|
|
| Time Management Information |
|
|
|
|
Time Management? NO!
Many people want to be coached to manage their time better. I say NO! to that. You cannot manage time anyway; it just keeps ticking away no matter what you do. What you can do is manage yourself based on the two concepts I keep mentioning: self-knowledge and self-acceptance. Following are four principles to maximize the time that you have. They take time to incorporate into your life at the habit level. Don't give up. Keep practicing. 1) GOOD ENOUGH Accept that no human being is meant to do everything. We all have our uniqueness; things we do better than others and vice versa. Perfection is not a human condition. Cut yourself some slack and adopt the concept of "good enough". You can rework your resume 50 times. Is it really so much better than a much earlier draft? You can shop for the perfect dress endlessly? Wasn't the first one you tried and liked as good as the 15th? How much time did you spend past "good enough"? Demand higher standards of excellence where it really counts. 2) SPECIALNESS Concentrate on excelling in what you do well, what you would enjoy doing better, and new areas you would like to learn. Delegate, hire, share, partner with people who complement you or can fill the needs you have in areas you don't enjoy or do not know that well. Don't ever berate yourself for not being able to do it all. Appreciate your talents and excellence and flaunt them. They are you, yours and very special. Let others have their specialness too. The results will not only save time but enrich and free you. 3) ENERGY AND TIME Know and honor your energy levels. Are you a morning person, do you have an afternoon slump? Your time will be best used if you pace the tasks you have to do based on this knowledge. Do the most challenging at your peak energy time. Build in your Joy Breaks (see last month's newsletter) both as rewards for finishing a formidable task and to refresh yourself at low energy periods. 4) FOCUS IN THE MOMENT Develop habits that help you focus on what you are doing in the moment. Do not allow yourself to think of what you have to do next while you are doing what you are doing. Put a "do not disturb" sign on your door and do not take phone calls. By putting everything else out of your mind while focusing on the task at hand, you will be using your time efficiently. If you get stuck on something, take a break. Move to something else, get the information you need to continue, change scenery, stretch, whatever it takes, but don't sit there stuck. Note: The suggestions I make are not one dimensional or simple. The questions I suggest you ask yourself have multiple answers and may be different on different days. I suggest you keep them all in a file or notebook and refer back to them regularly. You will gain a lot if you do. About The Author Dorene Lehavi, Ph.D. is principal of Next Level Business and Professional Coaching. She coaches Professionals and Business Partners and teaches teleclasses on techniques to break through barriers to the next level. Dr. Lehavi offers a complimentary coaching session so you can experience how coaching can work for you. Contact Dr. Lehavi at [email protected] or on the web at http://www.CoachingforYourNextLevel.com Subscribe to Mastering Your Next Level monthly e-newsletter at http://www.coachingforyournextlevel.com/newsletter.html
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
More Time Wanted? Deal with Your Time-wasters Now! Ever feel that you spend too much time shoring up the performance of some of your people? More time with one or two than with some of the others. Dont Forget To Take Time Out For You! As mothers we play so many different roles and most of us don't take time off that we deserve. Just think about it we play doctor, cook, chauffeur, teacher, lawyer, and the occasional referee as well. Controlling Family Chaos - Time Management for the Family Balancing a family's varying schedules can be near impossible. Soccer, hockey, dance, skating, Brownies, Scouts, skiing, swimming, school activities, homework, not to mention play and sleep time, fill our children's lives. Now add in the parental activities, including work, fitness, volunteering, and home maintenance � and well, 24 hours just doesn't seem to be enough. Put a Couple of Elephants on Your Plate How do you eat two elephants? The same way you would eat one; one bite at a time. Monstrous tasks often appear to be complex and overwhelming. That's why it's so very important to isolate the parts from the whole. Break your elephant-sized project into several smaller tasks. Identify one area and cut it down to size. Lather, rinse, and eat. The key is to begin! It doesn't matter if you have or elephants on your agenda. Put one of them on your plate today. Target one part, and start! Priorities: Dont Dry Your Dishes Do your dishes really need to be dried, or could you just let the water evaporate? If you spend just 5 minutes per meal drying dishes, that equals a quarter of an hour per day, or 91 hours each year. Time Management And How It Affects Your Kids Last week I