Archive for August, 2007

by Cheryl A. Clausen
This time management tip is based on being realistic. Are you feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and perplexed as to how to get everything done in a day? If you are, it may be time to ask yourself if you’re trying to do more than you can realistically handle.

In your eagerness to excel, advance, and achieve goals have you become like a kid in a toy store? When you over tax yourself you aren’t doing yourself or anyone around you any favors. Do you find yourself making too many mistakes, forgetting commitments, and missing deadlines? These are warning signs that you may be in over your head as far as the amount of work you are trying to achieve.

If your reality check indicates you’ve exceeded your limits how do you get yourself out of the mess you’re in? Identification of the problem is the first step toward a solution. Now that you know what the problem is, it’s time to do a realistic evaluation. What do you want to accomplish, or what do you have to accomplish to maintain your status? This is your must do’s list.

Train those around you to have more realistic expectations. If you’ve been struggling with this juggling act for a while you’ve probably trained those around you to place unrealistic demands on you. You have to set your boundaries before you can communicate those boundaries to others. You’ve probably been living without time boundaries, and that’s why you’re so over stressed. So when someone approaches you with yet another commitment the reasonable response is, “yes, I can do that but I won’t be able to get to it until” or “yes, I can do that but what do you want me to push back in order to do this” or even “yes, I can do that if I can assign this other project to”. Thus you begin to train others to hold more realistic time expectations, and to understand there are boundaries or limits to what they can expect. You also need to consider “no” as an option when what you are being asked to do doesn’t fit with what you’re trying to accomplish.

Eliminate the nonessentials. Even though you don’t realize it you probably spend a great deal of your time each day dealing with nonessentials because you’ve always done these things. Make a list of all these nonessentials and really challenge yourself to stop doing the things that you can simply stop doing, and to delegate the things that someone else could do just as well.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
Is your personal time management efficiency driven or effectiveness driven? Efficiency comes from doing things right the first time. The adage goes, if you don’t have time to do it right the first time when will you ever have time to do it right the second time. Perhaps the real question is, “should you be doing it at all”?

Don’t confuse activity with results in your personal time management. For example, a sales person could spend the day getting all their client files color coded and neatly organized, so they could immediately access a file and have all the information they need at their finger tips. That’s certainly an example of increasing efficiency, but does it increase effectiveness? You’re effective when you’re doing the right things. The right things are those things that produce the results that people pay you to produce. In the case of our sales person, no one is paying the sales person to have the best files and filing system in the company. The sales person is paid to secure new customers, and to obtain repeat sales from current or old customers. Sales is the key objective, and when the sales person is focused on sales activities they are focused on the right things thus being effective.

Don’t confuse being busy with producing results. You can be very busy about doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with results. Unfortunately, you usually don’t even realize when you’ve allowed yourself to get caught up in this busy trap. What does it mean for you to be personally productive in your job or business? How much of your work day do you actually spend on those productive activities? I’m being serious here, I want you to actually track how much time you spend on the activities you actually get paid to do each day for a week, and then come up with a total for the week. I predict that you’ll be shocked. Research has shown that the higher up in the company you are the less time you spend on the things that are truly an effective use of your time.

Your personal time management objective should be to transfer or eliminate the busy work. What activities are you doing now that you can transfer to someone else or eliminate entirely? If you were to do that how much time would you free up to use for effective work?

How much personal satisfaction would you gain, and how much stress could you remove if you increased the amount of time you spend on effective activities? What if you focused on spending just one additional uninterrupted hour each and every day on your effective work? What would that translate into in terms of the results you get paid to achieve? How much less stress, tension, and unnecessary clutter would you have in your life if you transferred or eliminated the busy work?

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Tim VanRavenswaay
The more I talk to people about what they want out of life the more I hear the same thing coming up over and over again… “I don’t have any time!”

All I can say is STOP IT!

We all have the same number of hours in each day, so why is it that some people consistently do what they want and others don’t? It’s simple… they stop the excuses.

Think about it.

What did you do last night?

