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time management

Who Plans For Anything?

February 24, 2013 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

Writing-book

 

Back in October, I sat down with my Personal Planning Tool (yes, even though I wrote it, I do indeed use it).

And after I worked through the entire thing, reflecting on what worked and didn’t work in 2012 and what I’d like to do differently in 2013, I promptly put it in a pile of papers and didn’t look at it until this past week, when I re-discovered it as I was cleaning off my desk.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I reviewed the document and…

In four months, I had accomplished almost all of the things I hoped to do for the entire year.

I was pretty much gobsmacked. Could it really be possible?

Oh, it’s not like I set easy goals for myself, sugar. I stretched. I aimed high. For instance, I threw out what felt like a big number on monthly income, and a big number for increased traffic to my blog.

And I got ’em.

In the Career area I set out five goals, and four of them have happened. I am astonished to say that the fifth one is halfway done. I did both my key action items, too.

Yep, in every area – Career, Finances, Relationships, Health – there’s been surprising progress.

And here’s the kicker – which I am going to admit to you, right here and right now: I haven’t really been paying attention.

I haven’t been obsessing, or checking, or even really focusing. In fact, I’d completely forgotten where I’d put the worksheet.

My goals were only in my consciousness because I had written them down, and given myself permission to go get them.

Which is probably the single most important thing I want you to know today:

The greatest gift you can give yourself is the courage to have goals.

Know your “why” around them.

Invite them into your life.

Write them down.

And then allow your better self to take the steps needed to get those things done.

Perhaps even while you are doing other things (or maybe just think you are), your intentions will be running like a background program, setting up real success in your life.

This week, as I looked over my plan, I was filled with a gratifying sense of accomplishment. I did what I said I would do – which feels like progress – and the reason I’m doing it feels entirely validated.

I’d like you to know that feeling, too.

Thoreau famously said “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”, and my guess is that those guys didn’t make a plan and put it away, only to realize later that they had achieved precisely what they set out to achieve.

Personal power, resilience and fulfillment trump desperation every time, darlings. Every time.

Go ahead. Give it a try. You can download the 2013 Personal Planning Tool PDF yourself. I wonder what you will get done in the next few months…while you aren’t even paying attention.

Oh, by the way, the Personal Planning Tool asks for a theme song for 2013. Mine? Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle.

It’s fun to be soaring, baby. Wanna do it together?

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Career Coaching, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Uncategorized, WiseWork Tagged With: accomplishments, goal setting, goals, Personal Planning Tool, planning, time management

Get Yourself Organized

April 12, 2008 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment


Just can’t seem to get organized? Feeling a bit out of control? A little swamped?

Join the club.

And, it’s a mighty big club.

Organization may the single most problematic task for most of us, according to my completely unscientific poll of clients, friends and family. Oh, and the mailman. So, how about some tips on how to get organized?

Let me be frank here: if other people think you are disorganized but you are fine with how you live, then it’s not a problem. For you. Of course, if you have 25 years of old newspapers stacked ceiling high, 85 cats and 43 cases of yams stacked in untidy pyramids throughout your house, you might want to consider that there’s a problem… But it’s up to you.

If your disorganization makes you late — paying bills, keeping appointments, forgetting to take medication — or prevents you from being truly happy, then you need to make some changes. Here’s how:

Identify the problem. Take a notebook and walk around your home, or your office, and make a list of the areas that need attention. Be specific. “Hall closet” or “supply closet”, rather than “whole house” or “everything”. “Calendar” or “paying bills”, rather than “time” or “money”. Got it? Once you can identify the problem areas, you can make a plan to begin to attend to them. Cherry-pick the easiest task first, and if none of them seem easy, then pick the area where getting organized is going to have the biggest impact.

