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Entries Tagged 'Goals & Time Management' ↓
I try to do too much-guilty as charged! I know all about time management and how to organize my time, but often that Type A personality comes out trying to get as much done as possible before getting out the door. I want to throw in a load of laundry as I start my day or check email or clean out the dishwasher. And that can cause problems getting somewhere on time as well as leaving a mess in my wake. Of course I don’t have a bunch of clutter in my home, but I still have stuff and when I’m in a hurry that stuff gets left out which means I have to come home later and clean up behind myself. A classic example is getting ready in the bathroom and leaving jammies on the floor and a curling iron and make-up on the counter. Now it doesn’t take much time to put it back away when I get home, but it does take time. It is more efficient to provide ourselves with enough time to clean as we go so when we come home we have a fresh slate instead of having to back track to get caught up.
Here are some tips to to help all of us get out the door on time:
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Get up a little bit earlier than you usually do
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Review your schedule the night before to make sure you don’t have any surprises in the morning
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Be realistic about how much time you truly need to get yourself ready, we tend to underestimate
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Focus on what you need to do to get ready; wait to focus on extra chores once you are ready
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Allow enough time to drive to your first destination of the day. Don’t push yourself so late that you have 20 minutes to complete a 30 minute drive. Talk about stress!
Take some time to organize your time so you can reduce stress, reduce mess and start your day on the right foot!
Tags: chores, focus, home, laundry, mess, organize, schedule, stress, time
Raise your hand if, in your quest for home organization, you have ever created a “To Do” list. I have, I have! It may be possible that I have a little bit of a type A personality (ok, yes I’m totally type A) and I find that lists are my friends. Ok, I have real friends too, but I do find lists to be very centering. I can feel overwhelmed, have my head spinning and feel like I’m going in too many directions until I pull out that magical piece of paper. I prefer to write my lists by hand and have them right in front of me vs. on the computer screen, but that’s just me. And oh how my heart sings as I start crossing off tasks that I’ve gotten done from my list. That’s when Type A steps in and creates a new, shorter list-ok, it’s a sickness.
I’m a busy mom running two organizing businesses and my home and one day I realized just how much I actually do every day. How much we all do every day. And we are all so used to cramming so much into a day that I don’t think we have a full appreciation for just how much we really do accomplish each and every day. From the small tasks like making a bed or breakfast, to running a meeting, organizing a PTA function or staying on top of a home remodeling project. Can you even imagine if we wrote a “Did It” list every day? On thing for sure, it would be really, really long. Maybe there is something to reflecting on just how much you did get done in a day vs. feeling bad about the things you didn’t get crossed off the “To Do” list. Picture everything you’ve gotten done that never even made it to the “To Do” list: the chores, phone calls and clean ups. We really do need to give ourselves credit and feel good about what we can pull off in a day.
As you organize yourself with your “To Do” list each morning, at least be kind to yourself at the end of each day and reflect on your “Did It” list. Then eat a piece of chocolate.
Tags: chores, computer screen, Home Organization, list, organize yourself, phone calls, tasks, To Do list, Type A
Whether you are working on a project at work or whether you are working on a personal goal at home, you can reach your final destination by organizing your projects.
- Step 1: Know what you want your final outcome to be.
- Step 2: Set a deadline of completion for yourself and add it to your calendar.
- Step 3: Decide how much you have to do each day or each week to reach your deadline. Give yourself a little wiggle room to expect the unexpected.
- Step 4: Mark off time in your day planner to work on your project; make this a critical task in your day, don’t leave getting it done up to chance.
- Step 5: Give yourself a pat on the back as you accomplish your small goals along the way.
- Step 6: Get help if you are struggling or find yourself falling behind.
- Step 7: Celebrate your success when you complete your project or reach your goal-way to go, you did it!
So, here’s an example of what I did for my own tasks on DIY Organization tonight. I am able to schedule blog posts and I wanted to make sure I have new posts coming out every few days. So, this is what I did:
- I decided I want a new post to go out every 3 days.
- I looked at the remaining dates left in the month of August and made a list of each day I want a new post to go out: 6th, 9th, 12th, etc.
- I then looked at my schedule and penciled in writing 2 blog posts on specific days on my calendar. It doesn’t seem like so much to do when I look at it as 2 posts.
- If all goes well and as planned, I will have posts scheduled through August 30th by August 12th. If something unexpected happens I still have plenty of wiggle room to make it up. If I’m on a writing roll and get done early-bonus!
