JUST SAY YES!
Posted on February 9, 2010 - Filed Under Get Organized, Overcoming Procrastination
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule,
but to schedule your priorities.”
–Stephen Covey
If you’re still procrastinating around doing the most important things you want or choose to do, here are ten tips to help get you moving:
- How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Break larger projects into manageable “bites” and create a reasonable timeline for you to accomplish these smaller tasks.
- Remember that each project expands to the time allotted to it, so set a limit for yourself: I am going to return all my phone calls in an hour. I will file papers for 30 minutes. I will spend 15 minutes picking up around the house. Set a timer. You will be amazed how much you can get done when you focus your time. My clients report that they are much more efficient and effective when they set a time limit for specific tasks.
- Check your self-talk. Do you frequently say, “I gotta…,” “I should…,” or “I have to…”? Replace this self-talk with “I choose to…” and recognize that you are at choice about what you do. If you don’t choose to do it, don’t do it!
- Eat a live toad first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. Tackle that “toad” - the important task you have been putting off, the one that is hanging over your head - because it will lift an immense load and you will feel much more productive.
- Train yourself to trim the F.A.T. When papers come into your office or home, give yourself these three choices: File, Act, Toss. (Note that “I’ll just put it here for now” is not one of the choices.)
- Relieve yourself of the stress caused by all of the clutter in your home and office by setting up some systems to manage the paper in your life. A good filing system and a tickler file system are essential elements. A good system will make a huge difference in your ability to effectively manage paper and prevent important activities from slipping through the cracks.
- Make a weekly appointment with yourself to plan your coming week. During your planning session, schedule important activities and tasks so you have a concrete plan for following through with your intentions.
- When planning your time, include both urgent (time-sensitive) and non-urgent but important activities in your plan. An example of an urgent activity might be a meeting or a project with an upcoming deadline. A non-urgent activity might be exercise or relationship-building - something important but not time-sensitive or deadline-driven.
- Make appointments with yourself to get administrative work done, such as paying bills or catching up with your reading. Treat this time as you would an appointment with someone else.
- Take 15 minutes at the end of each day to put things away and look at the calendar for the next day. Gather what you need ahead of time so you will be prepared for tomorrow.
This is the final post of four blogs about tools for dealing with procrastination. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, which you can send me by clicking on the comments button below. For free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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LOVE YOURSELF
Posted on February 6, 2010 - Filed Under Health & Wellness, Inspirational, Self Help
“Love yourself first and everything falls into line.”
-Lucille Ball
As we gear up to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I am reminded of the importance of first loving and caring for ourselves, so we are available to care for others.
When practicing good self-care, here are five important areas to examine:
Work:
- How many hours a day are you working? (If you’d like more free time, check out my free webinar and learn how to increase productivity.)
- Do you take breaks? How about lunch?
- Do you have the flexibility you need to accommodate other important areas of your life, such as family activities and your own hobbies? (You’ll find more about this topic next month.)
- If you are currently unemployed or fearful of losing your job, now is a good time to consider making a change. Do you enjoy your work and find it fulfilling? Does your industry face an uncertain future? Evaluate if a career change makes sense. You may benefit from reading an article I wrote several years ago called Follow Your Heart: Finding Meaning in Your Work.
- If business is down, what are you doing to bring it back up? You are invited to participate in my free webinar for some great tips.
Health:
- Are you exercising regularly? Health professionals recommend that we walk 10,000 steps a day. Buy a pedometer and you can easily track how many steps you take daily. You can build regular exercise into your day by parking farther away, getting off the bus or train one or two stops before or after where you usually get off, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
- Are you eating three balanced meals a day, plus healthy snacks? Are you staying hydrated?
- Are you tanking up on too much caffeine or sugar instead of giving your body the sleep it needs to run optimally?
- Are you regularly taking free days - a 24-hour period that includes NO work (no checking voice mail, text messages or email, etc.)?
