Time Are Good For Me And My Family

Three Reasons You Are Not Thriving

 

1. You are holding on to old emotional baggage.

 

Most of the emotion you feel in a day is not even about today. You are just recycling old emotional baggage that has never been cleared. It is so familiar, it has become a part of your self-identity, but you know it is not a part of your true identity because it causes you discomfort.

 

Release this old emotional energy with this simple technique:  Make your hand into a fist.  Rub your fist in a circular motion on the middle of your chest (your heart chakra) and repeat the following: "It is safe to get over this problem and it is time to let go of these feelings."  Repeat this five to six times as you rub the center of your chest.

 

2. You keep focusing on what you don't want.

 

Your mind is in the habit of "figuring out" what you need to change to make your life better. Your thinking mind is convinced that that is how the problem will be solved; yet, that is what keeps the problem constant and present in your life.

 

The law of attraction has no exclusion.  The law is that whatever you focus on, you create more of.  Stop your thinking mind from its obsessive habit of looking at your Life's problems by placing an eye patch over your right eye for 15 minutes a day or during spells of obsessive thinking.

 

When you patch an open eye, you quiet the brain hemisphere that eye is connected to. In this case you will quiet your left brain and break up the flow of energy so new vibrant energy can form in your experience to attract to you insights, answers, and resources to your problem.

 

3. You have bought into the collective belief that you can barely survive and are just getting by.

 

The world offers us one reality to believe in. Within that reality we have the agency and right to choose to go along with it or create our own reality. The world currently believes that "times are hard," "times are scary," "terrorists could attack at any moment," "the economy is bad," etc., etc., etc.

 

Even though the world reality is choosing this, you can choose an alternative reality. We are only bound by belief.

 

Choose the following beliefs to create a reality to help you thrive: "times are good for me and my family"; "I am prepared and I choose to live in the moment and focus on how safe my immediate world is "I am grateful to know that God is watching over me and the entire world to assist us in choosing a peaceful solution to our differences"; "I am grateful that my business is flourishing and I have more than enough money for my needs."

 

The greatest power you have to change the world's reality is to change yours. Stay free of condemning or judging the collective belief.  Choose to bless it and allow it. If you condemn it or judge it, you create a stronger force of opposition and polarity that makes that reality more powerful. It just is.

Time Management: Don't let email control you

A survey by AOL, quoted in Sam Geist's Quick Bites electronic newsletter (www.samgeist.com ), revealed that Americans are checking their emails around the clock, in the bathroom, while driving and even in church. For example,

• 15% of Americans describe themselves as "addicted to email."
• 40% say it is "very" or "somewhat" important to them to consider email accessibility when planning a vacation.
  Respondents who use portable devices has doubled since 2004, and as a result the average user checks about five times a day.
• 43% keep their email device nearby when they're sleeping so they can hear incoming mail
• 59% check email in bed
• 53% check email in the bathroom
• 37% check email while they're driving
• 63% admit to checking their personal email at work, on average of three times a day.

We have to be self-disciplined enough to ignore email and turn off our cell phones during parts of the day in order to be effective at work and enjoy quality time at home.

© 2008, Harold Taylor Time Consultants Ltd.

Expanding your business

Websites bring business
Not sure about professional organizers, but 30% of professional speakers in one survey revealed that they didn't have a website. Websites make you look professional, provide a great way to communicate quickly to your prospective clients, and may land you business you hadn't expected. And they're not that expensive to maintain.

Link to other websites
Many organizations have affiliate programs where you receive a percentage of any sale made when someone uses a link on your web to visit the other organization's website. If they are selling non-competing products that would help your clients and prospects, it's a win-win situation. For example, we offer 20% of any resulting sale. If you link to several websites, the revenue will add up.

 

Time on your side

Curb interruptions
Interruptions extend the time it takes to get things done. So do what you can to reduce the number. Engage the voice mail, ignore email, close the office door, and rearrange your desk so you are not in the line of fire.

Scheduling work activities
It's a good idea to break large tasks into chunks so you can whittle away at overwhelming tasks. But don't make those chunks of time less than a half hour or you will whittle your way to inefficiency.