Maybe you had plans to get home and work on something you wanted to accomplish, but then everything just kind of got in the way. You walked in the door and you needed to unwind from a stressful day so you decided to just sit and watch a little television and then you’d get right to it. Next thing you know its two hours later and now you’re surfing around on myspace and im’ing with your friends and you still haven’t started whatever it was you planned on doing when you got home. Now your friends call and they want to go for a couple of drinks and who are you to stand in the way of a good gathering so it’s out the door and several hours later when you return home exhausted it’s really too late to start anything new so you head off to bed… but you’ll get started tomorrow after work.

Don’t you get it?

We all have time; it’s just what we decide to do with it.

No matter what you say you want out of life, if you are doing anything but exactly that, you’re lying to yourself. Doing something else or doing nothing at all is the same as saying that your goals and dreams are not really your goals and dreams… they’re just fantasies.

You have got to decide what it is you really want out of life and go for it like there is no tomorrow and you can’t stand another minute of your life without it! That my friend is the only way you are going to get more time for the things you want in life.

You won’t get more time because you quit school, quit your job, get a different job, or end a relationship. You will get more time by doing the things you want to be doing instead of avoiding them.
You will get more time by getting up a little earlier and taking time for yourself. You will get more time by going for it with all of the passion you can muster and not accepting anything less from yourself than you know you are capable of.

That is how you get more time for the things you want in life.

Stop Saying You Don’t Have Any Time!

www.inspiredtolive.com

www.inspiredtolive.comwww.withoutthehassle.com

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by Hafizsteen
There are so many lessons every single day in your life, from the moment you were born to the day that you die. You learn from mistakes, surroundings, peers, family members and friends. You also learn lessons from courses, schools, seminars etc.

In order to get ahead, you have to keep learning and constantly upgrade yourself. There are so many lessons out there and in our fast paced environment, time is so precious and valuable. So the big question is which lesson should I choose? “Time is money” and we can’t afford to waste it by learning unnecessary stuffs.

When we are kids, we are constantly reminded by our parents to study hard, get a good qualification and with a good qualification, we can get a good job so that we can get a good, big salary. Big salary means a lot of money. So you can see from here, at the end of the day, the end of product is still money.

But the sad truth is, no matter how high your qualification is, we STILL have to use our precious time to work for somebody else just to earn that money. In conclusion, we exchange time for money. YOU WORK FOR MONEY.

Let’s take a short cut instead, instead of taking lessons and end up working for someone else, why don’t we use our precious time to learn how to GROW your money instead. Use the money that you have and MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU.
Given a choice, would you choose between learning to get a better qualification, so that you an get a better job and WORK TILL 65 or learn how to be your own boss, make money work for you AND RETIRE ANYTIME YOU WANT? I know I am not that dumb to choose the first one. I am tired of waking up early in the morning, being told what to do, when to take my lunch, when to go home. I want to be free. The second lesson teaches you the art of FINANCIALLY INTELIGENT. These lessons are out there and the resources are available everywhere. It depends on you, whether how bad you want it, whether you want to learn it, use the techniques, practice it, treasure it and then FIRE YOUR BOSS.

Like I say before, “life is a school” there are so many lessons in this world nowadays. Choose a lesson that is beneficial to you in the future, that can help you have a better life with your family and love one. Choose your LESSONS WISELY.

Hafizsteen is the webmaster of the site www.onlinemoney2u.com and he is making thousands of dollars every month through selling products online and advertising. He will introduce to you the courses that have helped him make a lot of money online. Please visit www.onlinemoney2u.com

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by Dennis Harting
We tend to get a bit reflective when someone close to us passes away. This is especially true if that individual was young. Questions such as what does it mean and why are we here go through our minds. It is a stark reminder that our time is limited. Unfortunately, the end will be near before we know it. Even in the best of circumstances, we can hope to enjoy 80 or 90 years on this planet. How we utilize those years is up to us. However, the amount we have is non-negotiable. We cannot purchase more time at the end. When we are done, we are done.

It is interesting how we spend our time when there is plenty of it. As long as we project that we have another 40 or 50 years, there is no urgency to what we do. We maintain the belief that we can always “get around to it later”. This changes as we grow older. Our outlook shifts to one where we know the end is coming closer. A person with an expectancy of another 40 years differs greatly from one with 10. This change in perspective manifests itself in how one spends the daily allotment of time. What was once critical is no longer that important.

