Taking Control - Where do I begin?

Where do I begin to take control of my life?

Begin by recognising that whenever you take an action there will be a result. It may or may not be what you want but learning to look for what you can learn from the result of your actions is very powerful.

Think about something in your life that doesn’t seem to be working exactly as you’d like it yet and ask - what can I learn from this? And how can I use this learning to do something differently next time?

As you work on taking control of your life, it’s not unusual for a little self-doubt to begin to creep in.

This is completely normal so you can relax, after all if we were sure of every outcome before we took the action where would the fun be? It would be like going to the cinema and knowing the end to every film. So next time you find yourself doubting yourself or your abilities why not just take it as a sign that you are growing.

The fact that you’ve noticed yourself doubting yourself or your abilities is great because means that you can begin to work on turning this around now. As a first step just begin to ask yourself more empowering questions, such as:  How could I use this doubt to help me move forward? How could you enjoy taking action today?
How do I control feeling overwhelmed, which leads me to procrastinate?

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Success Involves Saying ‘No’

Part of building your character is to learn to say no. Many of us are people-pleasers, people who would rather do something they don’t want to do instead of telling someone no. If you do that in business, you’ll end up chasing your tail more than getting things done.

You can stay extremely busy pleasing people, both inside and outside of your business, and never get around to getting your business done or claiming the success you’ve earned.
No matter what the definition of success is there will be times when you cannot keep everyone happy. By actively and proactively managing your time and saying ‘no’ as needed, you can not only protect your time, but you can ensure that you move efficiently towards your dreams and goals.

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Dealing With Time Wasters

There are two main categories that time wasters or time bandits can fall under.

The first category is self generated internal time wasters. These are the things that you do yourself to waste time and are the easiest to control.

The second category is the external time wasters. These are the things other people do to waste your time. This can be more difficult to control, though it can be controlled with a little bit of effort and ingenuity.

Let’s look at the self generated internal time wasters and some possible solutions:

1) The lack of planning and priorities. Many people never get anything accomplished because they don’t know where to begin or how to proceed once started. It is important that you keep a weekly schedule. List your priorities in order of importance. If needed, discuss the priorities with your boss or co-workers. Make a schedule that starts at the beginning of each week and incorporates all of your priorities into the schedule with goals for completion dates. List every hour and what you should be working on for that hour. Make a tight schedule so there is not a lot of time in between projects. Too much time between projects is wasted time.

2) Disorganisation. Disorganised people spend way too much time looking for lost items. Keep your office neatly organized and free of clutter. If you can’t do this yourself, recruit a friend or hire someone to help you.

3) Procrastination. This is a big time waster. Set a deadline for those projects that you don’t want to do. Plan a reward for yourself when finished. Work on the project in small chunks until completed. Sometimes it helps to work on it first thing in the morning to get it out of the way.

The second category of time wasters is the external time wasters. These are not as easy to control since they involve external factors. Here are some solutions to help control or at the very least, keep them to a minimum:

1) Visitors. If you get a lot of visitors dropping to your work area this could be a huge time waster for you. The solution is to move your desk so that your back is to the door. This will make you seem less approachable. When someone stops in to talk, stand up. This will send the message that you don’t have time to chat. If all else fails be honest. Tell them thanks for dropping by, but tactfully let them know that you need to get back to work.

2) Telephone calls. Screen your calls. Let the voice mail take your calls during the day when you are busy. Schedule time during each day when you will return the calls and let your clients know when that time will be. Keep your answers short and to the point and end the conversation politely when it has achieved it’s purpose. With a little practice you can be personable and still keep the conversation short.

3) Mail. It can flood your desk and take it over before you get to it. Schedule a time each day to go through your mail. Make it a rule to handle each piece of mail only once. Throw out the junk mail immediately, file” information only” mail in a file box to be read later and respond to the others by telephone or fax. Faxing a response is a great idea because the response is immediate and takes very little time.

4) Email. Clean out your email box daily and don’t use your business email address for personal use. Make an auto responder to send people letting them know when you will be checking your e-mails and stick to it (batching your work). Try to deal with each email now if it will take less than 2 minutes otherwise you could be wasting time rereading and reappraising what you might do with it. If you cannot deal with it now ask yourself can I delegate the job?  If not ask yourself is it important, is it urgent and make a time when you will deal with it?

Using these solutions, your productivity will increase and your stress level on the job will decrease. The best part is, you can say goodbye to the time bandits forever!

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Quick Start to Finding Your Values

Beginning with the End in Mind

‘Begin with the end in mind’, advises Stephen Covey in his highly-praised book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  Covey’s principle rests on the idea that all things are created twice: there’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation.  This means everything is first created in our heads.

