Get More Done by Doing Less - Organize Your Family's Time

When you think of organizing your family, you probably first think of everyone's stuff. It's true that cleaning up and organizing a messy house are part of family organization; but did you ever stop to think of how organizing your family's time is just as important? In fact, you may find that you can get more done by doing less if you organize your family's time. Your family may also find they have more time for the things everyone enjoys.

Here are some tips on managing time, and how to be more efficient without having to increase your daily workload.

Time for Math and Math for Time

One of the problems with time management is that many of us are stuck in the "addition phase." We add things to our schedules and shuffle things about, but do we ever take away or subtract anything? Here's a tip for keeping your family's schedule sane: don't add anything to your schedule without taking something else away. This can apply to the whole family - your kids can't add an activity, for instance, without cancelling another one; the same applies to you.

To take this concept a bit further, try subtracting first. Sit down with the family and discuss dreams, goals, joys, hobbies, etc. Then look at your schedules. Is your son's goal to be a martial artist? Then maybe you should take music lessons off the list and add in a private martial arts class. Is one of your goals to write a book? Then see if other family members can wash dishes a couple of nights a week to give you time to write.

A Time for Everything...

...and everything in its time! Time is not unlike space in this respect. Here's where you can do more by doing less once again. Does it feel like you do dishes all the time? Do laundry, wiping up, answering the phone, etc. seem to be never-ending?

While it's true that some chores are daily, they don't need to be done a dozen times a day. For instance, rather than grabbing and washing every dish immediately so your sink stays empty all day, wash dishes only once a day, say in the evening or first thing in the morning. The same goes for laundry - work out a regular schedule so that your laundry gets done but you aren't running ragged doing it.

The same goes for phone calls and email. Let your voicemail or answering machine pick up until your allotted time for making phone calls. Screening calls can save a lot of time. Have a set time for email checking, too.

For the other members of your family, homework time, TV time, and other activities can all be worked into the day in a scheduled manner. It helps things go a lot more smoothly and helps you get more accomplished without running frantically trying to keep up.

Electronic Day Timers

Did you know your computer can help you out here? There are tools and software that can help you automate much of your calendar and schedule, keeping contact names and numbers handy and reminding you of appointments. There is software that can do a lot more than that - and some of it may be free online. Take a look...but only during your allotted computer time!

Less Clutter = Less Stress ^SM     in your home, your business and your life

Organizational Consulting Services

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Time Management Basics for Working Women

Whether you work from home or work outside the home, all women work. Keeping your sanity while working and raising a family can be quite challenging, but there are some things you can do to help get things organized and less stressful. Here are some time management basics for working women.

Being a Morning Person

You may not be a natural "morning person," but mornings are really crucial for working women. In fact, one of the secrets to becoming a morning person is to be an evening person first! In other words, do as much as you can the night before so that the morning isn't so rushed and crazy. Here are some tips:

* Pack backpacks and diaper bags the night before and put them by the door.

* Prepare lunches (whether for you to take to the office or the kids to take to school) the night before and freeze or refrigerate.

* Lay out clothes the night before so you don't have to figure out what you and everyone else is going to wear.

* Get up before your kids do so you can have time to get your act together before they're up.

* Prepare any breakfast make-ahead items such as cut-up fruit or hard-boiled eggs.

Come to an Understanding

It's important that your spouse and/or kids understand that everyone has to pitch in. If both spouses work, for instance, it's unfair for one spouse to unwind in front of the TV after work and the other spouse to start working in the kitchen. So have a family meeting if necessary to discuss this issue; it needs to be understood that if you're contributing to the income, they need to contribute to the housework and other such tasks.

Prioritize

It's crucial for working women to prioritize their time. You can't, for instance, be driving your child 20 minutes both ways to attend an activity they're only moderately interested in. You also don't have time to attend every single sporting event or performance your kids are in, and it's okay - forgive yourself and do what you can.

Simple Meals

During this time in your life, it's a good idea to keep meals simple. A few main ingredients and quick preparation can be the rule; apply it to all kinds of meals. And in general, kids are just as happy with a cheese quesadilla as they are with an elaborate beef curry dish. In fact, they'll probably like the quick quesadilla better!

