|
|
| Time Management Information |
|
|
|
|
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. See if the following list of strategies can help your family learn to gain control of their time: 1. Hold a Family Meeting ? First parents need to objectively determine some initial priorities for their family. These need to be based upon last years schedule, the individual family member's personalities, finances, current commitments and the comfort level of the family. Some questions that will guide this process are: Do they want to focus on activities or academics based upon last years performances? Will the demands of school or work change? Do they want to fill time with activities or a balance of activities and free time? Do different family members have different needs? Is everyone enjoying their schedules? Is there time for friends, for family, for quiet time, for reading, or for playing? ? Once the family guidelines are determined, hold the meeting and give everyone a chance to choose one or two priorities for the session or year. If one member is having trouble narrowing their list down, have them put them in order of importance. Make sure everyone shares their list and explains why they put it in that order. 2. Create a Family Calendar ? Get a large calendar and input everyone's current schedules for the upcoming month into it. ? Add or remove commitments based upon everyone's priorities determined in the family meeting. ? Make sure this calendar includes school hours and activities, work schedules, activity schedules, religious events, family time, mealtime, homework time, sleep time and most importantly NON-scheduled time. ? Take into account hidden time- travel time, preparation/clean up time, waiting time, etc. ? Determine where conflicts lie � and as a family see if you can figure out solutions. Maybe one child can suggest a friend they could car pool with, maybe another can walk to their activity, or maybe one can bring their homework along and do it while their sibling is in a lesson. ? Depending on the comfort level of the family � activities may need to be removed or postponed. Some families thrive on being busy while others need to have a more relaxed schedule. ? Make sure that everyone is in agreement or can live with the schedule. ? Try it for one month and then have another meeting and evaluate the schedule. Make sure it works for everyone and make necessary changes. How to Handle Those Schedules and Not Waste TIme Once the priorities and scheduling are done, there are few things that families need to do to make sure that they can handle their schedules and not waste their precious time. ESTABLISH ROUTINES � If everyone follows a routine that works, life will run much smoother. Some areas where routines are a must are: before and after school, homework time, chores and meals. When we have children in school, we can't help but be busy. But being busy with things that are important to us is very different than being overwhelmed by disarray. If we take the time as a family to determine our priorities and work together to eliminate time wasters, we will be in control of our time! Tracy Lyn Moland, B. Ed, is a Mom Expert. From having written the best selling Mom Management, Managing Mom Before Everybody Else (tgot, 2003) to being a highly sought after consultant on the trillion dollar Mom Market, her advice and information has been featured in over 300 media outlets and to many conferences and corporations. For more information on Tracy Lyn's consulting or presentations please visit http://www.TracyLynMoland.com
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Have You Got a Minute? Such an innocuous little phrase, yet when you are hard at work, really focused and engrossed in what you are doing this seemingly harmless request can be a nightmare distraction. How Do You Start Your Day "Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." --John Ruskin Boost Your Productivity with 10 Minutes at the End of Your Day Once you have completed your day you can boost your efforts for tomorrow with an investment of only 10 minutes. Apply these strategies at the end of your work day and you will definitely increase your productivity. Organization Tips That Add More Hours To Your Day One of the most common complaints that small business owners have is lack of time. What most don't realize, however is that their lack of time stems from a lack of organization. But with a few simple tips - that you can implement immediately - you can literally add hours to your day. What to Do When Your Alarm Clock Doesn?t Wake You Up Tring ? Tring the alarm rings?but did you fail to wake up? You have a crucial meeting tomorrow. The last thing you do while sleeping is to set the timing s of your alarm clock, retaining full confidence in yourself of not making the blunder of getting late this time. But what happens? The alarm bell rings and falls on deaf ears. The time you realize that the dawn has broken, it's too late. Here are some nitty - gritty that should be followed in a terrible situation like this. Do You Put a Value on Your Time? As a small business owner, does the following paragraph sound familiar to you?? 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. Vilfredo Paretos Principle: The 80-20 Rule: 80% of Results are Produced from 20% of Efforts Vilfredo Pareto's Principle, or The "Pareto Principle," is more commonly known as the 80-20 rule. It suggests that a ratio of approximately 20% to 80% can be found as an effective measure for most things in life. Whether revenues generated per customer or value for hours worked, it usually can be found that 80% of all of our results in business and in life come from only 20% of our efforts! Time Invested Wisely = Your Dreams This past Friday I was asked to speak with a person, who just signed into a home-based networking business -- which I know is one of the most effective entrepreneurial methods for an average person to achieve true financial success. My entire conversation/coaching session with this individual was based on the simple theme of working your plan and committing long-term with no thought of ever quitting until the achievement of your ultimate outcome. Everythings Blurry Except For You Riding the subway home yesterday, my typically silent car was enlivened by two young girls and their mothers who hopped on. The girls, 7 years old or so, immediately danced over to the upright pole in the middle of the aisle and started twirling around it. After several minutes of this, giggling and talking and having a marvelous time chasing each other (paying no attention whatsoever to anyone else in the car), they settled into a rhythm directly across from each other. Still twirling, but more slowly, one said to the other ... "everything's blurry except for you" ... and the other immediately chanted it back. Back and forth. Their delight in each other's company was glowing in their conversation and lack of interest in anyone else on the train. They truly focused on each other, and discovered that everything else gets blurry! What a delightful example of focusing on someone when you're with them, and giving them 100% of your attention ... fully being there with them. Where Do Your Priorities Fit? An expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students when he decided to do an experiment. He pulled out a large mason jar, a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one by one, into the jar. When no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, "Is this jar full?" Everyone in the class said, "Yes." Living Life In A Time Starved World Recently I saw an advertisement for a time management booklet: "Shorter deadlines, competing priorities, endless meetings, interruptions and even higher quality expectations are just some of today's time challenges. And yet the number of hours in the day remains the same." Too Many Unfinished Projects? Q. I have several projects going at once -- but I never seem to finish them! I'm pulled in so many different directions -- and I end up with nothing to show for my efforts! Effective Time Management - Delegating Techniques Do you manage your time or does your time manage you? Do you start your day knowing what you want to achieve today and how you are going to achieve it? Effective Use of Your Online Time The Internet is increasingly becoming a major time killer for many of us. Involuntarily, we started to spend more time online than we really can afford. Managing Time to Accomplish More Time is inelastic. Despite what some of us persist in believing, it will NOT magically expand to accommodate all we have to do. So, in order to maximize the time we have available, we have to spend it wisely. 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. Coping with the Time Crunch "There is never enough time, unless you're serving it." -Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990) Time Management -- Urgent vs. Important "It's just been one of those days?I can't seem to get anything done! I've got way too many things on my "To-Do List". Oh the list started out innocently enough as a single handwritten column on one sheet of lined paper; but now it's grown to a three-column table in a spreadsheet software program! I get no satisfaction from checking off each item as I finish it. For each task I complete, at least two more are added. I began my work day at 6:30 AM with grandiose plans of completing a special project before Noon. Now it's 16 hours later (10:30 PM) and I still have not finished the project. My anxiety and frustration are mounting. Tomorrow's list has already been written and it does not include the things left undone from today's list! I don't know if I'm going to make it through the week with all of the demands upon my time and energy. I need help?quickly! Procrastination - Understanding & Overcoming it Whenever I've worked on 'de-cluttering' my living or working space, I've always found that it's the unfinished project ? whatever I'm procrastinating about - that takes up the most room.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2005 |