10 Ways to Take Back Your Time!

10 Ways to Take Back Your Time
By Linda Dessau

I've divided my tips into two sections - 5 ways to manage your time and 5 ways to take back your time. Both offer daily or regular practices to try out in your life right now.

The first section focuses more on easing the time pressures in your life, to deal with all of the things you've gotten yourself into ;)

The second section focuses on making overall changes to your life. When you take back your time you also take back your CHOICE. When we're feeling time pressured and stressed out it's easy to forget that we have any say in the matter. And we do!

5 WAYS TO MANAGE YOUR TIME

1. Choose specific times to look at email during the day - seeing emails as they come in can really distract you from what you're trying to accomplish and you'll end up losing time as you go back and forth between activities.

2. The 15-minute strategy. This not only helps motivate you by breaking down large jobs into smaller pieces, it also makes good use of your time. The strategy is to spend 15-minutes on a task and then move on the next. You can come back to the first one as many times as you need to until it's done.

3. Find a system that works for you for making and meeting deadlines and appointments - a calendar or day-timer. I use a Palm Pilot and have been really happy with it.

4. Plan and cook meals ahead of time. A huge time-saver and also makes it much easier to eat healthier. It could be as simple as cooking an extra portion of dinner and having it for lunch the next day, or you could plan out seven days at a time (which is what I do).

5. Keep up with things - whether it's tidying up your papers, doing the dishes or working on a report, doing things a bit at a time (see tip #2) instead of letting them pile up to the point of taking you all day, is much more manageable.

5 WAYS TO TAKE BACK YOUR TIME

1. Set and keep your boundaries - if you work for someone else, be clear about over-time and taking work home with you. If you work for yourself, establish the times of day that are no-work zones; good places to start are breaks for meals and deciding when you will start and stop work for the day.

2. Make one day a week "timeless" – rise and shine when you feel like it, eat when you're hungry and let your inner child (or your actual child!) plan your day's activities. Warning: This may conflict with the tip below ;)

3. Cut your t.v. time - try limiting it to one hour per day. Or try cutting it out completely for one week.

4. Buddy up and find someone to take back time with. Whether it's your spouse, best friend, family member or work colleague, if you're both committed you won't let each other bow out.

5. Take your holidays! Whether you're self-employed or work for someone else it's important to take time off to rejuvenate. You will be more productive for it in the long run.

Where do you need to take back time in your life? Where do you need to manage your time better?

(c) Copyright 2005, Genuine Coaching Services.

Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, is the author of “The Everyday Self-Care Workbook”. To receive one of her free monthly newsletters, subscribe at http://www.genuinecoaching.com/newsletter.html

Crisis = Opportunity

"When written in Chinese the word "crisis" is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents opportunity." - John F. Kennedy, address, 12 April 1959

Hang In There

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. - Harriet Beecher Stowe

This is The Day...

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. - Bob Moawad

Of All the Haunting Moments...

Of all the haunting moments of motherhood, few rank with hearing your own words come out of your daughter's mouth. - Victoria Secunda

Another Blessing

“When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place” - C.S. Lewis

Be Thankful To Struggle!

Be Thankful to Struggle
By Honman Chan

A student in a music faculty was coached by a renowned pianist and professor. One day, he walked into the class and saw a new set of music sheet at the piano. ‘This is extremely difficult….’, he spoke to himself as he browsed through them. He did some stretching and began to play the notes, only with many pauses and mistakes because of the high level of difficulty. ‘Not good enough still. Go back and practice harder!’ The professor told the student before dismissing the class.

The student practiced for a week. The next lesson in the following week came. Just when he was about to begin playing for the professor’s comment, the latter, without mentioning anything about the previous week’s lesson, gave him another set of music sheets. This set was harder and more technically demanding than the previous one. The student once again struggled through the whole piece.

In the third week, the same thing happened again. Each time, he got troubled by the new piece of music and took it back in the end for practice. And when he went back to class the next time, he had to face another piece twice more difficult than the previous one. Feeling not able to catch up, he felt uneasy and angry.

3 months passed and he could not take it anymore. He felt the need to ask the professor why the torture to him. However, this time the professor took out the earliest piece, gave it to him and said, ‘Play this!’, gazing at him in his eyes with full confidence in him.
Something amazing happened! To the student’s surprise, he was able to play the piece with such profound skill and technical precision. Next, the professor gave him the second lesson’s and the same thing happened. He once again gave an extremely high standard recital……… At the end of all the recitals, the student looked speechless at his teacher.
‘If not for this continual challenge, you are now still practicing on the earliest piece and will not be showing this kind of skillful performance today’, the professor said to him.

If we keep thinking about the difficult challenges we are facing, we can miss out the fact that we are also learning and improving at the same time during each struggle. How can one show improvement without any obstacle?

As a grown-up recalls his past, those naïve and inexperienced younger days are actually the ones that made up today’s maturity. This is how the student felt when he looked back at the earliest piece he had practiced before. People are used to displaying their most familiar and strongest area to others and when faced with a new question, they got extremely anxious. However, the difficulties you are conquering are actually shaping and training you up into the capability you will display. Therefore, be thankful to obstacle, be thankful to difficulty. And you will be able to jump over the hurdles in your life.

Have you seen a group of deaf giving a dance performance on stage? They cannot hear the rhythm, yet their steps synchronized perfectly. Their graceful and beautiful movement is amazing! These people did not give up in their silent world. They cross over the huge hurdle, enter into their path of success and tell the world with their flawless dance that their world, too, are filled with music. What about people like us who can hear and speak? Do you have a hurdle to cross over? Be Thankful and do your best to overcome it!

http://www.openyourmindtoprosperity.com/prosperity/

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Teddy Roosevelt-Dare Mighty Things!

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. - President Theodore Roosevelt

Ask for Broader Shoulders!

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. - Jewish Proverb

Growth = Discomfort

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. - Brian Tracy

Bright Enlightenment

“We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.” - Vernon Howard

Wisdom and Virtue

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. - David Star Jordan, The Philosophy of Despair

Converse With The Wise

A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study. - Chinese Proverb

Lose Your Worries

"Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway." - Mary C. Crowley