busy

3 Reasons To Be Nice (When You Don’t Have Time For It)

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Time management smile“Hurry” has become a mainstay of our vocabulary, especially at this time of year! Seems like everyone is in a rush to get somewhere, or do something. Before you get caught up in the sense of urgency, don’t forget that there is always time to be nice (and if there’s not, then you’re moving too fast!) Here is what reminded me of that today:

Today, while out holiday shopping, I saw a mom with two young (tired) kids  in front of me at the food court. The cashier messed up her order several times, and then they ended up being out of the soup she wanted. At this point, I was frustrated for her. When the food finally came out, I was expecting a tirade, but instead, she smiled and said, “Thanks so much! Good luck handling all these crazy crowds today!”

If this exhausted, clearly time-crunched lady made time to smile and say thanks, I had no excuse to be grumpy! When you catch yourself being irritable while crunched for time, remember these three things:

1. Everyone else is busy too

Everyone has somewhere to be and things to do. You aren’t the only one affected by the crowd, or the traffic, or the (insert life crisis here.) Try to be understanding. Even if you do need to complain, there are ways to bring problems to someone’s attention without being a jerk about it.

2. Stuff happens…roll with it

Sometimes things will be completely out of your control. When this happens, it’s easy to look for someone to blame…but it’s probably not their fault either. Look for the humor in a situation, not a scapegoat.

3. A smile might just make someone’s day

When you’ve dealt with cranky people all afternoon, one smile from an understanding person can turn your whole day around. Be that person.

Being nice doesn’t take any extra time. It might take a little extra energy, but that energy is returned to you doubled from the people who appreciate your kindness

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5 Lies We Believe About Time Management

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Time management liesTime management is an essential skill for productive success, so it’s no wonder we all want so badly to be good at it. However, in your quest for time management excellence, don’t let yourself fall victim to these 5 lies we believe about productivity.

1. Technology will save us.

There is an app or electronic device to manage pretty much every aspect of our lives if we so desire, and our time is no different. It’s easy to think, “If I just had the right program, or the right filters on my email, or the right calendar app, managing my time would be easy.” While technology certainly does help, it’s important to remember that it’s merely a tool, and without a plan, discipline, and patience, even the best tools can’t help us.

2. Everyone has more time on their hands than I do.

OK, so maybe not everyone, but when someone misses a deadline or forgets a responsibility, it’s tempting to think, “Really? Come on. I have way more on my plate than you do, and you don’t see me complaining.” Just remember that we all have our own unique time management struggles and your perception of what someone’s life is like may be far from the truth.

3.  I must multitask to get everything done.

While multitasking might initially seem like an efficient way to get multiple things done at once, in the long run your productivity takes a major hit. Plus, you’re stuck re-doing tasks that were done sloppily or without focus the first time around. Juggle multiple projects, but focus on one at a time.

4. There is a silver bullet piece of advice that will fix all of my time management problems, I just have to find it!

There is a lot of time management advice out there. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not, but ALL of it is just words on a page until you adapt it to your needs and put it into practice. I enjoy inspiring and motivating people to adapt time management solutions for their unique situations, and more importantly, ingrain the habits into their schedules. That’s what changes behaviors!

5. I can do it all.

You can do more than you think, but nobody can do it all and we harm ourselves by trying. Setting realistic expectations for what we can tackle and celebrating our small accomplishments along the way is what will keep us motivated to keep moving toward our goals.

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Moms: The Ultimate Time Managers

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Time Management for MomsThis past weekend we celebrated mothers. You know, those magical people who always seem to find the 25th hour in the day to get everything done. I’m not a mom yet, but I’m privileged to know some incredible women who make the “family balancing act” seem effortless. Check out how they do it! Even us non-moms can learn a lot from them.

Time Management Advice From Busy Moms

“How do I manage my time? One day at a time! I cut myself some slack and keep things in perspective. I’m also a huge proponent of keeping work and home separate whenever possible.”

Julie Weissberg
Music Teacher
Mini Maestros

“I taught my children young how to do a load of laundry and how to make a sandwich or toast and a quick batch of brownies.  Instead of doing everything for them, I helped them to be independent and able to do things for themselves.  My advice is when everyone is tugging at you to help them, be kind, but do what you can to help them help themselves.  Take a little “dessert” time daily to hug them and let them know they are loved!  Happy Mother’s Day!”

Gina La Benz
Independent Designer, Origami Owl
Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, Chandler/Gilbert YMCA

“I find that planning all of our family dinners in advance helps cut down on shopping time. I plan out the week’s meals, and then write the shopping list on the same piece of paper. I also take care of as many errands as I can in one place. Prescriptions! Cosmetics! All come from the grocery store.”