In working with people assisting them in overcoming their challenges, one realizes that many create tremendous pressure on themselves. They have the desire to perform at the highest level. Most carry the attitude that they must handle all situations themselves. Of course, they quickly find that there is not enough time to get everything done. The more that they take on, the further behind they become. This leads to an increase in stress and an assortment of other physical ailments.

Most people get themselves in this situation because they choose to minor in the major things in life. In other words, their focus is consistently on things that are really unimportant in the overall scheme of life. They have the tendency to put off the things that truly make a difference in their lives. The desire to “do it all” creates an unbalanced priority system. A great amount of time is dedicated to those activities which provide a low return in the long run.

What would you do if you knew this was your last day on Earth? Would you put all that extra time in at the office? Do you think you would put off calling your spouse and telling him/her how great you love is? The answers to these questions is obvious. Fortunately, most of us have more than one more day left on this planet. Of course, we never know when the ultimate outcome will surface. Yet it is safe to say that given only 24 hours more, every action would carry tremendous impact in terms of their importance.

Eliminating the focus on the minor things in life is one of the major shifts that you can make to improve your life. The time is now to begin ‘majoring in the major things in life’. Concentrating on the critical activities enables us to be more effective. We utilize the precious resource of time to our advantage. Time has the characteristic of diminishing returns. The older we get, the quicker a year passes. It seems like we go from New Year’s Day to Christmas in the blink of an eye. Putting our attention on the important activities ensures that we are putting our time to the most use.

There is an old saying, ‘In a hundred years this will not matter’. People also say ‘ We will be laughing about this in a year’ (or some other time frame). These quotes allude to the fact that whatever is the ‘crisis’ of the moment is not really paramount. If one is going to laugh about it down the road, why not laugh about it now? It must not be all that catastrophic if there is a hint of humor in it. Release the pressure of the situation by implementing humor. Understand that it most likely is not the end of the world.

Getting ones priorities in order is a key component to living a fulfilling life. People who do not truly know what they want are apt to be swayed by outside influences. Having the outlook that time is not an unlimited commodity will offer the motivation to get things in order. If you only had a short time to live, would you be fretting about this? Ask this to determine what are the most vital parts of your life. The clearer we become on what really is important, the more we can nurture those relationships and situations.

Another saying comes to mind; ‘live as if you are going to die tomorrow but plan as if you will live forever’. We found that a life with direction is the most successful. People who drift from one situation to another often lead empty lives. Their sense of accomplishment is low. People feel satisfaction when they had a hand in building something. The creative muscle is natural in all of us. Some use it to erect physical structures. Others develop companies. Still others use these skills to raise a family. Some do charitable works to gain a feeling of creating. Seeing your results after setting out with nothing more than an idea and desire is an indescribable feeling.

Begin taking your life to a new level by concentrating on what is important to you. Make those decisions as if you have only a short period of time to live. This will clear away many of the unimportant activities that really do not provide a great deal of satisfaction anyway. At the end of one’s life, rarely is a sermon given spelling out how much ’stuff’ on amassed. Instead, people speak of the character of the person, the relationship he/she had with others, the contributions made, and the thoughtfulness exhibited. Plan your day around offering these qualities to those closest to you. In the end, the only thing that truly matters is our interaction with others.

Dennis Harting is the Head Coach at Your Rich Life. He is an acclaimed speaker, trainer, and best-selling author. His international best selling books include Your Easiest Million and The Ultimate Procrastination Handbook. He also has had thousands of articles published worldwide. His programs and more information can be found at http://www.yourrichlifeinc.com.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
Effective time management skills start with decisions. Do you have trouble making decisions? Do you make decisions by not making decisions? After you make decisions you do change your mind? If this sounds like you, you may be a waffler. Waffling is a time management killer.

Why is it so hard for you to make decisions? The reason it’s so hard for you to make a decision is that you never know if you’re making the right decision. You don’t know if you’re making the right decision because you don’t have clear plans. You don’t have clear plans because you haven’t taken the time to formulate them, and you haven’t evaluated those plans for how well they will take you where you want to be in the long-term. Plus when you formulated those plans you may not have checked to make sure they would lead to actions that align with your values.