Replace New Year's Resolutions with Specific Goals

New Year's resolutions are doomed before you start. Anyone who delays something until the start of a New Year is likely to abandon it before accomplishing it. There's nothing magical about New Years or any other date. When you are committed to doing something, start now, not later. M.J. Ryan, in her book This Year I Will (Broadway Books, New York, 2006) quotes statistics that approximately 45% of us make New Year's resolutions but only 8% succeed. Back in 1993 a St. Petersburg Times article reported on a study conducted in 1988 that tracked 200 people who made New Year's resolutions. Within a month, 55% had abandoned their resolutions. At the end of two years, only 19% had kept their promises. It's easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment and make ourselves a lot of promises that we are not committed to keeping. We really haven't thought through the sacrifices or effort that might be required.

Replace New Year's resolutions with meaningful goals that reflect your commitments and follow the following five guidelines.

1. Be as specific as possible. David Niven, author of The 100 Simple Secets of Successful People (HarperOne, 2000) claims that people who construct their goals in concrete terms are 50% more likely to feel confident that they will attain their goals and 32% more likely to feel in control of their lives.

2. Put your goals in writing. If you cannot express your goal in writing you probably can't achieve it either. Putting it in writing tells your brain that you're serious about it and it goes to work identifying opportunities that will further your goal.

3. Put a deadline date on it. A goal without a deadline is like a check without a signature. If you are going to write a book, or clean the basement or lose ten pounds or save $5000 add a time frame to provide a sense of urgency and help you formulate your plan.

4. Be realistic. New Year's resolutions are in many cases just wishful thinking. Take into consideration your resources, including time, money and self-discipline and set goals that you really believe are attainable. Setting your sights too high simply gives you an excuse for quitting when the going gets rough.

5. Schedule time in your planner to work on your goals. Realize that nothing happens until you make it happen. Schedule the goal-related activities along with your business and personal priorities so you have set times to work on them.

New Year's resolutions have an exceptionally high failure rate because most of them lack the characteristics of effective goals such as those outlined above.

20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time

20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time

 

The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours." - Arthur Lacey

 

Are there a hundred different things you wish you could do with your life someday — anything from exercising to meditation or yoga to writing that novel you always wished you could write to reading more to relaxing and watching the sunrise? But perhaps you never have the time, like most people.

 

The truth is, we all have the same amount of time, and it's finite and in great demand. But some of us have made the time for doing the things we love doing, and others have allowed the constant demands and pressures and responsibilities of life to dictate their days.

It's time to move from the second group back into the first. Reclaim your time. Create the life you want and make the most of the free time you lay claim to. It's not hard, though it does take a little bit of effort and diligence.

 

Not all of these will be applicable to your life — choose the ones you can apply and give them a try:

 

1. Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what you've always wanted? How would you get to where you've always wanted to be? What do you enjoy doing, but don't have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? We'll look at some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time out to think and plan.
2. Find your essentials. What is it that you love to do? Make a short list of 4-5 things. These are the things you want to make room for.
3. Find your time-wasters. What do you spend a lot of your time on that isn't on your essential list? Take a close look at these things and really think about whether they're necessary, or if there are ways to reduce, minimize or eliminate these things. Sometimes you do things because you assume they're necessary, but if you give it some thought you can find ways to drop them from your life. Figure out what you do simply to waste time — maybe surfing certain sites, watching TV, talking a lot at the water cooler, etc. You're going to want to minimize these time-wasters to make room for the more important stuff, the stuff that makes you happy and that you love to do.
4. Schedule the time. As you sit down and think about your life and what you want to do, versus what you actually do, you will be looking at ways to free up time. It's crucial that you take a blank weekly schedule (you can just write it out on a piece of paper, or use your calendar) and assign blocks for the things you love — the stuff on your essentials list. If you want to exercise, for example, when will you do it? Put the blocks of time on your schedule, and make these blocks the most important appointments of your week. Schedule the rest of your life around these blocks.

5.  

