Good time management brings the rewards of results, recognition, free time, clarity, and focus. It gives you a purpose in life, structure to your day, direction, and reduced frustration. It brings you to the end of the day with a sense of accomplishment. If life is running you instead of the other way around, then these time mastery tips can help you get the upper hand. 1. Manage your reading pile so it doesn't "mushroom." You can't possibly read everything you'd like to, so develop ways to tackle your reading pile and keep it down to a reasonable size. 2. Create systems for repetitive tasks. Put automated systems or processes in place so you don't have to do the same tasks over and over. If you can't, look for ways to do … [Read more...]
Take an End-of-Year Look at Your Productivity Habits
The end of the year is a classic opportunity to look back over how things have been going and look forward to see how they could improve. January brings that fresh start that we all long for – let’s make the most of it! Think of all the things that drive you crazy – the biggest obstacles to your personal and professional productivity. For sanity’s sake, you might have chosen to pick your battles and resigned yourself to some pretty ridiculous productivity drains over the years. Maybe you decided that a staff meeting at work will always be a waste of time and have given up the good fight on making it better. Or it might be as simple as giving up on making it out the door with a decent breakfast in your belly. Not this year! Let’s take 2008 by storm and reexamine the way we get … [Read more...]
Put a new spin on laundry
How do you keep up with your laundry? I just heard from a reader who puts a load in before she goes to bed, throws it in the dryer on the way out the door to work, and uses the "touch up" feature when she gets home before folding. By doing this every day, she always keeps up with her laundry. She also recommended safety pinning socks together the minute she takes them off (she has a little basket in her closet), so she never has to search for and match socks. What little tricks do you have for staying on top of the skivvies? … [Read more...]
Pre-made shopping list
Ever want to buy healthy food at the supermarket, but you didn't have time to look in your recipe books and can't think of what to buy? Get tired of writing the same basic items---eggs, bread, milk---on your list again and again? Keep your kitchen well stocked by hanging a pre-printed shopping list on your fridge. Print a stack of copies at the Self magazine site. Stick one to your fridge each week and check off things as you run low on various items. Then use the list to trigger your thoughts on buying healthy foods for lunches and dinners for the week. … [Read more...]
Get out of your meeting—make your cell phone ring
This is hysterical. Have you ever been sitting in a boring meeting, wishing you had a reason to excuse yourself? Or on a disasterous blind date, looking for an escape? Before a potentially draining engagement, visit PopularityDialer.com. Schedule a free call to your cell phone at a designated time and specify a conversation: boss, cousin in need, friend, etc. The recording actually pauses for your end of the conversation. You'll be out of there in no time. … [Read more...]
Eliminate interruptions for better concentration
Interruptions abound—a co-worker drops by to chat, the phone rings, and your boss sends you an email to handle something, pronto—all at the same time. With a flurry of activity, you respond to these various demands. All prove to be low priority, and an hour later, you return to your initial task, your energy waning. You decide you’ll work on the project in the afternoon, when your energy picks up again. Of course, after lunch, there’s some crisis, and after fielding a volley of phone calls and unscheduled visits from co-workers, the day ends, and the project is yet again unfinished. You’ve lost your momentum. Much like your car has to work harder to accelerate from a complete stop, so does your brain. Although interruptions are a normal (and … [Read more...]
Handling vendor phone solicitation with a magic mailbox
A seminar participant shared a great trick she uses for those pesky salespeople who won't take "no" for an answer: << We had an extension set up that goes directly to voice mail so when I get a sales call asking for my boss (I can always tell it’s a sales call), I just say one moment (they think they are getting through), and they are immediately directed to our message that states “Thank you for calling (XXX) Medical Corporation. If you would like to mail us information regarding your company, our address is… or, if you prefer to fax your information, our fax number is… Thank you for calling…" I love it!! They may call me back but….they go right back into my magic mailbox. It works great because I don’t have to waste my time getting them off the … [Read more...]
Parents Want Help Helping Kids Learn Time Management
The back-to-school season is a time of change in a kid’s life. New schedules, new activities, new friends--both parents and children need to learn how to adjust to all the change. From the first day of elementary school throughout high school, kids have school assignments, sports, music and theater practices, social activities and home obligations thrust upon them with the expectation that they will magically know how to do it all. However, without the proper guidance and an easy-to-use system, it is easy for children and parents to get overwhelmed. In fact, in a recent DayTimers® survey on back-to-school resolutions, 72% of parent respondents said they wanted to improve their time management skills. And the best way to learn is to teach it. Teaching children time … [Read more...]
Setting and Succeeding at Back to School Resolutions
DayTimers Community productivity expert and author, Laura Stack, offers easy-to-achieve tips to help families succeed at making and keeping back to school resolutions. Back-to-the-Future. The first step in moving forward with back-to-school resolutions is to take a look back. What were the situations from the previous school year that could use improvement? Did your child often miss the bus? Did they have a hard time making the honor roll or even passing grades? Was everyone too busy to sit down for dinner together? Once you figure out what areas need improvement, it will help set goals for the upcoming year. Talk to your children. Whether your school-age children are in elementary school or high school, talk to them about areas they would like to see change, both personally and … [Read more...]
Have you become more productive or just learned how?
With all of the tips and tricks that we’ve discussed in this blog (including tons of great reader suggestions), we’ve all hopefully learned HOW to be more productive, personally and professionally—but have we BECOME more productive? I’ve come up with a few questions that you can ask yourself to see where you stand. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, so if you don’t like all of your answers you can always browse the archives of my newsletters for some inspiration. Are you productive -- or just busy? Watch out for this one, because it’s an easy trap to fall into. Everybody likes to look busy. Some workers make a career out of it while actually accomplishing very little in the average day. People zoom around the office, guzzling coffee and stomping back and forth to … [Read more...]