Keep things on hand for simple meals, too, such as jarred spaghetti sauce, frozen bread, frozen vegetables, tortillas, and pasta. Frozen chicken breasts and fish fillets can be prepared quickly, even without pre-thawing. Buy ground meat and make it into patties; freeze, and pull them out as needed.

Hopefully, implementing some of these tips will enable you to spend more quality time with your family.

Less Clutter = Less Stress ^SM     in your home, your business and your life

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Surprising Time Management Secrets

One certainty in life is that time is limited. While no one is sure how many years they’ll be given to finish doing what they want to do, everything is equal for each day you are given. Everyone has the same 24-hour day to dream, determine goals, and complete tasks that will help them meet those goals. But doesn’t it seem like some people are just better at time management than others?

Surprisingly, there are some time management secrets that make you feel like you have hours more in your day.

* Set Priorities - There are really only four choices:

1. Most important

2. Most urgent

3. Least important

4. Least urgent

When you identify tasks and set your priorities carefully by what is important over not important, as well as avoid having issues of urgency each day, you can get a handle on your time in ways that you never thought possible.

* Learn the Power of No – Saying no is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever learn to say. The problem is our parents disciplined the word “no” from our vocabulary. It’s time to learn how to say no again. If something is not right for you, is too “urgent”, causes you stress, or you just do not want to do it and it doesn’t fit in with meeting your goals, say no. Saying no will free up untold amounts of time to focus on your priorities.

* Disconnect from Technology – Unplug the phone, turn off email notifications, and for goodness sakes get off Facebook. If you’ve not completed the most important tasks on your daily list, you have no business messing around with technology. The idea of multitasking is overrated, so unplug and tune in to the tasks at hand. You’ll work faster, smarter, and gain the time you need for other things.

* Schedule Everything – Your priorities need to be added to your calendar. Everything from the 15 minutes you need to use social media for marketing purposes, to the one hour you take your kids to the park, needs to be put into your calendar. If you have a project due in a week, you should have five days of scheduled time to work on the project prior to the due date. This helps avoid those urgencies mentioned earlier.

* Ignore Interruptions – Unless the house is on fire or a child is bleeding, the telephone ringing and the knocks on your office door are not important. They are interruptions. Check your email at scheduled times during the day, explain to your children, spouse and family when you are working, and otherwise ignore the door bell ringing. If you didn’t schedule it, you don’t need it.

* Outsource – Whether it’s the housework, cooking, or customer service, it’s important to outsource what you can afford to outsource. There are huge payoffs to outsourcing the things that are simply time suckers from your day. If you can’t afford to outsource, your kitchen will not explode if a few dishes pile up, and everyone can do with eating a salad for dinner. And, you can automate a lot of customer service issues if you work from home.

* Once and You're Done – Multitasking is not really a bastion of efficiency. Instead, seek to touch each task only once and finish it. For example, when you check the mail immediately throw out the trash, schedule bills to be paid, and deal with any issues that came up with a letter - right then. Of course, your mail time should be scheduled as well so that you can stay on track.

* Check Your Schedule – At least twice a day, set out the time to check your schedule. Usually the morning is good and at the end of the day is good. Ensure that you have your priorities in order, add anything new to your schedule that needs to be added, and remind yourself of what is expected the next day. Checking your schedule helps you feel accomplished at the end of the day, and reminds you of what’s coming up tomorrow.

Finally, it’s important to be very serious about following your schedule and calendar. Use technology to help such as Google Calendar or Outlook, synced to your smartphone to help you remember what it is that you should be doing now, and next. It may seem geeky to be so serious about a schedule, but it’s this one factor that makes these surprising time management tips work.

 

Less Clutter = Less Stress ^SM     in your home, your business and your life

Organizational Consulting Services

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Setting Priorities for Managing Your Time

One of the hardest parts of time management is learning how to set priorities. Sometimes it can feel like every last thing you need to do is an emergency. But the truth is, there are ways to organize your time and manage the tasks that you need to do so that you get them finished right when they need to be done without feeling overwhelmed or rushed.