You can reach your goals by organizing your projects and breaking them down into manageable pieces. Let me know how it goes!
Tags: blog, DIY organization, goals, home, list, organizing, post, projects
Delegation can go a long way toward getting your home organized. Sometimes it is difficult to let go of being the one to get it all done. Sometimes it is hard to believe that anyone else will do the tasks or chores as well as we do. You might worry that something will get messed up, forgotten or simply not look at nice as when you do it yourself. Or that it is just faster to do it yourself.
Sometimes though, delegating duties will bring nice suprises. It can be surprising to learn that your kids may see something in a different light or have different ideas on how to do something that are even better than your ideas! When it comes to delegating duties to kids, in the big picture, you are teaching them life skills to help them toward their own independence.
So here we are at summer vacation and I have to balance business, kids, house, chores, etc. My kids are old enough to actually do some work for me this year which is pretty exciting. It’s also a little unnerving for a professional organizer who likes things done a certain way. My oldest recently cleaned out my twitter account to balance followers vs. following. She had a clever way of making notations on some accounts that I never would have thought of. Plus, the two hours she took to do it, opened up two hours of more productive work for me. Work that no one could do for me.
My youngest worked on Household Hub Notebooks and she pointed out a clever trick while she was working as well. So, just because I’m mom, I guess I really don’t know everything-who knew? So, don’t be afraid to get help to help you stay organized and get tasks done!
Tags: delegation, Home Organization
What a handy little gadget the Time Timer is to help you organize your time! The next time you need to make sure time doesn’t get away from you, pull out your Time Timer and make sure you are in control; be the boss! The great feature is the red shading that allows you to see and follow the passage of time. This can be a very handy tool for children as well. I had just a regular dial timer when my kids were small and I know how handy even that was for clean up time and many other tasks.
It can be easy to get sucked into a task like email and before you know it, a 10 minute task turns into a 40 minute task. That’s not good when you have a deadline to meet or a lot to get done in your day. Here are some handy ways you can use a timer to keep you on track:
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To set an allotted time for surfing the web
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To set an allotted time for spending time on social media
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To break down tasks into smaller chunks
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To allow yourself not to feel overwhelmed by a task-you can set the timer and do ‘anything’ for just 15 minutes!
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To give yourself 10 minutes of clean up/put away time at the end of a task or the end of the day
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To keep yourself from wasting time-beat the clock!
You can also purchase software to load onto your computer if you would rather have a Time Timer working on your screen while you are spending time on your computer. It’s so easy to spend more time than we mean to on the computer. A great tool to remind kids when their screen time is up as well.
Organize your time and strive to be more productive each day!
Tags: computer, organize time, productive, screen time, social media, software, Time Timer, tool
Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Biznik, Twitter-Oh My! These, aren’t even a fraction of the options that we have to choose from when it comes to social media. And with social media comes the expenditure of your time, energy and efforts. Which means you must organize your social media time and find a balance in how to use these sites as effective tools that don’t leave you sucked into the social media vortex.
Here are some tips on how to organize your social media time:
- Know why you are using social media sites-have a plan to make them effective for your business and use them as a tool
- Have a schedule for using these tools; don’t be random, create a time for it during your day
- Stick to the sites that work for you and your particular business. If a site is producing zero results-let it go
- Use scheduling tools: try hootsuite to schedule tweets on Twitter well in advance. You can input lots of tweets at one time, they will go out according to your set schedule and you don’t have to keep logging on to produce more tweets
- Don’t get sucked in, know why you are logging on and how long you want to be there. Set a timer, such as 10 minutes on facebook. It is so easy to start looking around, reading, responding and getting lost in cyberspace which can be a lot more fun that actual work sometimes.
We are so fortunate to have such powerful and amazing tools that bring the globe together and expose us to such a wide audience. Organize your social media time and make the most of it!
Tags: biznik, facebook, linkedin, organize, plaxo, social media, tools, twitter
What a handy little tool my BlackBerry has been to help me organize my office tasks recently! Do I mean I’ve used it to process emails? No. Do I mean I’ve used to to keep track of my schedule while on the go? Nope. Does it mean I’ve used it to sync my schedule with Outlook? Nada. I’ve simply used the alarm to help me put a cap on how long I am focusing on separate tasks-super simple!