   Consolidate. There are many things you do, scattered throughout your day or your week, that you might be able to consolidate in order to save time. A good example is errands — instead of running one or two a day, do them all in one day to save time and gas. Another example is email, or any kind of communication — batch process your email instead of checking and reading and responding throughout the day. Same thing with meetings, paperwork, anything that you do regularly.
6. Cut out meetings. This isn't possible for everyone, but in my experience meetings take up a lot of time to get across a little information, or to make easy decisions that could be made via email or phone. As much as you can, minimize the number of meetings you hold and attend. In some cases this might mean talking to your boss and telling her that you have other priorities, and asking to be excused. In other cases this might mean asking the people holding the meeting if you can get the info in other ways. If so, you've saved yourself an hour or so per meeting (sometimes more).
7. De clutter your schedule. If you have a heavily packed schedule, full of meetings and errands and tasks and projects and appointments, you're going to want to weed it out so that it's not so jam-packed. Find the stuff that's not so essential and cancel them. Postpone other stuff. Leave big blank spaces in your schedule.
8. Re-think your routine. Often we get stuck in a routine that's anything but what we really want our days to be like. Is there a better way of doing things? You're the creator of your life — make a new routine that's more pleasant, more optimal, more filled with things you love.
9. Cut back on email. I mentioned email in an earlier point above, regarding consolidating, but it's such a major part of most people's lives that it deserves special attention. How often do you check email? How much time do you spend composing emails? If you spend a major part of your work day on email, as many people do (and as I once did), you can free up a lot of time by reducing the time you spend in email. Now, this won't work for everyone, but it can work for many people: choose 2-3 key times during the day to process your inbox to empty, and keep your responses to 5 sentences.
10. Learn to say no. If you say "yes" to every request, you will never have any free time. Get super protective about your time, and say "no" to everything but the essential requests.
11. Keep your list to 3. When you make out your daily to-do list, just list the three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Don't make a laundry list of tasks, or you'll fill up all your free time. By keeping your task list small, but populated only by important tasks, you ensure that you are getting the important stuff done but not overloading yourself.
12. Do your Biggest Rock first. Of the three Most Important Tasks you choose for the day, pick the biggest one, or the one you're dreading most, and do that first. Otherwise you'll put that off as much as possible and fill your day with less important things. Don't allow yourself to check email until that Big Rock is taken care of. It starts your day with a sense of major accomplishment, and leaves you with a lot of free time the rest of the day, because the most important thing is already done.
13. Delegate. If you have subordinates or coworkers who can do a task or project, try to delegate it. Don't feel like you need to do everything yourself. If necessary, spend a little time training the person to whom you're delegating the task, but that little time spent training will pay off in a lot of time saved later. Delegating allows you to focus on the core tasks and projects you should be focusing on.
14. Cut out distractions. What is there around your workspace that distracts you from the task at hand? Sometimes it's visual clutter, or papers lying around that call for your attention and action, or email or IM notifiers on your computer that pop up at the wrong time, or the phone, or coworkers. See if you can eliminate as many of these as possible — the more you can focus, the more effective you'll be and the less time you'll waste. That equals time saved for the good stuff.
15. Disconnect. The biggest of distractions, for most people, is the Internet. My most productive times are when I'm disconnected from the grid. Now, I'm not saying you need to be disconnected all the time, but if you really want to be able to effectively complete tasks, disconnect your Internet so you can really focus. Set certain times of the day for connectivity, and only connect during those periods.
16. Outsource. If you can't delegate, see if you can outsource. With the Internet, we can connect with people from all over the world. I've outsourced many things, from small tasks to checking email to legal work to design and editing work and more. That allows me to focus on the things I'm best at, the things I love doing, and saves me a lot of time.
17. Make use of your mornings. I find that mornings are the absolute best times to schedule the things I really want to do. I run, read and write in the mornings — three of the four things on my Essentials List (spending time with family is the other thing on the list). Mornings are great because your day hasn't been filled with a bunch of unscheduled, demanding, last-minute tasks that will push back those Essentials. For example, if you schedule something for late afternoon, by the time late afternoon rolls around, you might have a dozen other things newly added to your to-do list, and you'll put off that late-afternoon Essential. Instead, schedule it for the morning, and it'll rarely (if ever) get pushed back.
18. The Golden Right-after-work Time. Other than mornings, I find the time just after work to be an incredible time for doing Essential things. Exercise, for example, is great in the 5-o'clock hour, as is spending time with family, or doing anything else relaxing.
19. Your evenings. The time before you go to bed is also golden, as it exists every single day, and it's usually completely yours to schedule. What do you want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby you're passionate about? Take advantage of this time.
20. Lunch breaks. If the three golden times mentioned above don't work for you, lunch breaks are another good opportunity to schedule things. Some people like to exercise, or to take quiet times, during their lunch breaks. Others use this time to work on an important personal goal or project.

