PERSPECTIVE

What is time really?
How much do we need?
How much do we have?

Just this morning I found out that an event I've been planning since last September has been postponed until October. What a disappointment!

I'm sure the culprit will turn out to be "lack of time."

My fear is that the kids involved with this project will lose heart, and think that all their efforts up to this point have been in vain.

But also today, I visited one of my new favorite sites, Global MindShift. I found 1/10,000 of a Second, a thought-provoking video clip on time and perspective that I'd really like to share with you. I'm planning to share it with the kids tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy it, and realize that it only takes 1/10,000 of a second (from a universal perspective) to make a difference.

DE-CLUTTER YOUR WAY TO TIME MANAGEMENT

If you search for “clutter control” and “time management” on Google, you get 21,400 hits. Do you think there’s a connection?

Clutter is everywhere - in our offices, in our homes, and even in our cars. How much time each day do you surrender to clutter? Consider these statistics:

• 80% of what we keep we never use. (Agency Sales Magazine, 2003)
• 23% of adults say they pay bills late (and incur fees) because they lose them. (Harris Interactive)
• The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year searching for missing information in messy desks and files. (The Wall Street Journal)
• According to a study conducted by a Boston marketing firm, the average American burns 55 minutes a day – roughly 12 weeks a year – looking for things they know they own, but cannot find. (Newsweek, 2004)

Convinced? I think these statistics are a little high, but just this morning, I spent at least five minutes trying to find a t-shirt. (I never found it.) If we spend just five minutes a day looking for the dog’s leash, the driver’s education certificate, the scissors, the Goodwill receipt, the white-out, or the safe deposit box key, that’s over 30 hours a year! (If you have to search for two things in one day - imagine how quickly it adds up!)

My time management advice for today is to de-clutter. This is a case of “do as I say, not as I do.” (You didn’t think I made up all the examples above, did you?) In fact, when thinking about this topic, I pulled three books about clutter from my own shelves. Each author addresses the psychology of why we accumulate and hang on to so much stuff. They each make a compelling case for de-clutterring, and provide specific instructions for eliminating clutter in every area of our home and office.

These may not be the newest books on the market, but the strategies – and the results – have withstood the test of time. You can read more about them at Amazon.com.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite stories about clutter; a true story about a friend of mine in Houston.

Connie was at work when she received an urgent call to return home. There had been a fire. Neighbors had called the fire department early, and luckily there was not much damage. But the fireman expressed ongoing concern for Connie. They were worried because it seemed that someone had ransacked the apartment before starting the fire. Connie looked around and admitted, with much embarrassment, that everything looked just as she had left it.

I bought this Hallmark card for her. :)

(In case it's too hard to read, it says, "I'm embarrassed by the amount of crap I have to move before someone can sit in my car.")

TECHNOLOGY AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Without a doubt, technology is changing the way we live and do business. For some of us, it represents little more than a new source of frustration. But if we take the time to master the many features of the (expensive) gadgets that surround us, we can take advantage of their time-saving, productivity-boosting capabilities.

Richard G. Ensman, in his 2000 article, Technology and Time Management, recognizes the many ways technology can help us manage our time. Each question in his quiz represents a “simple, yet tried-and-true method of timesaving technology."

On a scale of zero (never) to three (always), rate how often you practice the following timesaving methods.

1. I send agendas, meeting minutes, assignment summaries and other notices to co-workers and employees using e-mail.

2. I maintain working files in a single, readily accessible directory, enabling me to work on current projects whenever I have spare moments.

3. I maintain a perpetual “to-do” list on a computerized task manager or in a special file, checking off items as they are completed.