Becky Wilkinson
Nurse
Banner Good Samaritan

“I have had the unique experience of being a single foster parent. The main thing that helped me through the hectic schedule is: Writing It Down! If it took up time, I blocked it out on my calendar. I even had a “catch all” time blocked out for paperwork and misc items. Also, I’ve found you can turn cleaning into a bonding activity with older children by singing, dancing, and cleaning your way through the house. Most importantly, I had to let the perfectionist in me go. Some things are just not as important as spending quality time with the kids.”

Patty Conrad
Deal Assessor
Bank of America

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Hey Moms! (And Dads!) Looking for the perfect graduation present for your high school senior? Why not give them the gift of time management? The Time Diet: Time Management for College Survival

http://youtu.be/TjzrH8ucZOA

3 Crucial Things Busy People Know

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“If you want something done, ask a busy person.” Even though that statement seems so backwards, we all know it to be true. People with packed schedules always find the time to squeeze in one more thing. But is it possible to harness that level of efficiency without a crammed calendar? Absolutely. You just have to learn the time management secrets that busy people know.

1. We have more time than we realize

Much like people on a diet account for each calorie they consume, busy people account for each minute of their time. They know about Parkinson’s Law, that work expands to fill the time we have available, and therefore don’t give themselves two hours to get ready in the morning, or an hour and half to check email. When they sit down to work, they work efficiently and with the utmost focus, eliminating Time Killers that try to make their task take longer.

2. Don’t wait to want to do something

Sometimes there are tasks on our list that we aren’t looking forward to doing. When we don’t want to do something, we put it off hoping we’ll feel more like doing it tomorrow…as though enjoyment of a task was a necessary prerequisite. Busy people don’t think like that. They know their time is limited and it’s better to just do undesirable tasks now and get them off their plates and off their minds.

3. Put your head down and start grazing

Busy people know that worrying about a big workload is a waste of resources. Remember the story about the two cows:

“Two cows were both faced with an immense pasture of grass to graze. The first cow looked around and said, ‘Oh my goodness. There is so much grass here. How will I ever get through it all?’ While the first cow stood and worried, the second cow said nothing, and put her head down and started grazing.”

If we spend less time worrying and more time doing we not only lower our stress level, but we find that worrying was taking up a lot of time and energy that we could have spent on being productive.

The point of working efficiently is not to make time for even more work. The point of working efficiently is to get our work done quickly, so we can have more time for the enjoyable Desserts in life that are truly important.

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Busy, Busy, Busy!

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Our attitude toward time management greatly affects our productivity, and that attitude starts developing very early. This week, I overheard an interesting conversation between two 11-year-olds. It went something like this:

Kid 1: “Oh my goodness, I am so tired, I don’t even know if I can do anything today. I got no sleep last night.”
Kid 2: “Oh I KNOW! I was up until 1:00am and I had to get up at 5:00am for school.”
Kid 1: “Well, I’ve actually been up until 2:00am all week”
Kid 2: “Well, I kind of have it worse because I have a teacher who gives way more homework than you do…”

I listened to this conversation in amusement as I pondered two things:

1) Imagine how brilliant these children would be if I actually thought they were using all of this time to study efficiently and

2) How perfectly they will fit into the adult world where this kind of dialogue happens on a routine basis.

The Busy Battle

I like to call these kinds of conversations “busy battles” and the one-upmanship that occurs during them is extremely detrimental to our time management. We all have lots to do. Some of us, admittedly, have more to do than others, but when we make it a point to focus on how little time we have and how busy we are to the point that it becomes a competition, we are only creating an environment that breeds negativity and seeks pity. These of course are not the conditions that lead to motivated and efficient work.

In this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Laura Vanderkam makes some interesting points on the subject. At times, she seems to insinuate that everyone is exaggerating their busy level, which I do not entirely agree with, but I do agree with her suggestion that we change our language. She writes, “Instead of saying ‘I don’t have time’ try saying ‘It’s not a priority’ and see how that feels.”

Saying that something is ‘not a priority’ shifts the control of our time back to us, not our schedules. In the competitive society we live in, it’s only natural that we’ll get sucked into a busy battle from time to time. Wouldn’t it be cool, however, if that battle were about things we’ve actually accomplished with our time and not simply how many hours we fill with things on a daily basis.

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Graduation is coming up! Check out the best and worst things to get a high school senior!
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Photo Credit: Sweet Crisis

Hurry Up And Slow Down

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When speaking of time management, people are always looking for ways to get things done faster. While it may seem counterintuitive, sometimes the best way to do things faster is to slow down.

I’m not talking about the metaphorical, “take time to smell the roses” kind of slow down. I mean to physically stop moving so fast.

 The Daily Rush

The other day, as I was bounding out of my car to get to my evening class, (coffee, laptop and books in tow,) I stopped myself.  Why in the world was I racing as though trying to catch a train? I wasn’t late, and the classroom wasn’t going anywhere without me.

I realized that I do this a lot. I go quickly up the stairs to my office, I switch lanes frequently in traffic trying to find the fastest one, and I get frustrated trying to navigate past “slow moving” people while running errands. I know I’m not the only one who lives my day in one giant rush.

