• Make the most of the opportunities available
• Recognize that important things are likely to be the actions that help you achieve something of real significance and that urgent matters need to be taken care of efficiently so that you can stay on top of the important tasks of the day
• Even if you don’t feel like doing something, you can just start and once you’ve started you’ll likely begin to feel more motivated to continue doing it
• Plan a reward or celebration for yourself for completing tasks, such as a walking break or candy treat
• Make a list of activities that you enjoy that can be completed in 5 to 30 minutes and find creative ways to fit these into your immediate and long-term schedule

Beat Exhaustion

If you’re tired, it’s no use having priorities and a beautifully arranged schedule since you’re likely to not stay on task. You’ll be more vulnerable to interruptions during the work day, which can consume 10 to 20 minutes in getting back on track, not to mention the time spent conversing with the interrupter. Exhaustion happens to all of us and can have a negative impact on successful time management.

Some steps to combat exhaustion and fuel your energy:

• If you’re a morning person, plan your most important work for early in the day; if you’re a late-day person, do the opposite
• As much as possible, make sure to sleep at least 8 hours a night so that you can perform your best
• After a few hours of sitting at your desk or after a long meeting, get up from your chair and stretch
• Go outside for a 5 minute walk to get your limbs moving, breath some fresh air, and catch some sunshine
• Drink plenty of water to keep yourself hydrated and eat balanced meals to keep yourself energized
• Make time for quiet time by taking a few minutes to close your eyes and relax

As you can see, a little organization, prioritizing, and planning goes a long way. By implementing these tools, beating destructive habits like procrastination and exhaustion, you’ll allow yourself to have more free time. Time management will let you spend quality time on your hobbies and enjoy stress-free days. Time management will give you more time in the mornings to eat breakfast, calmly shower and dress, and not leave behind important items like your cell phone and vitamins. More importantly, by incorporating these time management steps into your daily living routine, you’ll be a more successful individual and have more time to finish your proposals, cook dinner, buy groceries, workout, and take your daughter to her gymnastics class

Edu411.org is a career education directory for finding colleges and universities, training schools, and technical institutes. For more information about careers, online and campus based career programs, please visit us at http://www.edu411.org.

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by Tellman Knudson
The term “attention deficit disorder” (ADD) wasn’t even around until the 1980s. People saw children exhibiting behaviors like the inability to pay attention, lack or organizational skills, rude communicational behaviors, and hyperactivity as bad parenting. Their profound response to these “bad” children was to beat them into submission.

Fortunately, those ideas are for the most part in the past, and these symptoms have been attributed to ADD, or when hyperactivity is added, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), even though some people and even some doctors still attribute those behaviors to “bad parenting.” But attention deficit is definitely a neurological difference from what science might see as a “normal” brain. Though no prescribed, scientific tests have been determined to pinpoint the causes of ADD, certain behaviors, which are continuous for a period of six months or more and which disrupt a person’s life, are seen as attention deficit.

Only recently, however, have theses patterns been acknowledged in adults. Recent statistics show that 70% of children with ADD will outgrow it by the time they’re teenagers, but it’s now recognized that 15 to 20% still exhibit symptoms into their adulthood. ADD, when not treated by medication or counseling, can lead to bigger problems like addiction, depression, career-related issues, and difficulty forming strong inter-personal relationships.

Treatment and/or counseling alone can make a huge difference for adults with ADD. If you have ADD, it’s all about finding ADD-friendly systems to help you cope because it’s important to know a) that they exist and b) that you aren’t alone. So, let’s talk about ADD-friendly systems for a moment.

For instance, let’s say you’re a work-at-home mom with adult attention deficit. How are you going to keep your schedule straight? If your husband works weird hours, will you be able to remember when a good time to have dinner is, or whether to have it at all? What about your kids? How will you keep soccer practice, dance lessons, and dental appointments straight? And if you’re trying to run a business, too, how can you meet all these obligations without messing things all up?

Train yourself to some type of planner.

Microsoft Outlook has a great feature in its calendar. You can use it to plug in all your appointments and to keep your “to-do” list straight. Since you’re working a home-based business, you probably are at the computer for a good part of the day. Leave the calendar open in your task bar and plug in appointments that you need to remember as they arise. Get outlook to remind you by setting up an alert that will pop up five minutes or more before the appointment is due.