4. I maintain my calendar and other key information using portable digital technology.

5. I have software that maintains my key organizational resources, such as contacts, tasks, events, and crucial records.

6. I append the names of files with dates for easy retrieval.

7. My computer file structure corresponds to the file structure in my filing cabinet.

8. I maintain a directory and bookmarks of commonly used reference materials.

9. I use shortcuts, such as templates and macros, to speed up my work.

10. I handle business transactions online.

I encourage you to read the full article, and consider the technological practices represented in all 29 questions. Your total score represents how well you use the timesaving technology at hand. If your rating is low - under 50 for the complete quiz - Ensman suggests reviewing each principle, reading up on the newest technology, and maybe taking a course or seminar to learn new skills.

Most importantly, Ensman reminds us that technological tools will increasingly influence our work and personal lives in the coming years. Mastering these tools can help us master our time, and ultimately our lives.

FITTING IT ALL IN

Do you ever have more than 24 hours of to-do-list items? Have you tried to cram too much into your day? It's like trying to squeeze our "misses" body into those "junior" jeans - there's just too much!

Today, my jeans are too tight. I’m being pulled in too many directions and I've overloaded my plate. (Are you seeing a pattern?) A family birthday, a volleyball tournament, a homework project, a PTSA awards program, camp registration, a sick friend, my volunteer job, and my real job, all have to fit somewhere in my weekend.

It’s a stressful time, any way you cut it. We’ve all been here. In fact, we’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. (Why is that?)

Whatever the reason, we need some strategies to keep us sane, and help us accomplish all we’ve put on our plates. Here’s a few that work for me.

· Break tasks into very small pieces, so that you can take advantage of five- and ten-minute windows, instead of holding out for that hour and a half block that never comes.

· Eat right. No excuses! It doesn’t take any longer to munch on something healthy - like an apple, a yogurt cup, or peanut butter on whole wheat toast – than to scarf down a handful of chips and soda. During times of stress, your body needs good nutrition more than ever.

· Find ways to multi-task. Can you read that report or fill out paperwork while you sit in the doctor’s office or carpool line? Just a little pre-planning can help you feel like Superman.

· Ask for help, and delegate what you can. In most cases, some task has to be done – that’s all. If it's not done exactly the way you would have done it – let it go! Of course, if you cannot tolerate any variations, you may need to delegate a different task.

I hope these ideas offer some relief. Moreover, I hope you’ll post your own ideas, for others to try.

At the very least, visit www.Zafu.com to find jeans with the perfect fit. (At least we can control some things!)

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

~ Charles Caleb Colton

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR KIDS

I’m a night-owl. Okay, I’m quite adept at procrastination; but for more reasons than that, I often find myself burning the midnight oil.

To make matters worse, I’m infecting other family members…yikes! On most school nights my teenage daughter is working on her homework well past midnight. I’ve begged, cajoled and pleaded, to no avail. She must be her mother’s daughter.

This week, in support of those parents who are struggling with children who are struggling to manage their time, I’d like to share the following strategies, based on an article by KnowledgePoints Learning Centers.

Understand the Meaning of Time

Buy your child an analog clock or watch. She will develop a greater understanding of time as she sees the minutes and hours pass.

Get Organized

Make a routine of when and where your child studies. His workspace should be well-lit, and organized for ready access to school supplies and resources.

Use a Planner

Like adults, kids need a place to record projects and assignments. Their planners should include extra-curricular and family related activities, so they know how to budget their time.

Outline Responsibilities

Help your child identify the most important items for the week. Have him create a to-do list, and share his sense of accomplishment as items are completed.

Avoid Overload

Sometimes things just pile up. Watch for signs of overload, and make sure your child’s schedule includes adequate time for eating, sleeping and having fun.

Practice Effective Study Strategies

Help your child determine how much time she will need to complete each assignment. Break long-term assignments into multiple steps that can be scheduled and completed a little each day.

Be Flexible

When the unexpected happens, help your child rearrange his schedule by discussing options and consequences.

Keep Goals in Mind

Children can’t always see the big picture. Remind them to focus on the important things, and maintain a positive attitude.

While this article was designed for working with children, the same strategies will work for us. After all, effective time management principles are universal.

Please visit the Parent Center at KnowledgePoints to read the complete article, Time Management: Planning for Success.