Break each problem area down into teeny-tiny little steps. For instance, take “paying bills”. What’s the optimal bill-paying process? Let’s write it down. OK. The mail comes. What do you have to do? Get the mail out of the box. Next? Sort the mail. Pull out the bills. Then what? Put them in a file folder? Pay them on the spot? What feels best for you? No, not throwing them into the trash, as much as you’re tempted. (Hey, I know your type.) Remember, what you resist persists, so if you hate paying bills and put it off, and off, and off, the problem will only get worse. So, make it as easy and painless as possible. And if you really, really can’t get the task done, outsource it — to your spouse, your eldest child, or hire a part-time personal assistant.

Tackle one problem at a time. We get overwhelmed when we try to pay the bills, organize the files, recast the calendar and write a strategic plan — all within the same 20 minute time period. Setting yourself up for failure, that is. Take one project at a time (that pesky “Hall closet”) and give yourself a realistic time frame for finishing it — even if that realistic time frame is three weeks. Remember, if you hit the wall on your project, that’s OK. Just keep on making teeny-tiny steps toward progress every day and soon enough the daggone closet will be tidy. That’s when you get to execute the very best tip:

Give yourself a reward. Honest. Give yourself something nice for having to do such a boring/nasty/unpleasant task. Make it something you look forward to — a solid hour of Guitar Hero, for instance; or, a long chat with your best friend. Link the reward with the action, Pavlov-style, and you will begin to look forward to knocking other tasks off your list.

The reward I love is free time. I figure that if I knock a project off thoroughly and don’t have to come back to it, I can then loaf absolutely guilt-free. Honey, talk about an incentive! Find the reward that means as much to you and you’ll find tackling overwhelming organizational tasks a snap.

Filed Under: Career Coaching, Clarity, Happier Living Tagged With: cleaning, clutter, control, de-cluttering, getting organized, happiness, life coach, organization, stress, time management

Email Triage

October 28, 2007 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment


Week before last I wrote about In-box Management and while many of you liked my highly figurative example of dealing with the spam between your ears, most of you would like tips to deal with the actual deluge of email you have to face on a daily basis.

I am glad to oblige. Let’s get started.

The problem with email is twofold. First, there’s too much of it in your in-box (we’ll call that “inflow”) and, second, you have to decide what to do with it (“outflow”).

In medicine, “triage” is used to identify and manage the most acute cases, those in need of immediate attention. Guess what? Triage can also be used to manage your email effectively. All you have to do is identify what’s most important, and deal with that first. Sounds simple enough, right?

Here are three tips to triage Inflow:

1) Have three different email accounts. One is your primary business email account. This is the account on your business card, and the one you give to professionals with whom you network. Your second account is for personal use — this is the one you give your mother, your aunt Suzy, your layout cousin Frank and others. The third account is the one you use for online ordering, online games, online quizzes, whatever. This third account is your spam magnet, and will draw most of the junk. Then, you can spend quality time on your business email, some time on the family email and little or no time on the junk email.

2) Use email folders. Many email programs will allow you to change your settings so that email from a specific sender, or containing specific keywords, can be automatically directed into a folder. For instance, if you are working on a project with Tom Smith, you can specify that all messages containing his email address go into a Tom Smith folder. That makes staying on top of the project a breeze! Likewise, you can make all email containing Words You Would Have Gotten Smacked For Using In Front Of Your Mother go right into the trash. Setting up a priority system with your email folders can help you spend time on what’s acutely important, and save the marginally important for another time.

3) Don’t read your email all day long. It’s a trap to have your email browser open all the time. If you are old enough, you remember when fax machines first hit the office. In my office, every time the fax machine signaled it had an incoming message the entire team gathered around to watch it come through. Who would it be for? What would it say? How important I would be if the fax was for ME! Over time, the novelty of faxes wore off (thank goodness), and we settled down to work. Today, the omnipresence of incoming messages means there is little time to actually think, or create, or evaluate. I suggest you check your email first thing in the morning, mid-day, at the end of the day. I know, I know — you work in a culture that prizes always being available. Well, that’s an awful lot like standing around watching a fax come in. Think of it this way: setting boundaries around reading your email gives you time to actually work!

Now, to Outflow. In my Stress Management class, I give a series of questions to ask when feeling stressed about a task. The very same questions can be applied to your email: Can I eliminate this? Can I do it another time? Can someone else do it?

