WIZE TIME MANAGEMENT

How can you ever possible measure something you’ve never seen?

This would seem to be a logical question.  However, in the previous post about specificity, you can easily see that any goal is actually measurable when you are clear about exactly what you want.

I used a car example.  Once you know all the details of the car, you can go online and find out what a car with those specific attributes will cost.  That’s your measurable – the cost of the car.  You know that when you have saved that much money, you can buy the car and your goal of owning that car is done – you’ve achieved it!  One of the steps will be easy to determine:  how much will you have to save each month and for how many months in order to attain that goal?

It’s the same with any goal you set.  Once the specifics have been worked out, the measurable can usually be quite easy to determine.

Do you think you can do it? Of course – it all starts with the details in the first part of SMART goal setting.

Lorraine Arams

http://www.wizeimte.com

Last week, I promised I would begin a series on the “foundational” pieces to time management.  This will be the first of those blogs.

This series will come to you on Mondays.  Wednesdays and Friday blogs will dedicated to time management tips, articles, events, news events and guest blogs.

I have a radio show on Blog Talk Radio too now.  It’s a new medium for me and quite interesting.  I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.  You might want to tune in to the programs sometimes.

Let’s get started on the foundational processes in time management.  I have coined the phrase, “you-centered time management”. Why would I call it that?  Because I’ve come to realize that if we don’t change our approach to how we use our time, we won’t achieve what we want in our lives.   But if we don’t know what we truly want in the first place, we can’t use our time wisely and therefore all attempts to change how we manage our time will result in a hodgepodge of tried and failed attempts at constructing the life we want.  Makes sense, doesn’t it, therefore to “dig up” from a psyche what we truly want in the first place.

Since only 3% of the population is said to achieve their goals, that leaves a whopping 97% of the people in this world who could but are not attaining the life they want.  We can change that and, if you’re interested, come along for the trip.

I would truly love to have your feedback – do keep me posted on your progress, ask me questions and let me know the discoveries you make along the way –

How Do You Put the “You” in Time Management?

It sound very easy at first glance.  It’s not.  Why?  Because we have been conditioned to:

• take advice
• do what others want us to do
• recreate other people’s successes in order to achieve our own
• want to please others’ and meet their expectations of us
• want others to like us
• and a host of other reasons why we have never really thought of time as our own – it’s been a calendar of things to do for a variety of purposes.  We have failed to first identify what we really want

What do you really, really, really want?  You likely know what it is but perhaps it’s buried so deep, it’s difficult to bring it forward.

For instance, when you were a child, you really loved to paint pictures – animals were your favorite subjects.  But then as you were growing up, adults told you that being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher was the way to go because you could make a good living doing those jobs and, in some cases, the benefits were excellent.  When you graduated high school, you took the “safe route” and dropped your love of painting though you’ve always been drawn to art classes, art exhibitions, and wherever else you could look at paintings.    Eventually, you got a job, created a family and your favorite thing to do became more and more buried.  It’s the past.  We can’t do anything about it now.  However, we can now start the process of looking for what you want.

I’ll help you through this process by asking a lot of questions and eventually, at some point, you’ll have a picture of what you want.  We’ll start with money since it is one of the more serious aspects of your life.

Here are 3 questions to get this process underway.

I would suggest getting a wire-bound notebook – small or large – doesn’t matter but something you like – the color, the paper, the texture – and begin writing down your answers.  Believe me, it’ll all come together even if at first it seems it’s going nowhere and you’ve done this so many times without success.   If you put in the work, it’ll come because what we are striving for here is our innate, personal understanding of our foundational core – “who am I”.

The only point we are trying to get to here is you understanding you thoroughly. Once you understand yourself thoroughly, managing your time will become a flow like a river.  You’ll know exactly what to say yes to and what to say no to – because you’ll know where you’re heading – much like the pioneers who headed West – they didn’t know the name of the place where they would land but they knew what they wanted – to own their own land and build a life in which their children would get an education, they would be free to practice whatever religion they chose and they would have a chance at a better life.  All they knew was land was available in the West – where exactly, no one really knew.

Money – understand what money means in your life – what does money mean to you?

1.  What does money mean to you?

2.  How do you treat your money?

3.  What is your relationship with money – how much of it do you really, truly need to feel satisfied?

Think hard on these questions – your first answer might be a little “flippant”. I want you to get to a point inside yourself where you have that gut feeling you now understand money for yourself – not dollars and cents – not investments – not savings – what is money to you?  From these 3 questions, I would like for you to write a 60-word paragraph to answer these questions until you completely understand internally how you feel about money.  You likely have to write and rewrite this 60-word paragraph over and over and over again to get the paragraph to contain 60 words.  If you know something really well, you can express it in 60 words and remember it because it becomes internalized as you write and rewrite it.  You’ll change your answers to the questions often and you’ll reword your paragraph many times until there is a point where the paragraph feels right – it is the picture of money to you.  Keep these thoughts and ideas very private because everyone will have an opinion of what you’re writing down - you’re not interested in their opinion!