- When was the last time you took a real vacation (at least several days in a row) where you completely unplugged — no business calls, no work-related email, etc.? Even if you cannot afford to travel, you can still plan some free or inexpensive things to do that will help you rejuvenate.
Spiritual:
- What are you doing to be spiritually tuned?
- Do you have a spiritual practice such as meditation or prayer that helps you to quiet the mind, de-stress and let go of your worries?
Finances:
- Do you know exactly how much money you have, including gain or loss from investments, value of insurance or retirement accounts, etc?
- Do you know where your money goes? When you start keeping track, you may be surprised at how much you spend in certain areas. (For me, a big surprise was the cost of my daily mocha habit.) Once you have knowledge, you can make conscious and informed decisions about how you spend your money.
- Are you asleep at the wheel, or are you actively involved in keeping financially fit by leveraging your money and minimizing debt?
Relationships:
- Are you nurturing the relationships that are most important to you? Do you tell those you love how important they are in your life? I’ve found an easy way to follow my promptings when I want to share how I feel. Click here and send a free Valentine in the mail to someone you care about.
- Have you let go of relationships that are not healthy for you to be in?
- Do you require others to honor boundaries that keep you physically and emotionally safe?
- Do you follow promptings to tell those you love how you feel about them?
For more free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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The NOT To Do List
Posted on January 26, 2010 - Filed Under Time Management, Time and Life Management
“With so many options and choices nowadays, you will
have to start saying no to some of the good things
in order to accommodate the best things.”
–Harold Taylor
How do you determine what goes on your NOT To Do list? Here are some suggestions:
FIRST, get clear on the big picture. What is most important to you?
- What do you want to do and who do you want to be during your lifetime?
- What legacy do you want to leave behind? How will your life have made a difference on this Earth?
NEXT, get clear about what you choose to do with your time. What are YOUR key roles?
- What do you choose to say YES to? What are you most passionate about? What are you best at doing?
- What do you choose to say NO to? What are you not passionate about that you are currently involved in? Review your calendar and your regular activities, and ask yourself if what you give your time to is most important to you?
- How can you best honor your own health and well-being (physical, mental, spiritual, social needs)?
- Does your life feel balanced among all of your key roles? (Example: parent, spouse, friend, volunteer, professional, hobbyist, etc.)
THEN, lighten the load. Free up your time for what matters most.
- Make lists of the following:
- Commitments you will renegotiate that are not important or are less important to you.
- Activities that simply don’t need to get done - things you choose to let go of.
- A Perhaps List of things you might do or that you plan to do but choose to defer for later.
- A Delegation list. If you don’t enjoy doing it or are not good at doing it, delegate as much as possible. Click here for tips on delegation.
- Schedule time for the following:
- Activities that will honor your own health and well-being.
- Activities which are important to you. Build in balance as you consider your key roles. Be aware of your self-talk. This is not about “have to” or “should.” It’s about what you choose.
- Time to do weekly planning. Keeping a weekly planning appointment with yourself will help you stay more focused on the deeper YES so you can JUST SAY NO to the rest! Visit http://www.orgcoach.net/sixsteps.html for an example of weekly planning.
- Time for family meetings. One common theme I hear from my clients is that they want to spend more time with the family. Work, responsibilities, and overcommitted schedules seem to be the biggest obstacle. The Family Meeting provides an important opportunity for communication and planning as a family.
This is the third of four blogs about tools for dealing with procrastination. Please check back in a few days for my final thoughts on this topic. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, which you can send me by clicking on the comments button below. For free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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Just Say NO!
Posted on January 19, 2010 - Filed Under Get Organized, Organize Your Life, Self Help, Time Management, Time and Life Management
“It’s easy to say ‘no!’ when there’s
a deeper ‘yes!’ burning inside.”
–Stephen Covey
As an organizing consultant, I get calls every week from individuals who suffer from stress, disharmony, and sometimes dysfunction. People call me asking for assistance getting organized. I often ask, “What will getting organized do for you?” These are some of the replies I hear: “If I didn’t waste so much time looking for things, I could focus on things that are really important that I just don’t have time for now,” or “I’d have more time to relax and do things I enjoy.”
