Ever feel like time is just disappearing as you’re trying to get everything done? Well, this weekend, time really did “disappear.”

Unless you are fortunate enough to live in the great states of Arizona or Hawaii, you lost an hour today as we Sprung Forward for Daylight Savings. Don’t worry. You can make up that lost hour with a few  time management strategies. Try these time management tricks this week to make up for your missing 60 minutes.

1) Kill a Time Killer
Remember, Time Killers are those little things that waste our time without our permission.  Little things like email, Facebook, YouTube and Internet surfing can be necessary for communication and fun Desserts…but only at the right time! Don’t let these things prolong your work by distracting you.

2) Invest Your Time
Over the past few months, I signed up for an email management service for my mailing list and a database to keep track of all of my citations for my school papers. Both of these services took time to figure out, but I have more than recouped that investment in the time these services ended up saving me. Have you been putting off a similar time management investment? Waiting for later? What better time than now? Do it this week.

3)  Delegate
Do you remember when you were 7-years old and you’d try to slip extra food on your dinner plate to the dog while your mom wasn’t looking? Oh how times change. Now that we are all grown up we try to heap more tasks on our plate and take care of it all ourselves. This week, pick one thing and delegate it. You don’t have to have a staff working under you to delegate. It could be as simple as asking a family member to help out, or hiring out a household chore if you can afford it.

And don’t worry, you’ll get that lost hour back in November anyway!

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Many of us are content to do everything ourselves. In fact, we often ensure that we do everything ourselves by not telling anyone else how we do things. But what happens when we need other people to help us out? Think of those people as your understudies.

As I was watching Wicked for the first time on Friday night (because I don’t catch on to things until years after they are popular) I flipped open the program to see if any of the leading roles were being played by understudies that night. After all, I had paid a lot for these tickets and I was going to be bummed if I didn’t get to hear the “real deal.”

Then it occurred to me, we all have “understudies” in life, whether we plan to or not. No matter how hard we try, there will be a time where we simply can’t do everything. Either we’ll get sick, an emergency will come up or we will have just over-committed ourselves. The better we get at letting people help us, the easier it is when these situations arise. After all, the “show” must go on, and you don’t want the “ticket holders” in your life to be left hanging.

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
How many times have you used that phrase as an excuse to not let others help you? It’s easy to point to other people’s failures as a reason to not delegate, but did you really set that person up for success?

Consider what would happen if the understudy for a major Broadway musical was given no script, no choreography and no direction. He was simply left to figure it out. No one would be a bit surprised when the performance crashed and burned would they? Make sure you don’t do the same thing with your understudies.

1. Take time for training
While it seems like taking the time to thoroughly train someone on a task takes far too long, it actually saves time in the long run. Give the person the right tools to succeed and you won’t have to waste time redoing it later.

2. Consider the person
Make sure the person you are asking for help has the skill set necessary to complete the task. You won’t ask a soprano to be the understudy for a tenor.

3. Assess
Make opportunities to assess the work others help you with. If something goes wrong, don’t simply take the task away. Help fix it. This will allow the person to learn rather than fail.

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Below is an excerpt from my new book, “The Time Diet Time Management for College Survival.” This section deals with one of the common pitfalls of college: procrastination. Don’t let poor time management skills affect your favorite college student. Pick up your copy today on Amazon.com for only $11.99!

Procrastination: The Enemy of Time Management

“Sometimes we procrastinate because we can’t find the time to get everything done. However, there are other times we procrastinate because we just really really don’t want to do our homework. We know we should work, but work isn’t fun and watching college sports and reality T.V. is. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Even the best students feel like this sometimes. Here are some ways to motivate yourself to do homework you just don’t want to do.

Break a large project into smaller pieces

The best way to combat laziness is to break up a Meat task into smaller pieces and tackle them one piece at a time. For example, if you have a research paper to write, you may not want to start it because it seems like such an immense task that you don’t have the energy to tackle. Watching TV, going to the gym or getting a root canal all sound more appealing than starting something so overwhelming.

Instead, break the large project into smaller chunks that are more manageable. Instead of saying “I’m going to start my research paper today” say, “I am going to start my research paper today by compiling a bibliography of library sources.” Setting smaller daily goals makes a large project feel more approachable.

Promise yourself a reward

We can all agree, there are a ton of things in life that are more fun than doing hard work! Instead of having the mindset that your work is preventing you from doing something fun, just re-frame your thinking. You are still going to both have fun and get work done today, but you are just going to switch the order around a little bit. When you finish compiling your bibliography for your research paper, then you are going to reward yourself with a 10-minute chill-out session with your iPod, or run over to the Student Center for a smoothie.

Be creative with your rewards. Rewarding yourself with a lengthy break or Dessert task every time you finish a difficult chunk of work is not always practical. Instead, be creative with your rewards, particularly if you are trying to save money and a java mocha chiller just isn’t in the budget every time you need a pat on the back.

A reward can be as simple as stepping outside for some fresh air, eating a few jellybeans from your drawer stash, or texting with a friend. Finally, remember that putting off your homework won’t make it go away even though you really wish it would!

