We are learning this week about how to develop greater self-control as part of my series, Thriving in God's Garden. It is based on the fruit of the Spirit, which can be found in Galatians 5:22. Today, I would like to address the issue of time management.
Time can be a heavy burden.
I don't think I've ever met any active adult who tells me that they have too much time on their hands. Children may claim to be bored, and the elderly may feel the hours dragging in the loneliness of nursing homes, but the rest of us never seem to be able to keep up with all of the demands made upon us in the limited hours we have to work each day.
King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3:1 (NIV), There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. Since this Biblical truth applies to all of us, it stands to reason that we should all be figuring out how to best manage our time to carry out the activities that God has planned for us.
Time can become a heavy burden if we don't make daily plans to use it wisely. We can either fritter it away or fill it with too many activities. Both extremes will leave us feeling dissatisfied at the end of the day.
Take control of time, or it will control you.
I have found that the best way to manage my time is to chart out my day the night before. I make a list of all the things I need to do at home, the errands I need to run, and the phone calls I must make. Before I go to sleep, I put my list in order and note a time frame for completing each task.
While I'm sleeping, my mind is working on tomorrow's tasks. When I do this, I find myself waking up with an answer to a question, or I dream about characters and plot twists for my novels.
Live by your list.
Writing a list the night before makes the entire day flow more smoothly. I live by my list, checking off each task and bearing in mind how much time I have remaining before I must move on to the next one.
I rarely leave home without my list. If I forget to take it with me, I inevitaby wander aimlessly through stores, unaware of the time or of the list of tasks that need to be accomplished.
Perhaps all of this list-making sounds a bit controlling. Maybe some of you prefer to live more vicariously in the moment. That's great, provided you actually get anything accomplished.
I suffered a closed-head injury a number of years ago that left me with deficits in the area of the brain that governs management of numerous tasks. Without my lists, I'm lost. Many people who suffer from ADHD or PTSD have similar issues with time management.
But I don't see this need for lists as a stumbling block in my life. In fact, I'm glad that God allowed me to brain myself. At the end of the day, I can look at my lists and feel really terrific about all that I've accomplished. Without my lists, I can't remember what I've done.
If I keep my lists in a journal, I have a long record of how I filled my days. I enjoy going back through my journals to see that I actually did something worthwhile with my time.
Expect interruptions and delays.
If you've ever flown on a jet, you know that there are often delays which can leave you stranded in airports or hotels in strange cities far from home. Like airline delays, our daily schedules can be delayed by numerous interruptions, such as phone calls, requests for help from friends, the dog running off, or a kid scraping a knee.
If we plan extra margins of time around all of our scheduled activities, we will arrive at the end of the day feeling less stressed. In other words, if we think it will take an hour to do the grocery shopping, we should plan to take an hour and a half, just in case the clerk is slow, traffic is backed up, or we spend too long selecting a birthday card or trying on clothes.
Prioritize your tasks.
For those of us who are over-achievers, the habit of making lists can get us into trouble. I may go into the kitchen to write a grocery list, and I wind up making a separate list of all the things in the room that need attention...the knife drawer needs cleaning out, the curtains need washing, the light bulb is burned out, and so on. That leads me to the next room, and the next, until I've got a fistful of lists, each several pages long. How do I get all of this done in one day?
The answer is that I don't! I must decide whether it is more important to wash the curtains or to buy groceries. If I don't have time today to do both, I can set aside my kitchen-maintenance list until another day when I have fewer demands on my time.
Learn to say NO!
Many people feel harassed by the clock, because they don't know how to say no. Every time someone makes a request of their time, they say yes. At first, they feel good about themselves, because they are helping someone else. But after a while, they begin to resent people asking for help. They develop burn-out in their careers, their volunteer work, and their marriages, simply because they say yes to everything.
If you're stretched too thin because you've agreed to help everyone who has ever asked you, start backing out of some of your commitments. Remind yourself that you're giving another person the opportunity to be helpful in your place, and you're making a better life for yourself.
Live on your own time one day every week.
I believe it is imperative for all of us to carve out a little time each week to just be. When Joe and I first got married, we used to go to a park after church and lie down on a blanket. We listened to the children laughing on the playground, watched the clouds floating by overhead, or closed our eyes and snoozed. This habit really helped us to recharge our batteries for the week ahead.
