Setting out to succeed with your own business requires managing your time well. If not done properly, not only will you waste time and not efficiently achieve your goals, but you may also find yourself losing clients, money, and/or possibly even the business, itself.

Here are three simple steps you could take in order to manage your time more effectively.

Step One: Develop a Plan of Action

You need to know what you want to accomplish and the time frame in which you want it accomplished. Developing an overall plan of action will aid you in achieving your goal. So, begin by writing down your primary goal and then writing down what steps you need to take in order to realize that goal. It sounds so simple, but most people don’t do this and become distracted and waste an inordinate amount of time. So, do not make the mistake of disregarding this important point.

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© Remez Sasson for Remez Sasson Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: business, goals, plan of action, Time Management

Is your schedule jam-packed? Is your day overloaded with meetings, managing your business, planning for the future and day-to-day work? Do you get to the end of the day and wonder what you really accomplished?  Is your work day overflowing into your home life?
 
Do you wish you could get a handle on time management once and for all, so you could run your life rather than your life running you?

You’re not alone. Don’t let the march of time spin you into a tizzy of stress and desperation. Apply these top 7 secrets and watch your time expand to include what’s most important to you.

Secret 1: Prioritize—Put your “rocks” in first.
What’s most important to you? Building your business? Getting a promotion? Leaving work at 5 p.m.? You need to focus on your priorities—the things that matter the most to you. Identify your top priorities right now. These are the “rocks” that you put in your schedule before adding lower-priority items.

Secret 2: Target your action.
Do your action items line up with your priorities—the rocks—that you just defined? If they don’t, you’re spending your time on non-priorities. Once you determine what the rocks are, scan your vast to-do list. Hone in on 3 rocks that you will accomplish today. For example: (1) Work on new project, (2) Contact 10 past clients, (3) Have meeting with boss about promotion.

Go to work on these priority tasks. When you complete them address other to-dos. Don’t get side-tracked by unimportant things. Learn to prioritize and stick to your list. Be honest and productive about what you really need to get done now.

Secret 3: Focus your mind first.
Consider focusing your mind as a warm-up before stepping onto the field. When you wake up, do you hit the snooze bar 7 times? When you do finally get up, do you jump out of bed, gulp a cup of coffee and run out the door? How you start the morning is a reflection of how you live your life. Instead, start your day with 15 minutes in which you focus your mind in solitude. Your brain will sharpen and your productivity will increase just from this one step.

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© Remez Sasson for Remez Sasson Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Time Management

What do Valentine’s Day, Christmas, dating, dinner and a movie, marriage and couples have in common? Rituals. A ritual is defined as ‘any method of doing something in which the details are always faithfully repeated.’ To relate this to your life, rituals include: the time you wake up, how your brush your teeth, the route you take to work – you get the idea.

Rituals give life meaning and help us celebrate milestones in our lives. They offer security, stability and routine and a sense of calmness to an otherwise chaotic existence. Rituals date back thousands of years with the ancient Egyptians. Theirs was a culture seeped in traditions. Eating, drinking, bathing, hunting and burying the dead were a succession of rituals.

Over centuries, mankind lost the importance of rites. However, many of us in the 21st century are reconsidering traditions and adding them to our lives as we desperately seek meaning during this increasingly shallow and disconnected time.

If you want to relax, enjoy your life and feel more connected to others, consider adding rituals to your life.

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© Remez Sasson for Remez Sasson Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: improve life, rituals

How do you feel at the end of the day? Do you feel satisfied that you managed to do everything you wanted to do, or are you frustrated because you wasted your time?

Do you manage your time properly?

15 Time Management Tips

1. You need to know what exactly want do
2. You must set your priorities
3. You need to be willing to give up other activities.
4. You need to plan in advance.
5. Write down the things you wish to do today.
6. Be reasonable with your tasks, goals, time, number of goals, etc.
7. Take your time to do a good job. Don’t hurry. A good job is done slowly.
8. Weed out what is unessential.
9. Exercise some willpower.
10. Exercise some self-discipline.
11. Develop the persistence habit.
12. Focus on what you are doing.
13. Learn to ignore distractions.
14. Go through to the finish line what you start doing.
15. Feel happy upon the completion of any task or goal.