Back in the dark ages (even before the fax machine, if you can believe it) there was an organizational school of thought best summed up by the phrase: “Touch it once.” The idea being that a letter came in through the in-box on your desk (how quaint) and the goal was to touch it once — read it and decide whether it needed to be filed, thrown out or acted upon. If it needed to be acted upon, you decided that before you put the paper down — you wrote someone else’s name on it and put it in the out-box, you called someone on the telephone to deal with it, or you wrote a new memo suggesting a meeting to settle the matter. Whatever you did, you didn’t let paper hang around your in-box.

That’s a good rule of thumb with virtual paper, too. Don’t use your email in-box as a filing cabinet. Read the message; decide to do something with it or delete it; delegate it to someone else; call a meeting; print it out and post it anonymously on the employee bulletin board. Whatever you do, just touch it once, do something, and let it go.

The immediacy of email creates a false sense of importance. Only you can triage your email — only you can decide what’s important and needs immediate attention, and what’s less critical and can wait. Many things clamor for your attention during the day — honey, if you don’t decide what matters, the clamor decides for you.

And the clamor doesn’t always know what’s best for you.

Filed Under: Happier Living Tagged With: clutter, coach, email, email overwhelm, life, organization, stress, time management, triage, work

Need More Time?

June 9, 2007 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment


Need more time? Have enough time to get everything done? Are there things that remain on your to-do list — for years? Stuff you never get around to tackling, oh, like exercising, finding a new job or actually having friends?

It’s a modern predicament many of us face. But here’s a strategy that really works: simply think about your time differently.

Imagine you have 100 units of energy to spend each day. You can’t take from yesterday, because those 100 units are gone. You can’t borrow from tomorrow, because those units belong to tomorrow.

You’ve just got 100 to use today. How will you allocate them?

First, you have to assess how you’re spending your time. Take a pen and paper (or a crayon and the back of an envelope, or a Sharpie and a docile housepet) and write down everything you did yesterday. Start with what time you woke up, when you got out of bed, what you did next, and next, and next — all the way to the time you went to sleep.

Now, remember: how you use your time reveals your true priorities. How did you use your time yesterday? What does that reveal about your priorities?

Let’s say you have a priority to find a new job, but allocated no energy to that pursuit yesterday (or the day before, or the day before). Could it be that you really don’t want a new job — but that your spouse is pressuring you to make more money? Or, your daddy said you’d be successful when you made regional manager, but you’d rather not do sales at all?

When you really want something, you’ll allocate energy to it. Plain and simple.

Friends, it is also possible to use “lack of time” as a way to avoid taking action, or to avoid something unpleasant. If you think that’s the case, look at the priority you allegedly want to pursue. Do you really want it? Are you avoiding something? Is the priority yours? Or someone else’s?

A priority that someone else places upon you is called a “should” — such as: you should always put ketchup in a dish, not serve it in the bottle at dinner time; you should be a doctor and make a ton of money; you should have a housekeeper; you shouldn’t have a housekeeper; you should keep your house tidy at all times; you should be thinner, smarter, hotter or blonder.

When really all you should be is — you. Shoulds limit us. They force us to serve another person’s priorities rather than our own. We depart from who we are in an effort to meet someone else’s needs — which may not allow us to be our best. That, my friends, is the path to unhappiness. Let’s all focus on being happy, and eliminate shoulds. Agreed?

If you look at how you spent your 100 units of energy yesterday and realize that another person took 70 units, they better have a darn good reason. Most of us are ready to help another person in crisis — but when that crisis goes on for weeks, months, years, you need to take a hard look and ask yourself whether the energy suck is keeping you from reaching your own priorities. If so, set some boundaries and re-shift your energy units to serve you better.

You have 100 units of energy to spend today. How will you use them to support your priorities?

Filed Under: Career Coaching, Clarity Tagged With: energy, get what you want, reframing thoughts, shoulds, time log, time management, workplace issues

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