What could you do to make the decision making process easier for you? Start by identifying the things that are really important to you about how you live your life. These are your values. Formulate a plan for what you’re trying to accomplish in both the short-term and the long-term. Break those plans down into action items, and prioritize them so they can be entered directly into your planning system, making sure that your actions are in alignment with your values.

You’ve made your decision, now what? Deciding to do something gets you nowhere. Taking action gets the job done. When you know what to do, and when to do it without even having to think, your time passes quickly and the work gets done. At the end of the day you’re able to check lots of things off your to do list, and feel good about what you’ve accomplished that day.

Notice how much less stress you have now that you aren’t waffling. Waffling over decisions takes a lot of time and causes a lot of unnecessary stress. When you’re able to make decisions quickly and take action things get done faster, and you aren’t in an emotional turmoil wondering if you’ve made the right decision. Will you always make the right decision? Probably not, but you’ve provided yourself with everything you need to make the best decision based on the information you have at hand.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
Stress and tension reducing time management strategy. Your mind is like a computer capturing and storing data all day long every day. When you choose to store unnecessary data in your mind you’re just increasing your stress and tension. With the fast paced world around you, and all the demands you have each day give yourself and your mind a break.

Use a system outside of your head to capture all the important things. Each day you have things you have to do now, things you can do later, things you can do some day when you have time, and things you want to remember to do at some point and you don’t have any idea when that point will be right now. So much information. So many thoughts and ideas. It’s no wonder you’re exhausted and have a tension headache by the end of the day. You can take a gigantic burden off your mind if you’ll just allow an external system to track all this stuff for you.

Don’t read the word system and think big and complicated and hard to learn. That’s exactly what you don’t want. You want something simple, that you developed, and that you understand, and that you’ll be willing to use daily. The whole objective of your system is to have a place where you can logically store all this information outside of your head. Thus freeing your mind up from having to track and remember all these really insignificant things in the big picture of life. You especially want to rely on an external system if what you’re tracking is really big picture important.

What system should you use with this time management strategy? Start with something you’re very comfortable with, and something you can rely on no matter what. Electronic systems are great, but when your hard drive crashes, your data is corrupted, or you have a virus how will you retrieve this information. Use one main system to manage your time, and only one main system. It’s okay to have other systems that trigger reminders, but you want one system that you can count on to have all the information you need.

How do you organize all this time related information? Everything that is this week should go right into your calendar. That’s the easy stuff. You also need one central location where you put all your “not now stuff”, all the stuff you want to or have to do later and you don’t want to forget. When you’re developing your system you also want to think about being able to access your information easily wherever you are, so you can add things and check things off and verify that you have the information recorded.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
As you struggle with time management each day it all boils down to uncertainties about what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Given that you know how to focus when you want to. Given that each day you write things down so you won’t forget or overlook them. Given that you understand the outcomes or results of your actions. Given that you know how to review your options and make choices. Why is developing an effective time management strategy so hard?

Time management struggles are the outward manifestation of internal struggles. You can attempt to use all kinds of time management strategies, tips, techniques, and tools but until you understand the underlying drivers you are making cosmetic corrections. Your internal struggles arise from a combination of your own behaviors and motivators, and the miss match between your natural behavioral styles and the environment you’re trying to function in.

There are two parts to time management for you. The first part is your time related behaviors. These behaviors are either natural to you or they are adaptations for how you think you need to behave to function in your world. When you try to adapt your natural behaviors too much to fit into your environment you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, burned-out, and generally miserable and unhappy. If that describes your current feelings you may need to step back and review your environment. You may even need to remove yourself from your current environment and into one that is a better match for you. You simply may be the right person in the right job at the wrong company, or the right person in the wrong job at the right company. Something isn’t working and you need to know what isn’t working.

The other part of time management is your motivators. Everyone has one or two attitudes that you need to have fulfilled. When you’re doing things that fulfill those attitudes you feel energized, satisfied, and generally happy. When you’re focused on tasks that motivate you time passes quickly because you’re enjoying yourself. Do the work or tasks you’re doing feel rewarding to you? You can’t expect to spend all day every day on rewarding tasks, but you definitely shouldn’t be spending the majority of your day doing things that make you feel exhausted, stressed, and strained.