Don't let email control you

A survey by AOL, quoted in Sam Geist's Quick Bites electronic newsletter (www.samgeist.com ), revealed that Americans are checking their emails around the clock, in the bathroom, while driving and even in church. For example,

• 15% of Americans describe themselves as "addicted to email."
• 40% say it is "very" or "somewhat" important to them to consider email accessibility when planning a vacation.
  Respondents who use portable devices has doubled since 2004, and as a result the average user checks about five times a day.
• 43% keep their email device nearby when they're sleeping so they can hear incoming mail
• 59% check email in bed
• 53% check email in the bathroom
• 37% check email while they're driving
• 63% admit to checking their personal email at work, on average of three times a day.

We have to be self-disciplined enough to ignore email and turn off our cell phones during parts of the day in order to be effective at work and enjoy quality time at home.

© 2008, Harold Taylor Time Consultants Ltd.

Expanding your business

Websites bring business
Not sure about professional organizers, but 30% of professional speakers in one survey revealed that they didn't have a website. Websites make you look professional, provide a great way to communicate quickly to your prospective clients, and may land you business you hadn't expected. And they're not that expensive to maintain.

Link to other websites
Many organizations have affiliate programs where you receive a percentage of any sale made when someone uses a link on your web to visit the other organization's website. If they are selling non-competing products that would help your clients and prospects, it's a win-win situation. For example, we offer 20% of any resulting sale. If you link to several websites, the revenue will add up.

 

Time on your side

Curb interruptions
Interruptions extend the time it takes to get things done. So do what you can to reduce the number. Engage the voice mail, ignore email, close the office door, and rearrange your desk so you are not in the line of fire.

Scheduling work activities
It's a good idea to break large tasks into chunks so you can whittle away at overwhelming tasks. But don't make those chunks of time less than a half hour or you will whittle your way to inefficiency.

Thank You Again for the First Time : Improve Your Business Writing

Thank You Again for the First Time

 

One of the most common polite mistakes I see in business writing is this: a message that ends "Thank you again. . . ." without thanking the reader at the beginning.

 

If you are in the habit of thanking the reader again at the end of your messages, be sure you said thanks somewhere previously. Otherwise, your politeness will sound canned and look silly. That would be a shame when your intention is to connect sincerely with your reader.

 

Getting the important things done

When you plan, you determine what important tasks you would like to accomplish in the weeks and months ahead. Then you list the various steps (if more than one is required) in order to complete those tasks, and estimate the amount of time it would take to complete each step. To this you add a realistic safety factor to allow for interruptions and other problems, and schedule the total time in your planner.

For example, if you feel it could take 50 hours of uninterrupted work to write a book, make it 75 hours. Then divide this figure by the number of weeks you plan to work that year. For example, if you work 50 weeks, then you would have to work 1½ hours each week in order to finish your book by the end of the year. If this amount of time is unrealis¬tic, set the goal for the end of the following year and work half as long each week. Don't be impatient; be realistic. Some of your goals could take one, three, five or more years to attain.

The secret to goal achievement is to schedule adequate time in your planner to actually work on them. Don’t leave priorities on a “To Do” list.

That doesn’t say that To Do lists are useless. There’s nothing wrong with being reminded about what has to be done. But those priority, goal-related projects and assignments should never be relegated to a To Do list. They should be scheduled in specific time slots throughout the week. You generally don’t schedule your daily routine. You schedule your projects. These are the important things you have to get done within a specific time frame, within a set budget. Your planner serves as a project manager.