Don’t set yourself goals that are too far ahead or commit to things with insufficient information. It is likely that you will not start the right action immediately because of the feeling of having enough time. (...more)
You have a sink full of dishes, three loads of laundry, 17 bills to pay, you're not sure how many e-mails to answer, a big stack of novels you'd love to read, and zero — count them — ZERO minutes of free time. "Where does the time go?" you lament. Here are some ideas to get you started on your quest to have a life:
A current TV commercial for an insurance company says "Life comes at you fast," as it shows some unimagined disaster striking.
Dallas author Vince Poscente thinks it's time to harness that full-throttle life force so that it works for and not against us.
His book The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World became a business best-seller because he hit a raw nerve: Most of us are in a dysfunctional relationship with our lifestyles.
We love our ability to live in the fast lane; we just wish things would slow down so we could enjoy it more.
We crave speed but feel chained by it.
Mr. Poscente believes we can turn this addictive dope of the new millennium into a helpful drug for fulfillment in 2008. It's all in what we do with the time that speed can save us.
One important planning consideration is what you’re going to accomplish each day.
In his role as the dean of creativity for the Walt Disney Companies, Mike Vance had a strategy he called DO-DOING-DONE. The idea is to start a task in the DO column, move it to DOING quickly, and then move it to DONE as quickly as possible.
That’s a fine idea, but it doesn’t really matter how you format your list. What does matter is that you have a list. In fact, you need several lists. Without them, your brain forgets many of the things you have to do as well as the cool ideas you come up with.
Having lists will enable you to plan your day most effectively and will relieve that nagging sense of “what did I need to get done…”
I use several types of lists, outlined here:
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
-- Melody Beattie
Resource for the Week:
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"Make Time for Success!
Make Time for Success! is Mind Tools market-leading downloadable time management and personal effectiveness system.
It teaches powerful, industrial-strength techniques that help you identify what you want out of life, organize and achieve your goals, and make the most of the opportunities open to you. In doing this, it transforms the life outcomes of the people who take the course, helping them to become focused and highly successful.
We’ve all felt that at one time or another.
There are our priorities, our boss’s priorities, our family priorities and the priorities that seem to land in our lap at the last minute - like a leaky toilet that floods, dropping water from the ceiling.
But there is a way to manage all of this effectively and I’m going to show you how in this article:
What stops you from 'getting things done?'Have you ever started your day with good intentions of completing a task or project only to find that by the end of the day you've hardly worked on it? Or have you ever set a goal to attend a seminar, learn a new skill or just have more time out for you?
I'm sure you have. I'm not going to write a long-winded explanation about the art of procrastination or "putting things off" but what I will do is share with you the secret of actually "getting things done"…putting an end to procrastination and just getting on with it.
"Be mindful of how you approach time. Watching the clock is not the same as watching the sun rise."
-- Sophia Bedford-Pierce
You can save time by managing your E-mail.
The problem is that you probably have several E-mail accounts. School, home (from your Internet Service Provider (ISP), night school class at a college or university, and several "free" or throw-away accounts.
Tips fall into two categories, i.e.,
http://classroomtoolkit.net/serendipity/archives/67-Top-Tips.html#extended
From: Jim Rohn
I often talk in my seminars about the importance of time and time management -- how rich people and poor people both have the same amount of time every day - 24 hours (which by the way, I find fascinating).
This week, as we continue to celebrate the Anniversary of the Weekend Event, I want to share with you four great time management ideas we've excerpted from the Event Speaker Round Table Session - Enjoy!
Brian Tracy:
I always give the principle of: Begin the day by "Eating That Frog". It basically says that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, then you will have the satisfaction of knowing it is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
And your "live frog" is your most important task. Now there's two corollaries to that. The first one is if you have two frogs to eat, eat the ugliest one first and the second corollary to that is if you have to eat a frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it too long.
So the key to high performance is to plan every day the night before, in advance, and set priorities for it. And then say, "if I can only complete one task on this list before I was to be called out of town for a month, which one task would it be?" And whatever that is, it becomes your frog and the next morning discipline yourself to start in on that task, the most important thing on your list, and do only that until it is complete.
If you can develop that habit, you can double and triple your productivity, you'll take full control of your life, you will eventually become wealthy, and the personal feeling of pride, accomplishment, discipline and achievement you get will be absolutely extraordinary. It is one of the most important of all lessons to learn, and one of the hardest things to implement if anybody has tried to do it.
Denis Waitley:
Stop watching in prime time and start living in prime time. Prime time is 7-11 pm EST, when all of America is watching other people making money and having fun in their professions. So if you want to watch other people making money, having fun in their professions, which gets their ratings up so they make more money, go ahead and do things that are tension relieving, instead of goal achieving. But if you truly want to live YOUR life in prime time, then write in prime time, have intimacy in prime time, talk with your children in prime time, live and do in prime time instead of unhooking and engaging in tension relieving activities.
Every book I've written, all seventeen, have been written 7-11 pm weekly and on Saturdays. And why? Because I am earning money the rest of the time, and I don't have time to write a book except in prime time.
So stop watching and use the television set as an appliance. It has doors on it. Close the doors and use like an iron, when you need to iron your clothes, bring out the TV set.
Jim Rohn:
Regarding the television, I knew a guy who wasn't doing too well and he wanted some advice from me. I knew he had a television set and knew he watched a lot of television, so I asked, "How much did that television cost you?"He said, "about $400."I said, "No, you're mistaken."He said, "No, this television set cost me $400."I said, "Well that's to buy it. To watch it, I am sure it is costing you about $40,000 a year to watch."
He finally got the message and he called his brother-in-law, who had a pick-up, and he and his brother-in-law hauled his television out of the house. His brother-in-law did say, "Well, you can just shut it off."
And he said, "No, for now I don't trust myself, Jim Rohn is right. I'm not going to let this television set cost me $40,000 a year anymore."
Vic Johnson:
My biggest tip would be in an area that I struggle a lot. About 15 years ago I heard someone say to never handle the items in your inbox more than one time. So I adopted that for email. Now I get over 300 emails everyday even though I have all kinds of filters, some of them going to other people, etc. My biggest challenge is to touch that email only one time. Either I forward the email, I return the email and delete it or drag it to a folder for action by someone else or delete it. If you continue to have to go back and revisit that email over and over trying to make a decision that's time -- that's wasted time -- plus it's on your mind until you get rid of it. So if you are in a profession and you handle a lot of emails and you're still getting a lot of items in your inbox, only touch them one time.
Reproduced with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine.Jim Rohn International2835 Exchange Blvd., Suite 200Southlake, TX 76092800-929-0434International and/or Dallas/Ft Worth - 817-442-5407Fax 817-442-1390 or visit the website at www.jimrohn.com