God commands us to rest on the Lord's day, and I believe there is great wisdom in following this law. Rest isn't just about sleeping. It's about forgetting the time, the lists, and all of the responsibilities that belong to the rest of the week.
Today's Challenge
How are you doing with time management? Are you making lists, planning your time, working your list, providing extra margins of time for interruptions, prioritizing tasks, resistng the urge to over-commit, and resting one day each week? Try following these suggestions next week and send me a comment to let me know if this helps you to be more self-controlled.
Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Redefine Time
Jack Canfield's Success Principle #40
Today, we learn about how Jack Canfield divides his time between work, family, and recreation. He suggests three types of days: Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation Days.
Best Results Days
To achieve our best results, we need to spend at least 80% of our time working within our core genuius. Remember, our core genius means that we're working at something we love so much, we hardly feel like charging people for it. On a Best Results Day, we're achieving the highest payoffs for the amount of time we work.
A Best Results Day for me would be one spent writing, editing, quilting, speaking, or coaching other women. The payoff could be monetary, but it can also be the fulfillment of a dream. Hearing from a reader that I've changed her life for the better is a wonderful form of payment for me. Having plenty of money is nice, but serving God's purpose for my life is even better.
Preparation Days
When we prepare ourselves for more Best Results Days, we are learning a new skill, locating a better resource, training our team, or delegating tasks to others.
Preparation Days for me would include networking with other published authors, taking classes to learn better methods for helping women to thrive, attending a writers' conference, reading books such as The Success Principles, or attending a quilt show.
Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days
An R & R Day extends from midnight to midnight. It involves absolutely no work-related activity of any kind: no business-related meetings, phone calls, cell phone calls, e-mails, text messages, or reading. We are not availabe to our co-workers, clients, or students.
By setting strict boundaries around our R & R Days, we actually help others to become more self-reliant. If we aren't there to rescue them when a problem arises, they become more creative and self-confident.
Jack believes that all R & R Days do not include children, either. He suggests that we hire a babysitter, send the kids to visit relatives, or swap child care with neighbors and friends.
I think this is unrealistic. I could never have afforded that much child care, and I wouldn't have wanted to be away from my children that much. I do believe that parents need some time away from their kids, but not on every single R & R Day of the year.
Jack believes that it should be every person's goal to have 150 days off every year. By simply taking every weekend off from work, we immediately free up 104 days of rest. Adding another 46 days off in the form of long weekends, holiday weeks, and 2-week vacations brings our total up to 150 days without work.
For most women reading this, I can imagine them rolling their eyes at this one. There's an old saying: A man can work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done. We may be able to curtail the business-related meetings, phone calls, emails, and reading; but we certainly cannot skip doing housework, cooking, and laundry that often. Our homes would be disaster areas, and the kids would be committing mutiny.
A wise minister's wife with eight children once told me that she had a rule about rest: no matter how much work was not completed by 7:00 in the evening, it would just have to wait for the next day. She headed for her recliner in the living room, where no children were allowed to disturb her for two hours. She spent the time reading and meditating while her husband put the kids to bed.
Joe and I have been completely out of balance in the area of R & R for years. We went to stay one night in a hotel recently when I needed to see a doctor out of state. I realized that it was the first time he and I had been alone in a hotel since our honeymoon! We have only taken one week-long vacation in ten years, and it was an exhausting disaster with our adopted daughter failing to adjust to the daily changes in her schedule.
The Travel Industry Association of America reported that the average vacation lasted 7.1 days in 1997. By 2001, it was down to 4.1 days. That report is 10 years old. I wonder how many people even take vacations anymore. Are others like we are, unable to go places due to a lack of funds? Are they tied down to two jobs, as Joe is, because our medical expenses consistently drain our reserves?
Our most pressing goal for 2011 is to work less. When we work too much, we experience burn-out, and nothing is pleasurable anymore. Taking more R & R Days can actually help us to work more efficiently, because rest helps us to see things more clearly and creatively.
Like many of Jack's success principles, this one is not new. God gave the Israelites the following command concerning rest: "For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord." (Ex 31:15) If we are in the habit of over-working, we can begin the new year by making sure that we at least rest on the Lord's day.
Today's Challenge
Take the following steps to achieve more Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days:
1) Schedule four Preparation Days during 2011 to increase the productivity of your core genius.
2) Clear your 2011 calendar of activities that steal away time from your core genius so that you can focus on working within your life's purpose. You'll achieve far more Best Results Days by doing so.