When you’re in the right environment doing the right things it should be easy for you to focus. Because you’re in the right environment doing the right things and you can focus, you can develop long-term plans. When you have long-term plans you can make decisions and choices each day that will take you closer to the fulfillment of those plans. Not knowing how to do something is the easiest correction of all, and you know what you need to do. Either learn how to do it, if it makes sense for you to do so, or how get the help of someone who does know how to do it.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
This time management technique is focused on getting the most from your most productive time. You spend your time either doing things that are important, interesting, or useful; or doing the things you have to do whether you want to do them or not. You only spend time on the things you want to do when there is time left over. Not everyone is focused on or interested in a return on their investment, but if you’re a person who likes to get a return on your investment who enjoys things more for there usefulness or ease of use than their beauty this time management technique is for you.

No matter if you’re doing productive things, things you have to do, or things you enjoy doing you need to feel at ease spending time on those things. You will feel more relaxed and more confident when you know you’re doing the right thing at the right moment. So how can you know that? It goes back to having a plan.

What is the ultimate outcome or result that you want? I don’t just mean today or right now I mean in the next 5 years or longer. Then step that back and down to today. Knowing what you want in 5 years what is the most important thing for you to focus on and accomplish today. When you can accomplish that one most important thing you are getting the best ROI on your time that you can get in one day.

If you were to accomplish this most important thing today, what would that provide for you? What is the return on your investment of time that accomplishing this thing would get you? Unless there is a dire consequence don’t focus on anything else until this most important thing is done for the day. Next focus your attention and time on the things you have to do. Allocate specific amounts of time for your tasks. When the allocated time is up stop the task and set it aside for the next day. When you have the self-control to hold yourself to these time allocations you’ll learn two important things. First, you’ll learn how much time things really take. Second, you’ll learn how much time you actually spend each day on things that have zero ROI. Can those zero ROI tasks be eliminated or delegated? Don’t respond with a “no” answer just because you’ve always done them. Large companies are notorious for hiring people to perform tasks that are completely unnecessary and useless. Don’t let yourself fall into that trap.

Time is money. What is your time worth? If you were spending one hour on productive activities how much is someone willing to pay you to do that? How much is one hour to spend as you choose worth to you? Can you pay someone else much less than what an hour of your time is worth to do some of the non-productive things you’re doing, and if you did that could you increase your earnings?

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis. Ready to start your journey for success? start here.

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by Cheryl A. Clausen
Your time management skills are the missing link to what you want. Why are you so drained, stressed out, and overwhelmed now? Because you’ve allowed your life to get out of control and it’s surfacing through your time management. This lack of control isn’t just internal it’s externally viewable for others to see from your cluttered desk or office, to your poor filing system, and your willingness to allow others to suck up your time.

Use your time management skills to regain control. If you called a friend on the phone and asked them for driving directions, what is the first question they would ask you? Wouldn’t they need to know where you are now to tell you how to get where you want to go? Can you answer the question, where are you now with your life? If you can’t, that’s a good place to start. Identify exactly where you are now in your life, in all areas and aspects of your life both personally and professionally.

Where and what do you want your time management skills to get you? Now that you know exactly where you are in your life the next step is to figure out exactly where you want to be in your life. As you think about where you want to be in your life make sure you are taking yourself closer to a life you want to live. As you look at your present and look forward to your desired future you will develop the motivation to close this gap. You won’t be willing to learn or use new time management skills until you clearly know what’s in it for you. The distance between where you are now and where you want to be provides that motivation.

If you had better time management skills how would your behavior be different than it is now? Would you be more careful with how you spend your time? Would you actually block your time for how you want to spend it rather than how you are spending it? Would you be able to make better decisions about how to use your time? Would you be more focused on each task because you clearly understand how the completion of that task takes you closer to the ideal life you are working to achieve? Would it be easier for you to say “no” to the things that move you away from where you want to be?

The best time management skill you can develop is a goals and integrity skill. Integrity comes from getting and staying on the path that takes you where you want to be. You set goals that move you closer to the accomplishment of that ideal life. You say “no” to the people, things, and events that aren’t in alignment with your overall plan. Your time management skills will give you back control of your life; and when you are in control you will feel energized, relaxed, and you will have the ability to do more than you do now.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis and find out where your opportunities for improvement are. Start your journey for success. your journey starts here.

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