attended a presentation from Parenting Expert and well-known author, Stephen Biddulph on "Raising Boys". As I have an 11 year old son, I was interested to hear what Stephen had to say. In fact, so were the other 800 other parents in the room! Nurturing Your Soul Number Yourself: Count yourself as an important individual. You are important. You need to be counted and acknowledged especially when you are helping others. One way that you can do this is by taking proper care of your self (having enough sleep, food, exercise and relaxation). Then you will have enough energy to help others and live the rest of your busy life. Sounds too basic? It's supposed to be. It's the basics that hold daily life together. Peace Of Mind At The Workplace Work brings together people of different characters and behavior, and this often causes friction, resentment and stress. Sometimes the boss is too demanding, colleagues may be unpleasant, there might be too much work or the working conditions may not be comfortable. The job may be boring, there might be competition or envy between the workers or the customers may be uncongenial or unfriendly. No wonder there is tension and stress. Time is Money? Not 1 in 10 people can tell you where money comes from, what it is and what it is good for, let alone how and why we get it. Time Management - Keeping a Clean Desk I have worked with so many people over the years that have made me wonder how on earth they can work at their desk when everything that was in their drawers and in their filing cabinets have ended up in piles on top of their keyboard. One co-worker of mine couldn't remember what colour the top of his desk was! I had to say something, but when I did, he told me that he knew where everything was and needed all that paperwork for different projects he was working on. More Precious Than Gold In this world there is something more precious than gold. Diamonds? No. Platinum? No. Some other precious metal? No. Time Management is Cause Control Recently I've experienced a barrage of time wasters. Everything you can imagine, most of them unexpected, many of them self inflicted. It's amazing how fast you can go through minutes. Prioritize with Two Questions "Because there will always be something more to do, we need to consciously choose what we are doing." Self Improvement and Prioritising The ability to be able to set priorities and deal with our most important tasks first is an essential skill for self improvement and achieving results. We are all busy and there are many demands on our time and it is very easy to be distracted by other people and events. We may feel we have so many things to do that we don't know even where to start. Procrastination. Id love to but... When a good friend asked me to contribute a little something for her newsletter it seemed like a great idea. When I cleared the decks and sat down to write it seemed a great time to color-code my closet or whip up a crab casserole. As an enthusiastic writer, who has nevertheless had writing blocks which have lasted longer than some World Wars, this business of avoiding doing something that I really want to do has always mystified me. Time Management: Which Advice to Follow? There are so many books on Time Management published every month that it is difficult to find the time to read and digest them all. What happens to most people is that they buy a book on time management, read it, decide that some parts of it may suit them, but then fail to adequately integrate the system into their lives. This is partly due to inadequacies in the system itself, and partly due to the inherently difficult nature of learning a new system - the equivalent to learning a new habit. What the books don't tell you is that each different time management system is not necessarily suitable to all people or for all uses for which people need them. Finding the right combination of the basic methods is entirely individual depending on both the nature of the tasks that are required to be done and the nature of the individual who is implementing the strategy. Are You Watching Too Much TV? Many folks tell me that they just don't have time to be organized. As old saying goes-one will always find time to do what they want to do. I am a firm believer that we can find an extra hour, at least, each day to carve out time to make our lives more sane. The Kaizen of Goal Setting There is an old way of goal setting and a new way of goal setting! The old way of goal-setting involved setting yor goals, preparing a list of sub-goals, and then carefully checking them off one after another (as and when they were being accomplished). Am I trying o pour cold water on the goal setting method many of us grw up on? Not necessarily Time Managements There are the golden rules that apply to time. If followed, your life will be successful. If you ignore these, however, you will always be scratching to catch up. Do not be one of the people you always here say "I don't know where the time went, it just flew by!". Too Much to Do? Too Little Time? Hey - Did someone press the FFW button?
|
| home | site map |
| © 2005 |