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© Remez Sasson for Remez Sasson Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Time Management, tips

Being “busy” can destroy your ability to get things done.

How many people do you know who are so busy being busy that they never seem to get anything worthwhile done? Does that describe you, maybe even just a little bit?
 
Being busy all the time, through necessity, is a curse. Being busy all the time, for the sake of it, is madness.

Continual busy-ness eventually leads to stress, particularly if results are minimal. You see, it will get to a point where something has to give way. It’s like filling a balloon with air. Eventually no more air will fit inside the balloon and it will do the only thing it can. It will burst.

It’s OK to have busy periods through each day, each week, each month and each year. However, you also need time to relax. Time to re-charge the batteries.

People who are continuously busy over long periods suffer from two main problems:

1. - they have difficulty saying “no” to anyone
2. - they have difficulty delegating tasks to others

Let’s look at each in turn.

First, those who cannot say “no.” I have a saying: “You can’t save the entire world.” No matter how good your intentions are, you cannot be everything to everyone.

Make a list of those who need and deserve your time. They are the one’s you should give priority to. Anyone else comes next – if you have the time to spare.

A wise man once said, “work always expands to fit available time.” It’s true. But it is only true if you allow it to happen.

You can always do the odd favor for someone on the odd occasion. Learn to say no in a nice way. Here is one such way: “If I get all my own work done, I will consider your request.” What does that really say? It says your work is important. If you get it done you will help. Naturally, if you cannot get it done you cannot help. It’s a soft way of saying no. Usually the asker will then go and find another person to ask.

By saying no you actually help other people to grow. Imagine if you always said yes to tying up your daughter’s shoe laces. If you never said no she would still be asking you to do it at twenty years of age. By saying no you make her learn to do it for herself. Remember the old saying about giving a hungry person a fish to eat versus teaching the hungry person how to catch their own fish to eat?

By saying no we can free up more time for ourselves and those who need or deserve our time the most. Do not become a slave.

Turning to the second problem, delegation – learn to enlist others to perform tasks that they are better equipped, or have more time, to do.

If you run all over the place attempting to do everything yourself you will never have sufficient time to do anything properly. Delegation is the art of a true leader. The secret to successful delegation is to build the importance of the task into the mind of the person you are delegating it to. Then, when they do it, thank them and praise them sincerely for the things they did well.

Don’t ever think you are irreplaceable, particularly at your employment. Somebody gave me a definition once of irreplaceability in the workforce. It went something like this: “Get a bucket of water, roll up your sleeve and thrust your arm into the water. Now pull your arm out. The time it takes for the water to settle back into position will be about the same time it will take to replace you!”

Learning to say no and being able to delegate will allow you to perform the tasks you really want to do and really need to do yourself at a much higher level of proficiency.

AL Williams wrote a book called “All You Can Do is All You Can Do But All You Can Do is Enough!” (ISBN: 0-8041-0499-9). Catchy title, isn’t it?

In his book, Williams says: “Don’t worry about things you can’t change. Focus on making your part of the world better, because when they click your lights out for the last time, you can’t have any regrets.”

Like I said earlier – you can’t save the whole world. Don’t even try.

If you want to be more productive, try to re-organize the way you plan your time. You can do this by:

1. - making a list of things requiring your attention
2. - prioritizing the list
3. - doing essential things first, non-essential things last
4. - after every third task, rewarding yourself in some small way
5. - continue to work your way through the list in sets of three

At the end of the day review your list. This is important because it will allow you to see how much you have done and achieved. Achievement will drive you forward to more achievement.

So, now you don’t have to be busy, busy, busy and get little done. You can just be busy achieving what you want.

The Author
Gary Simpson is a 7th Dan karate master who teaches self defense, motivation, self help and wealth building to students around the world through home study courses.
Visit his web site MotivationSelfEsteem.com

© Remez Sasson for Remez Sasson Blog on Self Improvement and Spiritual Growth, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: being busy, being busy versus being productive, saying no