Better Time Management

Especially these days before Christmas, quite a few people seem to be running out of time and get into a stressful situation:

So much to do, and not enough time…. How will I manage?

It’s really quite easy: You need to set priorities and to assign a ‘time-value’ to all the things you want to achieve. I’ve just written a short article about Better Time Management, you find the how to guide there.

Follow these simples steps and you’ll live a much happier, stress free life!

This audio book has acutally helped me to get organized myself:

A Guide To Time Management – MP3 Audio Book – You can listen to this audio online, just click the link!

 

The Master Plan – Do YOU have one?

Did you know that most people do not have a master plan? Do you have one?

If not, it might be a good idea to a) learn what a master plan is, and b) make one for yourself!

Master Plan – The Definiton

The broad but focused(!) line you want to follow to reach your goals. This is like a recipee for your personal fulfillment and happyness. It’s your road to success.

How to build a master plan for yourself:

I tend to do things in a quite structured way, maybe you have a different approach, for me this works quite fine:

Step one: Create a list of your personal, spiritual, physical, emotional and financial goals for the next year – i.e. for 2008.

Step two: Now assign priorities for each goal, start with number 1 for the most important goal, and increase the number as the priority decreases. You can assign the same number to no more than two items!

Step three: Now predict by what date you will have achieved the goal with the highest priority, then do the same for all your other goals.

OK, this is it, you now have your own Master Plan.

Question: How will you achieve your goals, now that you have written them down?

Answer: I suggest you read through this blog, it’s a good starting point, I’ve touched many subjects related to reaching your goals already. You also should – correct my self- MUST listen to a few audio books to understand how much energy you have and how you positively CAN reach any goal you set yourself.

Start off with The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Rhonda Byrne) and then go on listening to Law of Attraction by Michael Losier .

Once you have listened to these two, I suggest you also download 50 self help classics a great audio book that brings you fifty more authors who all have very valid arguments for your success. By listening to these AND following their advice, you’ll be reaching your goals much faster than what you ever believed possible!

 

Accomplish Your Goals

You need a strategy to accomplish your goals.

There is a step by step approach that will bring you to the achievements that you are haeding for:

1. Make a contract with yourself.

It’s OK to think: I’ll do this and that. It’s much better to write your goal on paper and define it clearly. Date this paper and sign it. Then place it where you can see it several times every day. … and keep your contract!
2. Identify specific rewards for positive action.

In this contract you can also enter the rewards you’ll give yourself for achieving certain landmarks on the way towards that goal. Treat yourself to things you really like when you manage to accomplish a specific step!
3. Establish certain penalties for procrastination.

This might work for some, for others it’s not practical. If you are sure that you will also use this intrument when you don’t go ahead and miss a landmark, then enter that into your contract as well. If you know that you will anyhow ignore the penalties, then just leave this part out. No use of stipulating something just for the paper…
4. Break your goals down into small steps.

OK, these small steps really are the key to your success! A large chunk might be just too much to get started at all. So break your plan into smaller mini-goals (the landmarks I refer to above) and make the steps manageable. Then it’s a lot easier to tackel one first step.
5. Schedule a time segment for each activity.

Try to estimate how long it will take to achieve each of these smaller steps and wrtie down, by when you want to reach the intermediate goals.
6. ACTION!

So, now you have a great plan and it looks all nicely organized. This is going to be useful only if you now take action. Do what you planned and enjoy the feeling of having reached each intermediate goal! You’ll see that by following this simple step by step system, you’ll actually enjoy doing what’s needed and the triumph of actually reaching a goal in the predetermined timespan is a feeling that you’ll start to love!

Have fun reaching your goals!

This positive energy and how to cultivate the right attitude is describen in ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne. It’s a great audio book that you can listen to on the go. This book will change the way you look at your life and how you’ll be setting goals and achieving the results you want!