3) Schedule at least four vacations in 2011, to include either long weekends or week-long vacations. If you don't plan them, they won't happen.
Start today to control your time. You'll be amazed by the changes in your productivity and happiness.
Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com
Today, we learn about how Jack Canfield divides his time between work, family, and recreation. He suggests three types of days: Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation Days.
Best Results Days
To achieve our best results, we need to spend at least 80% of our time working within our core genuius. Remember, our core genius means that we're working at something we love so much, we hardly feel like charging people for it. On a Best Results Day, we're achieving the highest payoffs for the amount of time we work.
A Best Results Day for me would be one spent writing, editing, quilting, speaking, or coaching other women. The payoff could be monetary, but it can also be the fulfillment of a dream. Hearing from a reader that I've changed her life for the better is a wonderful form of payment for me. Having plenty of money is nice, but serving God's purpose for my life is even better.
Preparation Days
When we prepare ourselves for more Best Results Days, we are learning a new skill, locating a better resource, training our team, or delegating tasks to others.
Preparation Days for me would include networking with other published authors, taking classes to learn better methods for helping women to thrive, attending a writers' conference, reading books such as The Success Principles, or attending a quilt show.
Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days
An R & R Day extends from midnight to midnight. It involves absolutely no work-related activity of any kind: no business-related meetings, phone calls, cell phone calls, e-mails, text messages, or reading. We are not availabe to our co-workers, clients, or students.
By setting strict boundaries around our R & R Days, we actually help others to become more self-reliant. If we aren't there to rescue them when a problem arises, they become more creative and self-confident.
Jack believes that all R & R Days do not include children, either. He suggests that we hire a babysitter, send the kids to visit relatives, or swap child care with neighbors and friends.
I think this is unrealistic. I could never have afforded that much child care, and I wouldn't have wanted to be away from my children that much. I do believe that parents need some time away from their kids, but not on every single R & R Day of the year.
Jack believes that it should be every person's goal to have 150 days off every year. By simply taking every weekend off from work, we immediately free up 104 days of rest. Adding another 46 days off in the form of long weekends, holiday weeks, and 2-week vacations brings our total up to 150 days without work.
For most women reading this, I can imagine them rolling their eyes at this one. There's an old saying: A man can work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done. We may be able to curtail the business-related meetings, phone calls, emails, and reading; but we certainly cannot skip doing housework, cooking, and laundry that often. Our homes would be disaster areas, and the kids would be committing mutiny.
A wise minister's wife with eight children once told me that she had a rule about rest: no matter how much work was not completed by 7:00 in the evening, it would just have to wait for the next day. She headed for her recliner in the living room, where no children were allowed to disturb her for two hours. She spent the time reading and meditating while her husband put the kids to bed.
Joe and I have been completely out of balance in the area of R & R for years. We went to stay one night in a hotel recently when I needed to see a doctor out of state. I realized that it was the first time he and I had been alone in a hotel since our honeymoon! We have only taken one week-long vacation in ten years, and it was an exhausting disaster with our adopted daughter failing to adjust to the daily changes in her schedule.
The Travel Industry Association of America reported that the average vacation lasted 7.1 days in 1997. By 2001, it was down to 4.1 days. That report is 10 years old. I wonder how many people even take vacations anymore. Are others like we are, unable to go places due to a lack of funds? Are they tied down to two jobs, as Joe is, because our medical expenses consistently drain our reserves?
Our most pressing goal for 2011 is to work less. When we work too much, we experience burn-out, and nothing is pleasurable anymore. Taking more R & R Days can actually help us to work more efficiently, because rest helps us to see things more clearly and creatively.
Like many of Jack's success principles, this one is not new. God gave the Israelites the following command concerning rest: "For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord." (Ex 31:15) If we are in the habit of over-working, we can begin the new year by making sure that we at least rest on the Lord's day.
Today's Challenge
Take the following steps to achieve more Best Results Days, Preparation Days, and Rest and Recreation (R & R) Days:
1) Schedule four Preparation Days during 2011 to increase the productivity of your core genius.
2) Clear your 2011 calendar of activities that steal away time from your core genius so that you can focus on working within your life's purpose. You'll achieve far more Best Results Days by doing so.
3) Schedule at least four vacations in 2011, to include either long weekends or week-long vacations. If you don't plan them, they won't happen.
Start today to control your time. You'll be amazed by the changes in your productivity and happiness.
Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com
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