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Graduation is coming up. Instead of presents that will clutter a dorm room, why not get some time management advice that will help students succeed? They will thank you later. Click here to buy on Amazon: The Time Diet Time Management for College Survival

Don’t let your fear of a big task get in the way of taking the first step. That is the idea behind “National Novel Writing Month” (NaNoWriMo for short). During the month of November, aspiring novelists can sign up with NaNoWriMo.org and pledge to write a 50,000 word novel (about 175 pages) between November 1st and November 30th.

While this may seem like an insanely short amount of time to write such a lengthy piece, there is one rather large catch to the whole process: it doesn’t have to be good.

NaNoWriMo is all about quantity, not quality. The idea is that aspiring novelists often get caught up in the planning and editing process in an attempt to make their novels perfect. However, instead of ending up with a “perfect” novel, they end up with a perpetually unfinished one.

The purpose of NaNoWriMo is to create a finished product, even if it isn’t very good, with the assumption that you can always go back and revise later, but at least it’s done. It is also much easier to sit down and write once you’ve removed the pressure that it has to be your most brilliant work.

Removing the Need for Perfection

While we don’t all aspire to be novelists, we surely all have some big task in our lives that we dream of accomplishing, but haven’t found time to do. I challenge you to take a page out of this book (pun intended.) Remove the pressure that it has to be your best work, and simply start working.

Too often, we let our pursuit of perfection get in the way of productivity. A mediocre finished product is always better than a “perfect” half-finished one. What have you always dreamed of accomplishing? Try making December or even January your month to finish that big task you’ve always wanted to. (You can even give your month a hip abbreviation.)

Let me know what you decide to finish. Over 30,000 people wrote a novel during NaNoWriMo last year. What will your accomplishment be?

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Photo Credit: Renjith Krishnan

Time is Money. We’ve all heard this saying so many times that it almost loses its effectiveness, but this weekend I was reminded of how true it really is.

I grew up learning that it’s always better to know how to do things yourself rather than paying someone else to do it. My dad did all of the landscaping. My mom did all of the painting. I never had a store-bought Halloween costume and my sister and I had an awesome tree house made out of scrap wood from our garage.

I carried these habits into my adult life. Because of that, I now know how to do so much more and have saved more money than if I had tried to find people to do these things for me.

The Value of Our Time

This past weekend we moved into our new house. I cannot think of a busier or more stressful time to have placed such an event, but such is life! I was wondering how in the world we were doing to do all of this, until my husband suggested we hire movers to take care of it all.

My first thought was, “No! That’s not how we do it! We rent a U-Haul, we load it ourselves, we unload it ourselves and that’s that!” But then I realized I wasn’t placing a high enough value on my own time.

Sure, we could have moved all of our stuff ourselves, but it would have taken several days. I wasn’t necessarily just paying someone to do something that I didn’t want to do, I was paying someone to free up time in my schedule.

Every hour I didn’t have to spend moving I could spend grading projects for my class, working on my doctoral projects, getting speaking gigs, etc…I wasn’t paying a mover 30 dollars an hour to move my furniture as much as I was paying 30 dollars an hour to have that time free for other things.

I am certainly not advocating that we all spend our last dime paying people to do things for us. However, if you’re anything like me, it’s good to have a reminder once in a while that we don’t have to do everything ourselves either. Our time is extremely valuable and we owe it to ourselves to use it wisely.

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Photo Credit: Renjith Krishnan

Have you ever noticed that it’s really difficult to motivate yourself to complete a task that doesn’t produce an immediate, visible result? It can be a real challenge to your time management.

For example, if you have a paper to write for school, you might spend all day researching your topic in the library. You may emerge feeling much more knowledgeable about your topic and more prepared to write your paper, but if someone asked what you did all day, you wouldn’t have much tangible work to show for it.

My frustration this week came from cleaning. We are moving into a new place next month and have started the packing/cleaning/organizing process. I spent all morning reorganizing the garage. I went through all the shelves, threw things away, consolidated boxes, and sorted things into a “give away” and “throw away” pile.

When I was done, I stepped back to admire my work…and realized it looked pretty much the same as when I started. Wow. Had I just wasted my whole morning?

Looks Can Be Deceiving

The most satisfying tasks to complete are ones that produce an immediate and visible result, but unfortunately, those aren’t the only kinds of things we need to do. Sure, I could have spent my morning putting all of my books into boxes. That is a much easier task to do and my room would have looked much more empty. However, looks can be deceiving.

Working in the garage was a much more valuable use of my Saturday, even if it didn’t necessarily look like it.

When deciding how to spend your day, be careful not to put off difficult things just because they aren’t very satisfying to complete. Remember, “later” always gets here eventually and you won’t be any more thrilled about the work. Better to just do it now!

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Time off from work or school is great. No one is going to argue with that. However, deciding how to spend this rare chunk of free time can prove difficult.

I’ve found that people usually have one of two reactions at the beginning of a break:

1. “It will be so nice to finally catch up on my work!” or

2. “I can’t wait to just relax and have fun!”

Therein lies the dilemma: Do you use these days off to get work done? Or do you take advantage of an opportunity to relax and go take a trip or do something fun?