Although a good storage or filing system and tickler file will help my clients find things quickly and remember important follow-up, there is no organizational system in the world that will fully address the most common concern that I hear from nearly every person who calls me - not enough time.
We all have 168 hours a week. You say that’s not enough? What if you could wave a magic time wand and add an extra day to each week - for a total of 192 hours a week. Would that be enough? I’ll bet not! It’s the buffet syndrome! Whether we get a smaller plate or a larger plate, most of us will fill it to the rim at an all-you-can-eat buffet!
I frequently tell my clients that organizing their time and environment without first clarifying their priorities is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Since more time will not solve the problem, the other alternative is to have less stuff you “gotta do.”
Check out my free webinar, Buried in Paper, at http://www.orgcoach.net/teleclasses.html .
This is the second of four blogs about tools for dealing with procrastination. Please check back in a few days for more on this topic. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, which you can send me by clicking on the comments button below. For free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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To Do or NOT to Do…That is the Question!
Posted on January 12, 2010 - Filed Under Get Organized, Organize Your Life, Self Help
“Even if you’re on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
–Will Rogers
A colleague of mine recently shared that she enjoys procrastination so much that she has decided to give herself permission to do it daily. So, once a day she sits down and plans, schemes, and lists anything that comes to mind - particularly things she knows she “should” do. She said that “it feels delicious constructing those plans with full awareness that I’ll probably not carry them out! Who cares? The fun is in the planning!” She reported that since she started allowing this frivolity, she gets it out of her system in one sitting, and she no longer feels the desire to procrastinate. She has cut in half the amount of time she “wastes” in this manner, which has freed her to fill the time more productively. She says, “Since it’s going to happen anyway, why not be at choice?”
A few hours after I read my colleague’s e-mail about how she plans to procrastinate, Oprah was on TV interviewing life coach Martha Beck about how to de-stress your life. During her interview with Oprah, Martha suggested that instead of making a To Do list, we make a NOT To Do list.
That same week, I came to the realization that I had over committed myself when I agreed to be part of a weekly teleconference meeting over the next eight weeks. As I thought about the topic of the teleconference, I had to laugh. The teleconference topic - Balancing Between Work and Life - hit a nerve. I realized I was getting out of balance myself!
How often do you commit to something that you later regret, and then say to yourself, “Well, I HAVE TO DO IT because I gave my word!” Then you go on your way, grumbling about how over committed and stressed out you are. That’s what I used to do, and I am getting better at recognizing when it’s in my best interest to renegotiate commitments I have made. In this case, I renegotiated my participation in the teleconference, and by doing so I have freed up several hours a week of my time over the next eight weeks.
I think it is more than coincidence that I was bombarded with similar messages from several different sources, all within the same week. Perhaps the universe was telling me something that I needed to hear, and just in time for March Forth Day and National Procrastination Week, which coincide with each other the first week in March.
Last year at this time I wrote an article titled March 4th. Time to March Forth!, and the year before that my March article was titled Fear Not! - The Perfectionist’s Credo - an article about procrastination. To do or not to do - to march forth or to procrastinate - that is the question. Or IS that the question?
It occurred to me that perhaps the best way to march forth in my life is to NOT do some things - to just say NO! I think that’s why my colleague enjoys her procrastination exercise so much, and why Martha Beck has helped so many of her clients reclaim their lives by creating a NOT To Do list. We’re all too busy being busy! Meanwhile, life is passing us by.
Several years ago I made a poster that says, “Every time I say YES to someone or something, I am saying NO to someone or something else.” (Remember, I’m a recovering workaholic!) This poster has helped me make better decisions about what I say YES and NO to. Given that procrastination means not doing something, perhaps one of the reasons that many of us procrastinate is because our lives are so full of things that deserve to be on our NOT To Do lists. Of course, there are also many other reasons for procrastinating.
