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!

 

Do Urgent Things Before It’s Too Late

Has that happend to you already: You try to complete the most urgent and important activities, but somehow keep on pushing them back, until you have to rush and nearly don’t manage to do them anymore. You are often completing these tasks at the last moment.

Some people actually need this pressure to do things, or at least they think they need need it, because it’s a great excuse to let things drag until the last moment….

If you have read ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne or intend to read or listen to it, then you know that this is not the best way to manage your life and reaching your goals.

There is a much better way to handle urgent tasks, and even if you think you need this pressure, try it the other way at least once, you’ll see how much easier the task gets if you’re not letting time pass by and then have to rush:

Schedule a block of prime time to work on an important activity that is due in the future. Begin at least two weeks before the time you think you’d need to complete the task. By leaving some spare time, you’ll be able to polish and review the task at least once before it’s due.

Just remember: the 80 / 20 rule applies! By having now enough time to review what you’ve done, you can possibly improve on it. But once you’ve reached the 80%, the effort you’ll put into it will not yield the same productivity anymore. so don’t overdo it!

Having a project ready on Wednesday when it’s due for the next Monday is great and will make you feel a lot better too!

Here’s a great book that will help you getting thinds done with ease:

Step by step, Neil Fiore, Ph.D. reveals in his audiobook ‘The Now Habit’ numerous tested strategies for ridding your life of procrastination:

• Use the symptoms of procrastination to trigger the cure
• Overcome the perfectionism and fear of failure that lie behind procrastination
• Benefit from making positive statements about work instead of sabotaging yourself with negative statements
• Make your worry work for you
• Use the Unschedule time-management techniques
• Accomplish more in less time through efficient “flow state” work styles
• Assist the procrastinators in your life in overcoming their problems

 

Use of Time

Time is a commodity that is precious. Time seems to be free and there seems to be plenty of it at first sight. But time that has passed is gone forever! This very minute you read this sentence will be over in 60 – no, now it’s allready only 50 seconds…. – and then – poooofffff….. GONE FORVER. WILL NEVER BE BACK.

GONE.

It’s just a minute, yes, and there are 60 minutes to the hour, 24 hours to the day. so in total there are 1’440 minutes every day, why worry about one single minute?

OK, you’re right: It’s no good to worry about a single minute, but you need to decide what you want to get out of this very day. If you let one minute after the other just dissolve into nothing, the end of the day will come and you’ll ask yourself ‘What have I done, enjoyed or achieved in these last 24 hours?’

I’m not advocating that you’ll now start to be your own drillmaster and race thought the day trying to catch every single second and fill all the time you have with something meaningful. You also need rest and sometimes to do nothing can be just as enjoyable as working or playing hard. Just be aware of time:

Take time to think and plan. Take time to study and learn.

Think about what you are reading, find ways to apply it to your life.

Use your time so that at the end of the day you can lean back and say: ‘I’ve use my time in a good way!

The audiobook A Guide To Time Management by Andy Guides offers great advice how to make good use of your minutes and hours every day. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is an other book that will show you how time can work for you.

 

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’.

 

Perfection – No! | Precision – Yes!

Often perfection and precision are confounded. That can lead to a major problem: People who want to have everything perfect often suffer from perfection paralysis. If you are trying to be perfect, your productivity suffers. You need to be able to tolerate imperfections.

It’s OK to be precise, and in some instances it’s important, like in goal setting. But precision does not mean perfection! You should think this over once and for all and then decide for yourself that:

• You are not perfect and never will be.
• Everything you do is and will be somehow imperfect.

Perfection Paralysis can be stopping you from doing anything, even in cases when doing something would be much much better:

• If it is worth doing, it’s worth doing whichever way you can.
• Nobody prevents you to later make a correction, just don’t overdo the correction stuff.
• It will never be absolutely perfect!
• Use the 80 / 20 rule!

The 80 / 20 rule says: Everything can be accomplished. It’s just a question of productivity: with about 20% of your effort (input) you get about 80% of the final result (output). Every percentage point higher, say 81% of the final result, will take a disproportionate effort. For the 81% output you might have to add 3% more input, for the next point to 82% it might be an additional 5% etc. The input to achieve a higher output increases disproportionally to the result that you get.

Let’s say you have to prepare exactly 10 kgs of apples, and you should try and get these 10 kgs right. But if it’s 9 kgs 990 grams or 10 kgs 010 grams of apples does not make a big difference. People who suffer from prefectionitis will juggle apples until the scales show exactly 10 kgs 000 grams.

Now let’s look at a merchant who knows that his customer will not wait the few minutes it would take him until he has found the last few apples to make exactly 10 kgs. He will toss apples into the bowl until the scales show 10 kgs plus something, might be 10, 50, even 100 grams over. It’s OK, because it’s precise as far as the customer is concerned, he asked and will pay for 10 kgs. He applies the 80 / 20 rule and does not overdo the perfection part, but he is precise with his measurement and has minimum 10 kgs on the scales!

Apply that to your life and the everyday tasks. Don’t be sloppy, just don’t try to be perfect. You, I, and everybody else, never will be! Giving yourself and your life the freedom of not being perfect and to tolerate mistakes and imperfections will save you from a lot of hardship and you will gain time to do things you like and want.