Overload
“I can’t get anything done”, “I’m burning the candle at both ends”, “I don’t know how to get organized” Sound familiar? These are always some of the biggest complaints I receive from coaching clients and my followers online. I always recommend creating an action list in your daily planner. If you tell me you don’t go by a daily planner, then I just solved 50% of your problem. The iPhone and iPad are not a sufficient way to organize your daily To-Do’s. You should have a catch file to store your incoming important papers until you have the time to deal with them properly. In your home, the catch file could be a magazine rack, which hangs on the wall in your office or work space, so it is really visible. You want to label each holder to meet your needs. Examples would be, to be paid, to be filed, to do, kids sport/activities and for review. When you bring in the mail or print off an important paper or email you place it into the appropriate holder on the magazine rack.
Organized
So why is it so important to get organized anyway? First of all, to be organized gives you an automatic sense of empowerment! When you can manage your daily life, you have mastered the skill organization. Organization is the glue that keeps our lives together. Look at this scenario: say you spend roughly 30 seconds every hour looking for a piece of paper to help you get some of your work done. If you calculate that out per day you would be wasting 12 minutes. Now, 12 minutes is not a lot now, but if you figure this out per year then you would be wasting 73 hours. That is more than 3 days wasted just looking for a piece of paper.
Besides your newly purchased, magazine rack for organization, let’s look at a quick way to begin your new found organized lifestyle today.
Here are 14 Time Balancing Behaviors:
- Create a daily plan in your daily planner.
- Put a time limit on each task.
- Good is good enough. No need to redo what’s done and ready.
- Empower others.
- Learn to say “NO.”
- Eat healthy when you can, exercise at least 3 days a week and sleep!
- Use a calendar/daily planner/organizer.
- Know your deadlines for task and be early.
- Touch paper and email once.
- Delegate task
- Focus and block distractions
- Eliminate time wasters (TV, lengthy gossip phone conversations etc.…)
- Do the important/urgent first.
- If it doesn’t get done today, it goes to the top of TO-DO tomorrow.
Everyone faces obstacles, errands, responsibility and the endless need to do more. Some people avoid them, others comfort them and move forward. Sticking to a daily plan isn’t difficult, it’s a choice. Remembering that time management is life management and organizing your daily life leads to confidence, empowerment and a sense of success. Preparation is the key and provides better problem solving, creativity, less stress and substantial time savings. Let’s get organized! Let’s get empowered! In the words of Charles Dickens- “Procrastination is the thief of time.”