To begin with the end in mind means starting with a clear understanding of your destination.  Most of us are walking down the road of life, checking the road-signs as we go, and wondering where on earth we are.  Some of us have detailed road maps, and are following the paths plotted by previous explorers.  What Covey suggests is that we all need an understanding of our destination - in other words, a vision.  Without a vision, we are just meandering along the road.  We also need our own compass, or set of guiding principles, which will direct us in life.  This compass needs to be fashioned by our own unique hands, and will help us on our own unique journey.

It is important to remind yourself that you are not your values.  You are much more than your values.  These values are not the result of a master plan for your life and intelligent choices you have made, rather they are mostly the priorities that have been conditioned or programmed into you.

With the understanding of what your vision for your life is, if you are going to redesign/ improve your life, what values would you choose to have to ensure you live the life you’ve always dreamed of?

That is, in order to be the best person you could possibly be, what would your values need to be?

Once you have settled on your five highest values you have to spend the rest of your time living up to them.

Imagine if you had a coach, could that make it easier to have clarity of your values?  Could a professional assist keeping you on track living up to these values?

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The Secret About Getting More Done In Less Time

Perhaps one of the biggest secrets to achieve more in less time is applying the “80/20″ rule.

The “80/20” rule also known as the “Pareto Principle” or “The Vital Few” states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts, or alternatively, it can also mean 20% of your results will come from 80% of your efforts.

This rule fits nicely with all aspects of our life. For instance:

• 20% of your clothes will be worn 80% of the time
• 80% of the world’s money is in the hands of 20% of the people
• 20% of companies within an industry will conduct 80% of the business of that industry
• 80% of motor vehicle accidents will be caused by 20% of motorists

As far as time management is concerned, applying this rule and its effect on your life will surely help you spend your time more wisely.

You will come to realise that all those little chores in your life and those that get in the way are often classified as “should-dos”. These can be annoying because these are the things that need to be done but have very little impact on your happiness, satisfaction or sense of achievement towards the goals you have set forth.

Delegate

Look for alternative ways to accomplish these little chores. You can hire someone to help you or if you are on a tight budget, you can always consider bartering - in exchange for the tasks you want done, you can offer other assistance while you are at it doing yours. Remember that you can also delegate most of the “should-dos”.

Batching

By grouping repetitive tasks together you will save the time it takes to set up and pack up for each task.  For example:

• Instead of going to the shops to buy food 3 times per week go once and do one big shop.
• Do all your clothes washing once or twice a week only.
• When you cook a meal make extra to do another meal.
• Automate (direct debit) the payment of regular household bills: gas, electric, mobile …

Once you get rid of some of the “should-dos”, you can now channel the time saved towards the “valued” - tasks which you place more importance and adds value towards achieving your goals.

You will then come to realize that you will have an improved outlook on life, feel great about yourself and be motivated to get more accomplished.

Know what you want

Would you like to know what you really want?  Do you feel that you need to have some kind of control? Like being in the driver’s seat, so that you will be able to drive to the “places” you want to go?

Here are some tips to help you realize what you really want:

1. Make time for yourself. Use the time to reflect on where you are and what you want with your personal life, your relationship, your personal growth etc.
2. Ask yourself which are the things in your current life that take most of your time and which the least. What are the reasons for the outcome?
3. Do the things that you are passionate about. It will have the “staying” power. You will be able to last longer doing them and you might not want to stop.
4. Fast forward to age 85. Have you accomplished what you have set for yourself? Have you made milestones accomplishments along the way? Did you make an impact on somebody’s life, relationship etc?
5. You must be realistic with your goals. You must be able to feel good accomplishing one major task, instead of completing a series of them and still not feeling that sense of accomplishment.

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Time Management - A Paradigm Shift

Despite all your best efforts with To Do Lists, Action Plans, prioritisation, calendars, state-of-the-art diaries and up-to-the minute timetables, do you find yourself saying that there are “never enough hours in the day”?

The two primary factors that drive our choices concerning how we spend our time are urgency and importance.

It is a status symbol in our society to be busy.  If we are busy, we are important.  We can even get our security from it; it is validating, popular and pleasing and it is also a distraction from looking at what is really important. Many of the traditional time management tools focus us on doing the urgent things.  However, the more time and energy we spend doing the urgent, the less we have available for doing the important.  Many of the things that are important to us achieving our objectives are not urgent, and therefore are left by the wayside.  Take a look at this table below:

The next table displays the average amount of time spent in each quadrant. The first estimated figure is what we should all be aimin gfor, however the second figure (in red) shows us how much time we really normally spend there:

As we can see, many of the things that are important to us achieving our objectives are not urgent. Ask yourself, where did you spend most time last week? Are you focusing on the Urgent areas at the expense of Non Urgent, but Important, areas of your life? What could you do to make a positive step towards better managing your time today?