If you don’t have Outlook, try another piece of software called Time & Chaos. But if you’d rather have something with you all the time, buy a personal data assistant, like a Palm Pilot, or get a cell phone with scheduling capabilities. If you prefer to enter appointments by hand, a simple wall board or wall calendar, with big squares so that you can enter information into them, will work, too. It all depends upon your personal preference.

But if you want something really high-tech and user friendly at the same time, try Mark Joyner’s Simpleology at http://simpleology.com. His “Simple Science of Getting What You Want,” also known as Simpleology 101 will organize every bit of time in your day and help you to see what you want in your life and to get it. Use it every single day. Simpleology even has a desktop solution that you can download to see your day plainly, every minute you’re in front of the computer.

Organization is a difficult process for people with ADD, so you may have problems meeting some things that are expected of you. If you implement one of these systems, and just organize your day right from the start, you’ll soon be better organized and right on time for each thing you have to do.

Using ADD-friendly systems for everything from organization to achieving better interpersonal relationships can free your life. We’ll be talking about these issues in the future, so be sure to stay tuned.

Tellman Knudson, CEO of Overcome Everything, Inc., is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner, who has coached many ADD clients to greater happiness. Get instant access to his free weekly ADD Success Tips when you visit Instant ADD Success at http://www.instantaddsuccess.com/

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by Juliette Lee
Old habits die hard, they say. How right they are.

I am a novel freak and have been since the 4th grade when I read an amazing novel that started me down the road of reading.

I continued this craze for reading right into college and even early in my career. I didn’t quit even when I got married and had my first beautiful daughter.

But as you would expect, as I climb higher in my career and the kids increase from 1 to 3, I am beginning to have less time to spend doing what I loved so much - reading novels.

Being a die-hard at anything I do, I continued to read novels. Sadly, it was starting to take me 3 months to read just one novel, instead of the 3 or so hours it used to take me when I had more time.

I would read a chapter on one day and then put the novel aside. In two weeks time, when I had some free time on my hands, I would read another chapter. Then it would be another 2 or 3 weeks before I could read another. And so on, until I would finish just one novel.

I didn’t like this and knew that there had to be a better way of STILL getting the value of a novel in the same 3 hours it used to take me, instead of the 3 months it now takes me to finish just one novel.

I started asking for a way out.

Thankfully, I found one…

Audio books!

I simply buy the novel I want to buy, not in hardcover or paperback, but in audio book format - containing the exact same content of the novel in spoken-word!

Now I don’t have the limitations I used to have with “reading” my favorite novels.

In the morning while doing my chores of exercising, making breakfast, dressing up for work, etc, I listen to my novel in audio book format. While commuting to work, I continue from where I stopped. During break at work, I also listen. And before driving back home from work, I complete the remaining part of the novel.

Total time spent - about 4 hours for each novel.

Phew… how I love audio books for saving me so much time, yet I’m still getting the same value!

If you haven’t tried the amazingly wonderful advantages of audio books yet, don’t hesitate.

Apart from novels you can get almost any kind of book in audio book format. From business books, professional books, motivational books, etc, all can now be found in audio book formats.

Go online to find that book you have always wanted to “read” but have never had the time to. Now you can ¡V with audio books!

It’s now far easier to find the audio book format of that favorite book of yours than you ever imagined!

Juliette Lee is the editor and CEO of MyAudioCompanion.com. To find the best audio book titles, please visit http://www.myaudiocompanion.com

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by Shafir Ahmad
Balancing your work life and your home life can be very difficult. Your job can require more of you than you are able to give in a typical 8 to 10 hour day. A lot of people will bring work home with them at night or on the weekends or will work longer hours to get their jobs finished. But the more time that you spend on your work, the less time you can spend with your family. A lot of marital problems can stem from one or both spouses spending more time at their job than with each other. However, there are ways to get your work life and your home life into balance.

* Take care of yourself. Eat a healthy balanced meal three times a day. Drink plenty of water and schedule exercise into your day, even if it’s only 15 minutes. Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. These are the most important steps that you need to take to get your life back in balance. Someone who is tired, skipping meals and is out of shape cannot function at their maximum capacity.

* Say no to the unimportant tasks. Many people do not know how to say no. They get themselves so buried in doing things for others that it becomes impossible for them to do anything for themselves.

* Make a list of your priorities. Think about what you want to be remembered for. If you had to write your own obituary, what would you want it to say? Do you want to be remembered for being an excellent employee and a “yes” person or do you want to be remembered as being a loving parent and spouse whose greatest accomplishment is family? Learn to say no to the things that will not help you achieve your goal.