Listen to a sample of ‘The Secret’ audio book here

 

Learning To Say ‘No’

So much to do! Not enough time! How will you manage to get this all done??? … You are overwhelmed. All good intentions to finish all these tasks will never be enough to really manage……

This ugly problem of too many things that are waiting to be done pesters way too many people. And it is so easy to overcome!

• Learn to say, “No!”

Say “no” to activities and people that do not contribute to reaching your goals. And with goals I don’t just mean work goals, I mean whole life goals. That includes pleasure and quality time with friends and family!

People will take advantage of your kindness and generosity, once you seem to say “yes” all the time. You end up being a stop gap for all the others, who manage to free their time by letting you do things with or even for them.

If you want to learn more about saying “No” and time mangement, then this audio will help you learn the right techniques: Andy Guides has written ‘A Guide To Time Management’ . He says:

Managing stress and time is a rewarding accomplishment that all must maintain in order to reach success. Each day we wake up, we stress to meet deadlines, demands, and finding time to spend with our family, selves and friends.

While these are challenges we all must face, there are tools and techniques that can help you to meet them in a better, balanced way without feeling as though you are at the end of your cord. I know this to be true because I discovered them and implemented them in my own life with amazing results and now I want to share them with you!

This is the most complete report on time management you will ever read! Not only does it include timely tips and hints on tools to manage your time but how to create a backup time management plan as well!

You can download this audiobook ‘A Guide To Time Management’.

 

Getting Organized – The Secret That Is None

Using an organizer or daytime planner can be a great tool to coordinate your activities. It’s actually the secret of many successful people. It also helpy ou to focus and get a clear mental attitude about the things that need to be done.

Here’s how you use a planner effectively:

• First you need to add the relevant tasks into your planner for the date they need to be done. Take the items from your master “To Do” List.

• Once an item is completet, mark it as completed by checking it off.

• If you are left with tasks not finished by the end of the day, report them over to the next day.

• If after the next day an intem is still not completed, something is wrong. Either you are procrastinating or it’s not really something that needs to be done? Ask yourself, “What if I never do this?”

• If you can honestly say, that nothing bad will happen if you don’t complete this item, then you should delete it immediately and forget about it.

You see, writing these tasks down and keeping a planner is quite effective. Nobody can keep all things pending in their head only, and by being able to go back a few days to see if you are completing things and what has been deleted, you will better be able to structure your “To Do” List in such a way that after a while you’ll only have the urgent and important, or the important tasks written down.

 

Goal Setting – The Secret: Precision

Goal Setting is a task that most people take too lightly and underestimate: If you are setting a goal the right way, you’ve made already one third of the way to reaching it! If you are full of good intentions, but don’t set goals, chances are that you’ll never fulfill your wishes!

Let’s look why goal setting is so important: If you’re the captain of a ship, and you venture into the deep waters of the sea, without seeing land anywhere, how will you reach your destination:

• By letting the winds drive you wherever they want and not changing the sails, or
• By adjusting your sails according to the compas, so that the force of the wind is used to drive you in the direction of your destination?

The answer is really quite clear, isn’t it? The chance that the wind will drive you to your destination without you changing the settings of your sails, is quite small…. – and without knowing in which direction your destination is to be found, you can’t set your compas course!

The same philosophy applies to goal setting: If you let yourself drift and just hope that some day something good will happen, it may take longer than your life for your wish to come true… – So give your life direction and set goals!

Let’s look at what a good precise goal looks like:

• It defines a final state
• It is measurable in quantity
• It is measurable in time

Means: i.e. you could define the final state like this: “I want to have a circle of real friends, minimum 5 people who I can talk to about anything and who trust me and I know that I can trust them.” You have also defind the quantity with the number of five.

Now, that is great, but how long will you take to achieve this final state? Defining a time frame for this is impossible…. So we might need to define a second set of goals that will lead us to this final state:

Simply by getting to know more people and finally finding the ones that meet the category. Simply might actually not be the best term to choose in this case, finding friends like these is not something easy. But let’s see how we can achieve this.