This week is my fall break from teaching. I am so excited to finally have some time to breathe, but I’ve had difficulty deciding how best to spend these few precious days.

On the one hand, I could get caught up on a lot of work. It wouldn’t really feel like a vacation, but I’d be far less stressed when I went back to work. On the other hand, I could sleep in every day, go shopping, go on a trip, and other fun things that I never have time for otherwise.

 My Day of Nothing

I thought I had found a good balance. I was going to work hard for the first three days of break, and then go on a vacation to Florida to see some family. However, yesterday threw that plan out the window- in a good way.

I woke up feeling a little sick yesterday. I tried to just work through it, but I kept feeling worse. I ended up spending the whole day lazing around the house. You know what? It was wonderful. Anyone who knows me knows that I never ever spend a whole day doing nothing, but it was exactly what I needed to start my break.

I’m certainly not advocating that we all sit around and be lazy all the time, but I think there is something to be said for allowing yourself to do nothing once in a while. My vacation will be fun, even though I won’t be sleeping in or really “relaxing.” Then, it will be nice to get work done and finally feel as though I’m crawling out from my pile of “to dos.” However, my yesterday of “nothing” was blissful.

What is your favorite way to spend your break?

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Photo Credit: Michal Marcol

The more things we have on our plate, the more likely it is that we try to multitask as a time management strategy.  We work while we eat, we eat while we drive and we have conversations via phone, email and IM all at the same time.

Doing two things at once seems like a great way to get things done faster, but I’ve learned there is some interesting research that proves otherwise.  This is particularly true when you are trying to do a “Meat” task in your Time Diet that requires a lot of thinking.

A 2005 study published by The Procedures of the National Academies of Science found that doing too many things at once can be detrimental.

When people multitask while doing something like reading, listening or studying, they store the information they learn in a different part of their brain than people who choose to only focus on one thing. Non-multitaskers store it in a part of the brain that easily recalls information later. Multitaskers store their information in a part of the brain that is more difficult to recall in different situations.

Basically, if you multitask on something difficult, you’re still going to get your work done, but you’ll have a more difficult time remembering it later.

How to MultiTask Effectively

So, what do we do? Sometimes there simply aren’t enough hours in the day! We can’t finish everything if we don’t double things up.

Save the multitasking for your Vegetables. Remember, the Vegetable tasks in your Time Diet are the easier ones that don’t require as much intense thinking. If you simply must multitask, save it for the Vegetables that aren’t very difficult to do.
For example:

Folding laundry and talking on the phone- perfect combination!
Filing papers and skimming your email- great!
Reading a report and messaging with a friend….not the best idea.

Then next time you catch yourself trying to multitask with difficult and important things, remember: it’s better to find a few extra minutes to focus on one thing so you do the best job you can and don’t have to find time to re-do it later.

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When we fail to make time for our own projects, a terrible thing happens: Nothing.
It’s one thing to find time to work on projects or assignments that are essential. If you don’t finish a project for work, your boss will be upset. If you don’t turn in an assignment for school, your professor will lower your grade. If you don’t get your leaky roof fixed, you’ll have an unwanted shower in your living room the next time it rains. However, if you fail to make time for your own projects, an even worse consequence occurs: Nothing.

When we already have a full plate of obligations to other people, it’s difficult to find time for completing our own projects that are important to us. There is no consequence for never planting that herb garden you’ve always wanted in your backyard or never getting around to training for that marathon you’ve thought about. The only thing that happens is….well…nothing. And that’s the problem. You’ll experience “nothing” instead of the fulfillment and happiness of working on something just for you. You have to learn to be accountable to yourself .

What Writing a Book About Time Management Has Taught Me About Time Management

As many of you know, my project has been writing my first Time Diet book about time management. It has been more difficult than I ever imagined. I’ve re-written it twice and really thought I’d be done by now. However, it’s extremely difficult to find time to write when I have so many obligations for work and school. I have learned three ways to manage my writing time so I don’t let my book fall by the way side.

1) Make Appointments for Yourself
I schedule my writing time in my calendar just like I schedule all other work time. Before something makes it into my calendar, it’s just an idea. When it’s written down on a specific day and a specific time, it’s a commitment.

2) Remove Other Distractions
When I’m writing at home, it’s all too easy to become distracted with other work I have to do. This is why I do most of my writing at Starbucks. I almost feel obligated to share some of my (hopefully) future profits with them, but I think they’ve made enough money off of me in Grande Java-Chip Frappuccinos.

3) Hold Yourself Accountable
I don’t allow myself to break commitments I’ve made to my writing. I set mini goals for myself such as “Have Chapter 1 edited this week” or “ Re-write Chapter 2 by Saturday.” I write these goals in my calendar and tell my husband about them. My big goal is to have this book finished this summer. There, now I’ve told you my goal too. Feel free to nag me about it. I can use all the help I can get.

I don’t know what will come from finishing this book, but I do know that the worst thing that could possibly happen is “Nothing.”

If you’re also writing a book, or curious about the process, I’ve been reading “The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published” by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. It’s a fabulous resource. You can buy it on Amazon Here.

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