TAKE YOUR TIME BACK

This week we’re going on a field trip. Remember those? Sometimes you learned a lot, sometimes, not so much. The destination was unimportant - the real treat was just riding a bus with your friends, and getting out of school.

I’m sending you on a trip to “Take Your Time Back.” This is the promising title of an e-newsletter I received from FineLiving.com. So, I followed the link, took the quiz, read the articles, and found three more hours in my day! (Okay, not really.) Nevertheless, I did find some value in the exercise, and I hope you will too.

Before you go, let me share a few caveats:

• You’ll take a short quiz of one to three questions in these six categories: sleep, work, getting around, food, housework, and physical fitness. However, I can think of quite a few things I do each day that don’t fit neatly into those categories – like spending time with family and friends. So be sure to consider that when you see your “pie.” (Also, pay attention to the wording of each question – some ask you to estimate the time you spend daily, while others ask for a weekly estimate.)


• Their so-called solutions don’t come cheap. FineLiving proposes solutions in each category that may save you time, but almost always cost you money. Sure, we could all save time with professional landscaping, cleaning, and laundry services. And who wouldn’t appreciate home delivery of fresh gourmet meals? Unfortunately, most of these are luxuries that don’t fit into my budget. (Unless of course, I trade more of my free time for work time – and isn’t that missing the point?)

In the end, I found this exercise to be entertaining and somewhat useful. The time calculator is simple to do, the pie chart was eye opening for me, and the articles do offer some helpful tips. I hope you’ll visit and enjoy the site. Be sure to come back and share your thoughts!

TAME YOUR TIME BANDITS

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung. ~Tagore

By now you’ve probably realized that several of your everyday activities have become time-wasters. It’s not that the activities don’t have value, it’s that we often allow them to dictate when we do them, or how often we do them, instead of the other way around.

Handling incoming calls and drop-in visitors – in the office and at home, reading e-mails, and procrastinating are four of the most notable bandits. But time management experts offer several proven techniques that can put us back in charge of our time.

For each of the four time bandits, I've summarized a few tips below, and supplied a picture link to related articles.

HANDLING CALLS
If you can handle the caller's request immediately, do it. If your answer requires something more, tell the caller when you will be able to return the call. You determine when you have time to find the answer, and when to make the call back. Also, recapping the conversation confirms understanding, and signals that the call is concluded.

HANDLING VISITORS
Stand when they enter the room, so that they also remain standing.
Set time limits up front. If needed, suggest a later meeting, at your convenience, preferably in their office.

EMAILS
Don't be a slave to the computer! Turning off the audible notification will reduce your urge to read each one as is comes in. Instead, plan to check and answer emails two or three times a day, maybe when you arrive, after lunch, and a few minutes before you plan to leave the office.

PROCRASTINATION
Break large projects into manageable steps. Decide to work for only a set amount of time. Once you get started, you'll gain momentum. Reward yourself.

A quick Internet search yields an abundance of time management tips. You'll notice several techniques are repeated often. That's because they work! Spend a little time analyzing what you're currently doing, and comparing it to what you should be doing - according to your prioritized plan.

By changing just a few habits, you can reap many rewards!

TAKE TIME TO PLAN

This week we'll begin to use all the information we've been gathering.

• First, we examined what is important to us - events and activities that bring joy to our lives.
• Next, we set some SMART goals that would guide our actions as we try to create more joy.
• Last week, we took a critical look at how we currently spend our time.

If you're like most of us, your time log exposed several minutes - maybe even hours - you spend each week doing "stuff" that is completely unrelated to your personal and professional goals. Awareness is power. Now that we know what (and who) our time bandits are, we can find ways to eliminate them.

Making a plan for the day is critical. Imagine the achievement of your goals as your destination, and your daily plan as your road map. You need a way to measure your progress, and confirm that you're on the right road at every turn, and not driving aimlessly until you run out of gas (or time).