* Another great way to balance your work with your home life is to find a job that is family friendly. Find an employer that recognizes that you have other people in your life and these people have needs too. Things such as employee assistance programs, health insurance that covers dependents and spouse, on-site child-care and paternity leave are all benefits to look for.

* Simplify your life. De-clutter your office at work and at home. Group your errands and take your child with you when you go. This is a great way to spend some alone time with your child. Turn off the television. Turning off the TV will free up precious time to play board games with the family or get out and take a walk with them.

* Eat together. Make it a priority for the family to get together for a least one meal a day at the table. This is valuable time that can be spent learning about your kids and some of the challenges they may be facing.

These are a few suggestions to help balance your work life and your home life. List your priorities and make a schedule to stick to them. Learn to say no to the unimportant things. You only get one chance at life. It’s up to you to do everything you can to make it count.

Shafir Ahmad is the author of “The Experts Guide to Managing Your Time”. If you are not managing your time, then you are wasting it. Don’t waste time! Get your 7-Part eCourse on Secrets To Better Time Management at http://www.PlanYourTimeNow.com

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by true2you
In 30 minutes, you can declutter a few cabinets. In 30 minutes, you can walk 1-1/2 to two miles. You can lose yourself in a novel, or play two board games with your children in 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, you can make three to four phone calls. You can watch a sitcom, or idly search several websites in 30 minutes. In less than 30 minutes, our nation was rocked and a record was set by one man at Virginia Tech. In less than 30 minutes, a doctor can deliver life changing news. In a split second, accidents happen that forever take our loved ones from us. Sorry for the shock factor, but I want you to understand that time stands still for no one, and we all have 24 hours in a day. Take eight hours away for sleeping, and we are left with 16 hours. So, are you spending your time in this precious life exactly the way you want to?

Know Yourself and Your Priorities
I want you to take a look at the “True to You” Life Wheel and ask yourself what’s most important to you in each of these areas of your life. Go ahead. Make a list of your priorities. Maybe your list might look something like this:

 To continually grow and change so I can live my best life
 To make God the center of my life
 To enjoy my life with people, places and activities that refuel me
 To love my husband and children to the best of my ability
 To take care of myself emotionally and physically so I can be available for others
 To build a financially strong present and future
 To be passionate and give my best to my chosen profession
 To provide a beautiful and nurturing home environment for my family

Think about who you are and what you want to be. Do not be influenced by what society says you should be. It’s okay to consider what’s important to your loved ones, as long as you are not giving up an important part of yourself. Your life should be crafted so that it is “true to you”. In this way, giving to others flows freely, and from the heart.

Examine Your Current Life
Now that you know your priorities, take a very close look at your current life. Does everything you do support your priorities? Get out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Label the first column “Say Yes To” and label the second column “Say No To”. Think about the way you are spending your time. What activities are you choosing to engage in that neglect your priorities? Perhaps you are immersed in volunteer work that drains you. Maybe you have a daily 90 minute commute that makes you angry. List all of the things in your life that you want to say no to. Again, scan those priorities, and ask yourself what you want to be doing with your time. List all of the choices and activities you currently say yes to (that support your priorities). Add in those items you are not currently doing, but want to say yes to. Exercise regularly. Establish a weekly date night with my husband. Find a new job that I am passionate about. Organize my home.

Spend Your Time Wisely
Design your life and use your time so that all your priorities are honored. Eliminate everything that is not aligned with what’s important to you. Put a plan in place to start adding the important activities. Every time you are faced with a decision to do something, stop, and think about your priorities before you make a choice. If the choice supports your priorities, jump in with two feet! Take your toe out of the “water of unimportant activities and decisions”.

Seek Balance, Not Perfection
I can hear it now, “I don’t have time to do all the things I want to do.” Yes you do. You have 16 hours in a day, 112 hours in a week, 480 hours in a month, and 5,840 hours in a year to do whatever you want. “But I have to work so I actually have half of that time”. Hopefully your work supports your priorities and you are passionate about what you are doing. Everyone chooses how they are going to spend their time. If you don’t like how you spend your time, then choose differently. Get creative with your time and make a way to do the things you want to do. Find the right balance for your life. Things don’t have to be perfect, just enjoyable. That’s when “attitude” comes in to take over. When you are feeling grumpy because you “have to” do something that supports your priorities, remind yourself why it’s important to you. Part of loving our family sometimes means we need to do laundry, console a crazed child, or sweep up crumbs from the floor for the 100th time. Taking care of ourselves may mean we say no to our family, and yes to a 30 minute workout. Seeking financial stability may require us to temporarily stop spending money. These choices may not always be easy, but they’re always important if they support our priorities. So make this your new motto — I will make time to do the things that support my priorities, and I will choose to love every minute of my life.

