Running late? You can regain control! With five easy strategies that will help you plan better, schedule smarter, and manage your time masterfully! This week on the show, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright take on the chronically late and offer suggestions for how to get back in control of your time!
There are only 24 hours in every day. No matter how hard we try, how much we wish it to be otherwise, there is simply no way to cram more time our lives. And yet, some of our biggest organizing challenges come from how we think about the time we have. This week on the show, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright take on this issue of time, how we think about it, and offer suggestions for how to manage the activities we take on, rather than the scarce minutes we have on the clock!
How many of you have a “To Do” list a mile long? When writing it you become very ambitious, thinking, maybe, just maybe you will actually get it all done… But you don’t!
I am guilty! I do this and I find I do this often!
I’ll get a free day to get some things done around the house, and all the sudden I have a list of 10 things to do, but by lunch time I am tired and only half, if that is done!
Does this sound familiar to anyone? I really hope it’s not just me!
Time goes by fast, no doubt, and things usually take longer than you expect. I get interrupted a lot! I have 2 kids and remember our new puppy? He takes up a lot of time too! Potty breaks are a constant around the clock event right now!
In the last week, I signed up for the free trial of OmniFocus. OmniFocus is a great product, there will probably be a blog post about in the future. My point for this post is to talk about a revelation I learned as I was watching one of the tutorials.
Is your “To Do” list filled with tasks or goals? If it’s filled with goals, it’s actually going to be almost impossible to get your to do, done! It becomes unreachable! Uh… I never really thought about it before.
Goals are what we want to achieve, the end result, but they do not clarify the how to do it part… That’s where the tasks come in. To reach your goal, break it down into tasks. It will certainly make your “To Do” list more organized and hopefully more productive! We can all tackle something big in small chunks, but to tackle it all at once can be extremely overwhelming!
I am a work in progress, but with this new awareness, I hope to be more effective!
I hope it helps you too!
Happy Organizing!
Do you have a project at home where you keep thinking to yourself, “I’ll get it done, when I get to it”. Then 6 months later the project is still not completed? You are not the only one! We tend to have so many things “to do” but we don’t have the time “to do” them. There are a lot of ways to prioritize your tasks, one is by doing the easiest ones first or the ones that take the less time. Maybe you choose to go the other route and tackle the most time consuming, hardest tasks first.
It really doesn’t matter how you decide what your priorities are, what’s important is that you do them!
Solution: If you need to get something done around the house or a project at work, you have to schedule the time to do it! Make the commitment!
You have to make the time, you can’t wait for it to come to you… Because we all know… It will never come! It sounds so easy, I realize it is not. The reality is if you want to see a project completed, you have to do the work.
So if you have something you have been wanting to do and just haven’t had time to do it… Decide to make it priority, make a commitment, schedule into your calendar and get it done!
Happy Organizing!
In our podcast, Taking Control of Small Time, Pete and I talked about gaining control of those little time wasters and what can we do to be more productive. You know the time wasters, like Facebook, waiting for your kids, or maybe you are on hold waiting to talk with someone.
There are lots of little things you can while your are waiting for someone or something, you can empty your dishwasher, you could fold laundry, or pick up around the house. Being aware of the tasks that can easily be done and being aware of the time wasters, can actually really help you get more done!
How can we organize our tasks better?
Pete gave us a great suggestion on using the TCO Daily Checklist… After each task he puts down the minutes he thinks it will take him to do the task. So when looking at his list he can see how many 10 minutes tasks he has vs. how many 60 minutes tasks he has.
I love this idea and I will be implementing it right away! I think this is a great tool to use to update how effective your To Do list really is! By seeing how much time each tasks take, you can really plan for your day in a much more productive way. Rather than just looking at all of what you have to do, you break it down into chunks of time!
What a great way, to take back your time! Thank you Pete for the great suggestion!
Happy Organizing!
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