We can tell ourselves that this haste is necessary to save time, but really, it’s not. The 5 seconds that you save by rushing to get somewhere are canceled out by the extra feeling of stress that rushing causes. There are three negative side effects of the stress of rushing:

1)      Sloppiness

2)      Forgetfulness

3)      Un-focused work

Move Purposefully

Instead of rushing around, slow down and embrace the calm notion that you’ll still get everything done today without the need to hurry from place to place. Don’t think of it as moving slowly. Think of it as moving purposefully. You have goals for your day and you’re not going to dawdle, but your daily life shouldn’t be akin to the 50-yard dash.

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Technorati Keywords Time Management, Efficiency,

Photo Credit: Michelle Meiklejohn

How to Get Ahead

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A slow workday is a great time to try to get ahead with your time management in hopes of easing the burden of your busy times. “Getting ahead” can mean doing things like organizing, planning, creating new systems and getting a jump on important Meat and Vegetable tasks. Think back to your most stressful weeks at work or school:
What were the tasks that took a majority of that time?
Is there anything you can do now that will make those tasks easier later?

I asked myself those questions this week.

I am a teacher and just finished the first week of school. I know that if I don’t start the year organized, I will never be able to catch up once the semester gets rolling. My husband works in travel and he knows that once the busy travel season hits, he’ll be knee-deep in work. We brainstormed some ways that we can use our slower times to ease the stress of our busy times. This is what we came up with:

Finishing Vegetable Tasks Early

This semester I am teaching an online class. I know that once the class starts, I will be spending a majority of my time grading and answering questions. To help ease that stress, I did as many of the organizational “Vegetable” tasks this class will require in advance so I won’t have to worry about them later. This included setting up all of my contact sheets, grading rubrics and supplemental materials. Now I won’t have to worry about all of that mid-semester!

Delegating to Technology

My husband works in travel. Each account his office processes has numerous deadlines to keep track of- deadlines for air, deadlines for hotels, deadlines for visas, etc…When many groups are traveling at once during the busy season, it can be a lot to keep track of by hand. That’s why this week, in their slower time, they set up a program that automatically calculates all of these deadlines and sets up reminders based on the expected travel date. They wouldn’t have had time to set this up during the busy season, but now their work will be much easier!

Organizing Differently

A large part of my time as a band teacher is taken up with keeping track of which students have their music and instrument on a given day and finding materials for them to use when they forget. There is nothing more frustrating than just beginning a rehearsal only to have to stop when a student walks in without his music. To fix this, I used my slow time to set up a binder for each instrument with a set of music for students to use when they forget. This binder also includes a piece of paper for them to sign their name when they need to use it. Now I don’t have to worry about stopping to mark down who forgot their materials. The students do that for me!

What things can YOU do early that help you in your busy times? Leave your idea as a comment! Maybe it will inspire someone else to do it too.

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Technorati Keywords: Time Management, Stress Management,

Photo Credit: Michael Marcol

Stop Being Busy

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One of the single biggest time management mistakes people make is to confuse being busy with being productive. When you are busy, all you are doing is filling time. You are working, so it gives the temporary illusion that you are getting something done, but you’re not.  If you want to actually make progress on a goal you have to be productive.

(Check out my video about being busy and productive Here)

When school let out last week, several of my colleagues asked me how I planned to keep busy this summer. I don’t plan to “keep busy” this summer. I plan to be productive.

This summer, I have many goals but my biggest one is to prepare my book for publication. My manuscript is finished but as I’m quickly finding out, writing the book is one of the easier parts of the publishing process! I’ve decided that the only way I’m going to finish this summer is to find time every day to devote to the book. I could spend this time reformatting all of my headings and playing with the cover font. I am technically “working” on the book, but I’m only being busy. I’m not taking concrete steps to move toward my goal. Sure, the cover font needs to be dealt with at some point, but the more pressing issue is finding an editor and researching publishing outlets. If I want to be productive on my book right now, I need to work toward those goals. (On that note, if you know of a trusted editor, let me know!)

Busy is Easy, Productive is Hard

The problem we have is that being busy is easy. Being productive is hard.   Here are three simple steps to make sure your work sessions are productive:

1)      Have a Goal- Without a goal, our work has no purpose. Have a concrete goal that you are working toward.

2)      Have a Plan- Your goal is worthless if you don’t have a plan to get there. What small thing can you do each day that will move you toward your goal?

3)      Re-assess Your Plan – After you create your plan, you can’t blindly continue down your path. If something isn’t working, re-assess and change your approach.

Remember, sometimes your plan won’t always work and it might feel like you are taking a step backwards, but that’s OK. A step backward means you’re learning from your mistakes and sometimes that’s part of being productive. When you’re busy, you’re only taking steps sideways. You’re still moving, but you’re not going anywhere. Only productivity actually moves you toward your goals.

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