Well designed time management tools can be a great help to keep you organized and motivated. The variety of tools is endless, and includes calendars, to-do lists, time schedules, project planners, and more. It may take more than one try to find the layout, size, and details that work for you. I've included links to some of the biggest providers so you can comparison shop. Some of these sites also include their own time management tips and techniques.

Once you find the right tools, you have to use them! Let's start with your calendar. How many do you keep? One for home, and another for work? Maybe another for school, or kids activities? Unless you can clone yourself, and assign a different self to tend each one, you need to work from a single, comprehensive calendar. Otherwise, you risk committing to too much at one time - and likely, too much overall. Once you see all the demands for your time in one place, you can make better, more purposeful choices about how and where you spend your time.

Now that you've listed all your events and activities in one place, you can prioritize them, and plan your day in such a way that the most important things get accomplished. We can't do everything in 86,400 seconds - so we have to prioritize each event and activity, based on how it supports our goals.

Check out The Sideroad for How to Prioritize Work.

Over the next week, I hope you'll start your journey toward better time management by following these steps:

• find the time management tools that work for you;
• begin each day by making a to-do list and setting a priority for each item; and
• work on the most important things first.

I know it's not as easy as it sounds, but you can get great results by implementing just a few time management principles at a time. For my next blog, I've compiled lots of tips for taming those time bandits we mentioned earlier. But for now, we're out of time. :)

TIME IS MONEY

Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have - so spend it wisely” ~ Kay Lyons

If time is money, then everyone is in debt. ~ Dutch saying

We get 86,400 seconds each day. Instead of the number of seconds in your day, what if that was the number of dollars in your bank account? How would you spend them? Would you invest your money wisely, or would you squander it? Would you share it, or let anyone else tell you how to spend it?

It’s time we start thinking about time in the same way – as a valuable, consumable resource. When we begin thinking about time in this way, we realize several things about our “spending habits.”

• We often let friends and acquaintances determine how our time is spent.
  
• We make impulse buys, without considering the trade-offs.
  
• We sometimes don’t hold ourselves accountable for our “purchases.”

Our calendar, like our checkbook, speaks volumes about what we value. Having committed to a few important goals, we can determine the best way to spend our time and/or money. (In an earlier post, I mentioned that without knowing our goals, we have no way of judging the way we spend our time.) The question then becomes very simple: is this purchase in line with my goals? Does it take me closer to, or farther from, the results I want?

Before we consider all the choices we could be making, we need to become aware of our current “spending habits.” What are you buying? Do you really know the amount of each purchase? Is it a planned, worthwhile investment, or an ill-considered impulse buy?

We can’t make more time, we can only make trades in the way we spend it. So we need to know what we’re willing to bargain: what we’re willing to give up, and how much we’re willing to pay to reach our goals.

Your charge this week is to keep a time log. I know it sounds tedious, and it is. Nevertheless, it is the only way to get a true picture of how you spend your time now. Just keep it for seven days. This isn’t rocket science – it’s simply putting pen to paper, noting the time whenever you start doing something new. Be honest! If you take 10 minutes to chat about the game last night, write it down!

This is not the time to evaluate, only to record. There will be time later to evaluate. And the best part is, you’ll be the only judge.

(Time really is money! Click on the picture to read the findings of a British professor.)

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. ~ Carl Sandburg

SMART Goals

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.

~ Andrew Carnegie

Now that we've thought a little about what's really important in our lives, our next step is to turn some of our "wishes" into goals. Wishes do come true! But they aren't granted to us as in a Disney fairy tale. Because we live in the real world, we'll have to make our own wishes come true, by setting SMART goals and taking actions to reach them.