This is what will really bring you to the final state: Start meeting new people. At the bus stop, at the waiting line in the supe market, in a bar, your choice really. If you have special hobbies or passions, go where people with these hobbies are to be found etc. Your time frame is in this case a repetition of an action until success:

• I will make contact with one new person every day.

Now we have all three points covered that make a good goal: final state, quantity, time.

You see, it’s not really complicated to set a goal.

Once you are clear about your goals, you might want to use additional help to reach these and to program your mind to help you keep drive towards success. Glenn Harrold has produced a Guide to Manifesting Your Goals and Dreams that uses hypnotic techniques. This works quite well, provided you have precisely defined goals and not just a wish…

 

 

Visualization – The Secret To Reaching Your Goals

Visualization is the most effective way to link emotions with your goals. If you i.e. want to become a great speaker, you visualize this scene: You visualize yourself in front of a large crowd that is listening to you. You stand in front and speak to them, they are attentive, friendly faces look up to you and you feel great speaking in front of this large crowd. Do this at least once every day, try to feel how great this is: So many people that love listening to what you have to say, that laugh at your jokes and applaud you with a standing ovation at the end of your speech.

If public speaking is, what you want to do, then the audiobook ‘101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers’ might be a good technical help, visualization will help you gain the necessary confidence to succeed!

Visualization is also one of the key elements that are mentioned in ‘The Secret’, the book everybody talks about and that is a New York Times best seller.

 

Patience – The Secret To Success and Stress Free Living

In today’s time, everything must be finished and done nearly before it got started…. Time is money! But is that really so?

Patience can actually get you a much better quality of life! Let’s look at a few examples of how patience will increase your life quality immediately:

• Traffic: You are sitting in the middle of a royal traffic jam. Can you personally do anything about it (other than not using your car and staying away from high traffic areas during rush hours)? Not really! So why getting impatient, angry or upset? Listen to some great music, take the time to think about something positive, give the driver next to you a great smile!
• Lines at the cashier: Will the line move faster and people simply disappear because you think things are moving soooo slooowwww? No! So why getting impatient? Enjoy a moment of calm and observe what others do, maybe even start chatting with somebody. I’m having a lot of fun in a line and had many great conversations already.

You can spin this on and you’ll find that there are plenty of situations every day that will improve greatly and become totally stress free, once you develop the knack of stepping a few steps back, and realizing that patience is the key. Add some tolerance and allow for small deficiencies in yourself and others, and it gets truly great!

Also, if you are impatient, you tend to take the wrong decisions and come to the the wrong conclusions. It’s very easy to get frustrated or laid back when things don’t go according to plan. If the plan is to move faster than possible, then either find an other way, where there are no traffic jams, (literal ones and others) or slow down to a realisitc pace. Just because it takes a bit longer does not mean it’s impossible!

 

Purpose – Achieving Your Goals

Purpose is important if you want to reach anything in life. Purpose give your actions direction and sustains your efforts.

Write down the goals you want to achieve. If you could have anything, what would it be? Don’t say ‘This is not possible anyhow…’ – Just tell yourself: ‘I’m capable of anything, so let’s see what I really want.’

Once you have your goals written down, select the three most important ones. If you try to achieve everything at the same time, you’ll overload. So just select three goals. Write every one of these goals on a big sheet of paper and hang it where you can see it at all times.

Now read that goal every time you see the sheet of paper. Every time! Repeating will help you get that sense of purpose and to get focused on the goal.

The audiobook ‘Every Move Must Have a Purpose’ by Bruce Pandolfini goes much deeper on the subject and will help you understand how important purpose is in life. Bruce Pandolfini is one of the world’s most sought-after chess teachers, and one of the most widely read chess writers working today. He was the analyst for PBS’s coverage of the match between chess superstars Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Bruce Pandolfini was portrayed bythe actor Ben Kingsley in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, and more recently was featured in the New Yorker and Fast Company. He is a regular columnist for Chess Life, the bible of the chess world, and continues to professionally coach young chess players and consult with CEOs from Fortune 500 companies. Bruce Pandolfini lives in New York City.