Thankfully Stephen Covey’s time management grid is here to save us from ourselves. It looks like this:

 

 Use the grid to help create your daily to-do list by prioritizing the importance and urgency of each item you have to pick from. It can be as simple as doing the purple things first, then the green, next pink, and finally the light green items. But, if you do it this way you might miss out on something important you can learn from the time management grid.

Eliminate Urgency from Your Life

By focusing on green you can eventually lessen the purple items on your list. By learning to say no to others you can virtually eliminate the pink things, too. Finally, by getting your schedule under control the light green will eliminate itself because you won’t feel the need to procrastinate anymore.

Learn to Say No

As children we are taught to not say no. Unfortunately, this transfers over to adulthood in a bad way, especially for females. If you determine something is in the pink or light green area, you can use that to determine whether or not you should say no. If it’s something that your client wants that takes five minutes, but it’s not that important, you can do it. If it’s something you just like to do, you can always do it after you’ve done three purple or green tasks.

Assess Your Time Expenditures Now

Now that you have Dr. Covey’s time management chart, you can go back and re-evaluate the things you are currently doing each day to find out what color they are. Knowing their color will help you label each thing that you do throughout the days, weeks and months ahead so that you can prioritize them.

Finally, when you are assessing any task, make sure you label it, then ask yourself if it fits in with your core values and goals. If it does, it’s going to be in either the purple square or the green square. If it doesn’t, it’s probably in one of the other squares. As you learn to use this system it will start becoming more automatic so that you can say yes or no faster and put your time management on auto drive.

Less Clutter = Less Stress ^SM     in your home, your business and your life

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Learn to Say No: Increase the Power of How You Spend Your Time

One of the very best ways to manage your time is to learn to say no. Saying no is a great way to control how you spend your time and take your power back. Most of us don’t know how to say no because our parents taught us very well not to say no. Many two-year-olds love saying no, but they are quickly taught that the word no is very unacceptable. But, it’s time to take back the power of no and earn more time in your day for doing what you really want to do.

* You’ll Reduce Your Stress – One of the worst things about overscheduling your time is the stress that it will cause. Learning to say no will automatically reduce your stress, even if the first few times you say no will be a little stressful. The freedom you experience will soon overshadow the fear of saying no.

* You’ll Be Perceived as More Professional – No one person can do everything. If you already have something scheduled and can’t do something, it is to be expected of a professional person. You don’t even have to provide a reason; just say that your calendar is full.

* You’ll Improve at Tasks You Really to Want to Do – If you’re not spending time doing stuff you hate doing, you’ll get to spend more time doing things you want to do. That means you’ll get more practice and become better at the things you already like doing.

* You Get to Spend Time Doing What You Want to Do – No one wants to spend time doing things they dislike doing, but they tend to say yes due to the lessons their mom taught them. If you really want to spend more time writing or helping your clients solve their problems, say no to doing things you don’t want to do and recommend someone else.

                                                      

* People Will Respect You More – Even really good people lose respect for those who act like doormats. You probably don’t want to appear as a doormat; you’re just trying to be helpful. But even nice people will take advantage of those who say yes all the time. That’s why you’ll notice it’s always the same three people doing all the work in any group. The yes people.

* Saying No Gives You the Opportunity to Say Yes – This may sound counter-intuitive but it’s true. If you learn to say no to things that don’t advance your business or life in any measurable way, you’ll have more time to say yes to things that do.

* You Won’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew - People who say yes to everything tend to do most things half way. They don’t mean to, but they get too much on their plate and end up not being able to do the tasks they agreed to do to the best of their ability. If you say no, you can avoid this embarrassment.

* Pause, Breathe Deeply, Check Your Calendar – In order to say no without a problem, when someone asks you to do something, even if it’s something you know immediately that you do want to do, make it a practice to take a pause, take a breath, and check your calendar. The act of calendar checking can give you time to give some thought to whether or not you want to say yes or no.

Saying no can truly give you back enough time to create the life that you really want to live. If you’re feeling hurried and overwhelmed take the time to practice saying no. By saying no you’ll take control of your schedule and feel like you get more time in your day.

Less Clutter = Less Stress ^SM     in your home, your business and your life

Organizational Consulting Services

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