SMART is an acronym often used to direct the process of goal setting. The actual words may vary, but the concepts are invariable - because they work. SMART goals are:

• Specific (significant, stretching)
• Measurable (meaningful)
• Attainable (achieveable, agreeable)
• Relevant (reasonable, rewarding)
• Timed (trackable, tangible)

A SMART goal is a wish that has been tranformed into an action plan. If we try to follow a course that lacks these characteristics, we will come up short. Repeated failures can discourage us, and cause us to give up. But by setting SMART goals, we are setting ourselves up for success.
Consider the following example:

WISHFUL THINKING: I need to lose weight.

SMART GOAL: I will lose 18 pounds by August 1.

Can you see the difference? I would never reach the first goal (wish) because I don't even know what it looks like! How much weight do I want to lose? How long am I giving myself to lose it? But by making it a SMART goal, I know exactly what I need to do: lose just three pounds a month for the next six months. My new goal is specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and timed. And now I'm ready to identify the steps that will get me there.

Let's try another one:

WISHFUL THINKING: I want to improve my golf game.

How can we transform this into a SMART goal? Well, we need to make it specific. What is my average score today? What do I want my average to be a year from today? By adding specifics, I can decide what steps I need to take (golf lessons, different clubs, more putting practice), I can measure my progress (averaging at least one point lower every three months); and most importantly, I will know when I've acheived it! Maybe I can't play like Michelle Wei by Friday, but I can reach a SMART goal like this:

I want to lower my golf score by four points in twelve months.

Test this method for yourself. See how much more clearly you can visualize your success. Experience the benefit of being able to track your progress, so you can gain momentum, or maybe adjust your plan. The best time management starts here, giving us a clear reason to make choices in the ways we invest our time.

To learn more, check out this list of goal setting articles.

Finding Joy

Did you notice the title of this page? The Joy of Time Management. I know you must be thinking, "yeah...right." But if you'll hang with me just a minute, I'll try to explain.

I was looking for a name that I thought clearly stated the purpose of our blog - time management - and yet didn't scare anyone off with visions of daunting time logs, half-checked to-do lists, or unforgiving routines. Instead of focusing on the how-to (at least in the name), I chose to focus on the end result: JOY.

And the more thought I put into this name, the more fitting it becomes. First, we feel joy when we manage our time wisely. And then, having done so, we give ourselves more time to pursue those things that bring us joy. Whether it's more time with family, time to volunteer, or time to travel, surely each one of us could benefit from a little more joy in our lives.

So before we go any further in our journey - before we start setting goals, making lists, and completing calendars - I need you to do some "joy seeking."


What is it that brings you joy?

What do you enjoy doing?

If the time fairy granted you two more hours today, how would you spend them?

(You're not really going to spend them racking up a few more checks on some to-do list, are you?)

Identifying the sources of joy in your life is an important step toward better time management. Without first naming those things that bring you joy, you can find no purpose, no direction, and no sense in managing your time differently. (Notice I said differently, not better, because better is a comparative term relative to your goal - which is not yet named!)

Look for your joys this week. You'll find them in your heart; not your calendar, your check book, or your to-do list. I hope the quote I've picked for this posting inspires you to return for more.

Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss.

Dwight David Eisenhower

To get all there is out of living, we must employ our time wisely, never being in too much of a hurry to stop and sip life, but never losing our sense of the enormous value of a minute.

~ Robert Updegraff

With the start of a new year, many of us are setting new personal and/or professional goals for ourselves. Whether those goals are small or life-changing, they likely require some investment of time.

But where will we find that time? We certainly can't make more time. The best we can do is make a trade - an exchange of one activity for another - that will enable us to reach our chosen goals.

Years ago I conducted public workshops for a company that offered tools and training to enhance personal productivity. I can attest to the value of goal setting, planning, and putting the right tools to work. (Even if I don't always practice what I know!)

This blog is set up to exchange tips, techniques, and general thoughts for using time more effectively. Each week I'll start with a thought, and share at least one technique designed to help you get more out of your day, and ultimately, reach your goals. I'm not sure in what order things will be presented. Maybe it will be driven by the kind of week I'm having. Or maybe you'll post something that I can build on. Wherever it goes, I hope it adds value to your day.