What is possible once you de-clutter your life of activities and commitments that are not top priority to you? What does your NOT To Do list contain?
This is the first of four blogs about dealing with procrastination. Please check back in a few days for more on this topic. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, which you can send me by clicking on the comments button below. For free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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January
Posted on January 8, 2010 - Filed Under File Organization, Get Organized, Organize Your Life, Self Help, Time Management, Time and Life Management
A Call to Action!
“How come there is never enough time to do something right
the first time, but there is always time to do it again?”
-Anonymous
January is filled with organizing holidays…What are you doing to celebrate them? Here are some ideas…
- New Year’s Day - Block out some time to do the following:
- List your accomplishments for the past year and celebrate them.
- List your “incompletions” for the past year and decide what you choose to do about them in the coming year.
- Clean Out Your Closet Month - Identify which closet(s) in your home or office need to be cleaned out, and carve out some time in your schedule to do it. You may discover a significant tax deduction if you choose to donate things to charity. Click here to read about an excellent tool that helps you value donations. They guarantee you will save at least $300 in taxes. I have used this myself for YEARS and it has saved me many thousands of dollars in taxes over the years.
- National “Be On Purpose” Month - Identify the following:
- What are your top three personal goals for the new year?
- What are your top three professional goals for the new year?
- What one personal quality do you most want to develop in the new year?
- Life Balance Month - Identify what will build greater balance in your life in the new year:
- Self care
- Relationships
- Hobbies
- Volunteer work
- Organize Your Home Day (early January) - Identify which areas in your home need to be de-cluttered and organized and carve out some time in your schedule to do it. Click here for tips on how to do this. You may discover a significant tax deduction if you choose to donate things to charity.
- National Clean Off Your Desk Day (January 13) - Plan an office party and have everyone clean out and organize their files, e-mail messages, and electronic documents. Create a “white elephant” room and ask people to bring their no-longer-needed office equipment and supplies to this central location. One person’s discarded office tools may be another person’s treasure!
Attend my free Buried in Paper webinar and learn how to manage incoming information more effectively: http://www.orgcoach.net/teleclasses.html
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The Faces of Disorganization
Posted on December 29, 2009 - Filed Under Business, File Organization, Get Organized, Time Management
The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year retrieving misplaced information on desks or in files. At a salary of $75,000 per year, this translates to 12.3% of total earnings, or $9,225…and that’s just for one person!
In the examples shared in the previous blog, disorganization symbolizes a costly drain of resources that has several faces - the corporate face, the personal (employee) face, and the public (consumer) face.
The corporate face of managerial disorganization is measured in lost productivity dollars. Take the example of the employee above who makes $75,000 per year and wastes one hour a day looking for lost and misplaced information (this is a conservative estimate). Now multiply that loss in productivity by 10, 50 or 100 managers who are organizationally challenged. The numbers become alarming when multiplying the loss.
In addition, it’s difficult to measure the loss in terms of unfinished projects, sales calls never made, or innovative ideas that were never pursued as a result of disorganization. Each manager’s personal inefficiency becomes an operating inefficiency for the company. Restoring individual performance is essential to getting the highest productivity return from the investment in management.
The personal face of managerial disorganization is one you’re probably familiar with - either because you have struggled with it yourself or because you have worked with a disorganized colleague and have experienced the results of their disorder. Basic skills are consistently compromised by inability to organize one’s environment, schedule, and thoughts. The symptoms: piles of paper, missed deadlines, constant interruptions, forgetting to follow up or follow through, inability to find needed information, running late, and the list goes on. Personal organization is a key trait of many successful people.
The public face of managerial disorganization is one we are all familiar with. When productivity goes down in any place of work, the cost of doing business goes up. We all end up paying for it - in the costs of delivered goods and services, or…in the case of government waste…with our tax dollars. Sometimes the cost goes far beyond dollars and cents (September 11, for example).
For more free resources and valuable productivity tools visit www.orgcoach.net.
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