Recently my interior design partner put a status on facebook that she had set a timer for 30 minutes while working in her office and just how much she got done during that 30 minutes. It can be easy to get caught up and lost in our tasks, especially on email and social media. Once you get sucked in, you can kinda get lost for a while. So, instead of feeling like I have to do any one task in my office for long periods of time, I am setting my alarm on my phone, actually for just 15 minute increments. It really is amazing how much you can get done in one focused 15 minute session. At first I had the alarm tone that I use to wake me up each day, which of course needs to be somewhat annoying. That doesn’t work when you are in the middle of concentrating unless you want to give yourself mini heart attacks all day. So I changed it to a soothing tone to shake me ever more gently out of my current task. And it seems to be working.
Organize your office tasks by breaking tasks into smaller chunks of dedicated time.
Tags: Blackberry, email, facebook, office tasks, organize, schedule, social media, sync, tasks, timer
This past Saturday I gave a talk in my local area about Goals and Time Management. Some of us that were there currently do a lot of our business work from home and realize how important it is to be organized with workflow. So we talked a little bit about how easy it can be to get distracted by other tasks such as housework or even by time consumers like facebook since it can be so much fun-facebook, not the housework! So I shared with everyone a picture that I had recently about how I should prioritize my office work. Knowing just how easy it is to get caught up doing all the little stuff, like making phone calls, checking facebook, cranking out emails, while the more important and longer tasks may take a back seat.
So the picture I had in my head was a triangle. With the tipy top being where I should start by concentrating on the most important/critical task. A critical task could be a project with a deadline, a task I need to complete that affects someone else getting their work done, a task that affects my bottom line or maybe even just a task that I am putting off or procrastinating on. It happens.
Then coming down from the triangle as it gets wider, would be a flow of all the other smaller, less critical tasks. That’s where the phone calls, texts, facebook updates can fall into place. It’s easy to knock out the little stuff, but are those tasks really getting you closer to your goals? Organize you workflow priorities and see things get done!
Tags: bottom line, critical tasks, email, facebook, goals and time management, office work, organizing office, phone calls, priorities, workflow
Have you ever heard of SMART Goals? I recently read an article about SMART goals and I thought, ”Now that is a great way to get organized with a concrete plan!” So here’s an overview and I will use an organizing goal, but of course!
S: Specific Be specific about what you are setting out to do. Don’t say, “I’ll get the house organized.” Say, “I will organize four drawers in the kitchen.” Choose the four drawers you are going to work on.
M: Measurable Make sure you can measure your progress. Write down which drawer you want to organize each week and check it off when it’s been done.
A: Attainable Make sure you can take certain steps to get to your goal. This can mean planning which day you are going to organize the drawer that week and mark it off on your calendar so you have time set aside. It’s not going to happen by chance. You are making a plan to make it happen.
R: Realistic Make sure your goal is do-able. Saying you are going to declutter and organize a huge kitchen in two hours after you have worked all day and you’re tired is not do-able. Saying you will declutter and organize one drawer every Saturday after breakfast for 30 minutes is do-able.
T: Timely You should be able to reach your goals in a certain amount of time. Set a date that you want to reach your goals and place it on the calendar. If you are breaking goals up into steps, put each step on the calendar.
You can organize your goals to get organized-now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Tags: calendar, date, drawers, goals, organize, planning, SMART Goals, steps
Well, it’s heading to the end of January. It’s been a few weeks since we were all feeling in the holiday spirit and feeling optimistic goals and a fresh, new year right around the corner. Well, how are you doing so far? Have you met one of your goals or are you making progress toward meeting one of your goals yet? It’s easy to ramp up those plans over a good glass of champagne. Then comes along the normal day-to-day activities, the deadlines, the requests on your time, getting dinner on the table and just wanting to veg out on the couch at the end of the day because you are just so darn tired.
But this isn’t the time to give up, oh no way! This is the time to make sure you are doing several things to keep up your momentum:
- Make sure you have written down your goal-this will help make it happen. Put it where you can see it-make it bold!
- Make sure you have written down the reasons you want to reach this goal-this will keep you motivated! Why is this important in your life?
- Make sure your goal is reasonable and attainable. Did you bite off more than you can chew?
- Make sure you have broken your goal down into little bites, little steps, a bitty bit at a time.
- Get someone in on your goal with you. Garner some support for your efforts and the desired end result. Get a cheerleader in your corner!
Every day is an opportunity to work on your goals, to move forward. You are alive-anything is possible!
Tags: activities, goals, opportunity, steps, support