You have a week to do this – work on it a little every day – the point here is to get to understanding -putting the “you” in time management – putting the “you” into your own life!

Lorraine Arams

http://www.wizetime.com

Let’s review what we talked about this week regarding goal setting.

How are you doing?

Did you get some interesting insights on how to “tweak” your goal setting process or are you encouraged to set goals even if you have never done it before or failed to reach goals you had once set?

I started on the first day talking about Missing Link – a free product that is available to you on my website.  This system is actually a “new twist on an old theme” – taking what is generally accepted as the right way to set goals and adding one crucial component to the mix:  time management.  All you need do is visit my site and you’ll find the way to access that down loadable product.  It might just be the key that finally gets you to achieving a goal and spurs you on to set more goals and achieve them too.    Does Setting a Goal Get you the Result you Want?

Then   I introduced you to some supporting material from Zig Ziglar.  In Missing Link, there are steps to be taken.  Zig Ziglar points to the fact that assessing what the obstacles are and identifying the people who can help us decide what those steps might be.  And, of course, as in Missing Link – “What’s in it for me” is ever so important to achieving goals – you won’t unless you  Goal Setting – are you missing these important steps?  Likely!

And finally in the last blog, I introduced you to the visual component of setting goals. It’s a tool that is seldom recommended in goal setting exercises but which is very important in the goal setting process – it’s much easier to believe in something when you can see it – Best Tool to Help You Set Goals Visually -and it’s much easier to understand the steps to take, when to take them and how each step builds on the other.

We all love to play – and this element certainly adds the playful element to setting and achieving goals.  The company I recommended offered you the best of all – the inventor of mind mapping – who can explain it better than the person who created it?  The video tells the story and if you try the system, you’ll see how all the color truly makes it a magnificent way to build the map!  Best of all, you can work on it either on the computer or on paper – either way or both ways is very helpful.

I hope you learned some new things and I hope you can now see how blending these components combined with your own discipline and your belief in yourself, can get you on the right track to achieving your goals, getting what you want and realizing long-held dreams!

Lorraine Arams
Missing Link at http://www.wizetime.com

Our great grandmothers understood good time management practices long before there were books and tapes.  Lots of work had to get done, most of it manually.

There were no automatic washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, cell phones, computers or, for some, no electricity.  Every single task contained within it several smaller tasks to achieve it.  For instance, to iron, the wood had to be gathered, a fire lit in the wood burning stove, the irons heated before any ironing could begin.

If you think you don’t have time today, imagine what it was like then!

What could your great grandmother teach you about time management?  To prevent pile ups!

Because of the labor intensity in each task, it was imperative that the work flowed.   Imagine burning wood in the stove and heating up the irons when the clothes hadn’t been washed yet!

They designated certain tasks to certain days – clothes washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, floor washing on Wednesday, baking on Thursday, and so on – each day had a main task and each week that task was completed.

Today, we can and should do the same. In each job or business, there are certain tasks which need to be done each and every week – contacting potential clients, creating reports, making sales calls, networking, accounting, filing, etc.

We can take our regular tasks and assign them a day – the most logical day to get the tasks completed,  assign an appropriate time slot and make it a recurring event in our electronic calendars such in Outlook in Microsoft.

Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version)Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version)

How does this help us? It:

• creates a routine – we know what we need to get done each day of the week
• keeps us on target for all the “chores” that are imperative to “smooth operations”
• clears our minds – it’s there on our calendars every week and every week it gets done.  We don’t have to worry about forgetting to do it and we keep the routine tasks up-to-date.  If anything happens such as getting sick, it won’t take much to catch up
• prevents pile ups!
  
• AND the stress is lowered immensely – we don’t have to burn the midnight oil to catch up to a series of overdue reports or overdue billing or overdue sales – we’re on top of our essentials!

Great grandmothers had it together – by necessity – we can learn from from them.

Give it try it – you might like it!  Many people in my small business workshops have adopted this system and it works well.  Often it’s the routine tasks which trip us up – we’ll get it done tomorrow and tomorrow never arrives.

Lorraine Arams
Set some goals – a new system
complimentary for you -

http://www.wizetime.com