Lori Radun, CEC — certified life coach and inspirational speaker for moms. To receive her FREE newsletter, and the FREE special report “155 Things Moms Can Do To Raise Great Children”, go to http://www.true2youlifecoaching.com

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by Katherine Westphal
What would you do if you had four extra hours to spend every day?

I could hand it to you right now on a silver platter if you like. By tomorrow you could have an extra four hours already. The hours would add up quickly. In a week, you would have 28 extra hours. In a month, you would have over 120 extra hours. In just a year, you would have 1460 hours (61 solid days!). Imagine what you could do all that time.

Don’t believe this is possible?

There’s more. You won’t need to quit your job to get this time. You won’t need to cut out half of your night’s sleep. You don’t even need to buy anything. Getting this time is simple. Some people may find it a bit challenging. Others may even consider it a bit revolutionary. All you have to do to get this extra time is:

Get rid of your TV.

That’s right. That is all you have to do. Get rid of it. Good-bye. Cionara. Au reviore. Tschuss. Ciao. Toss it out the window. Throw it in the trash. Get rid of it. Toss it in Boston harbor and have a Boston ‘TV’ party! On second thought, TV sets are toxic waste. Take your old sets to the toxic reclamation center.

You may even get more than four hours a day by turning off your television set for good. Some people may get a little less. If you are an average American, you will gain an average of 4 hours 35 minutes every day. Now, let’s imagine how you might actually use these four hours every day.

Hour 1-Sleep and Self Renewal

Do you need more sleep? Have you been watching the late, late, late show every night with glazed eyes and the remote control mysteriously glued to your hand? Starting tonight, you could start getting the full amount of sleep you need.

Perhaps you could benefit from some quiet personal time for reflection every day. You could read a book. You could pray or meditate. You could relax in a hammock. You could go for an evening stroll and observe all the houses with funny glows emanating from their depths, the residents staring blankly at their TV screens.

Hour 2-Health and Exercise

Once you get some rest, you could get that couch potato body moving again. You could go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. You could play. You could dance. If you have children, instead of allowing them to watch the “after-school specials,” you could send your kids outside in the time-honored tradition of parents everywhere: “Go Outside and Play!” You could even start that exercise regimen you have been putting off since New Years.

Hour 3-Family and Friends

Probably the greatest benefit to getting rid of the TV is that you have time to spend with your family and friends, actually interacting and building happy memories. TV is such a horrible substitute for real family interactions. Building real memories and enjoying real interactions with friends and family is far more rewarding than reruns of Leave it to Beaver or Friends.

Your family could start eating meals together. You could have a “Family Game Night.” You could invite your friends over for a cup of coffee. You could even take a mini-vacation.

Hour 4-Community Time

An interesting essay by Robert Putnam called “The Strange Disappearance of Civic America” highlighted an important problem: since the advent of television Americans’ “civic engagement”, or participation in social groups, has been declining.

It is time to bring back the America of old, the good old days when Americans led the world in community engagement. Bring back the neighborhood block parties. Bring back the church potlucks. Bring back the social activism. In the past these things defined America. TV has turned America into the “blue light special” nation, a pathetic shadow of the America of community builders and problem solvers of yore.

The choice is yours

Naturally, how you choose to spend your four hours a day is totally up to you. These suggestions are only meant to spark your imagination. You could devote your entire four hours to building a business or mastering a new skill. You could devote all your extra time to your family or your community. You could write a book. You could even go fishing for four hours every day. The opportunities are limitless.

Of course, you may have to sacrifice the latest sexcapade on “Desperate Housewives.” You may need to forego “Must see TV”. You may have to sacrifice the latest football drama and the interminable replays. You might even miss the latest antics of Brittany and Paris.

However, consider what you will gain if you merely find the willpower to get rid of your TV.

Katherine Westphal is the founder of Trash Your TV which examines the effects of watching too much TV. Get in control of your TV addiction today.

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