Archives for February 2017

More Sanity-Saving Skills Every Busy Person Needs

February 27, 2017

This post is part 2 in the series Sanity-Saving Skills Every Busy Person Needs.

In the last 5 months, have you been mastering these 9 essential skills for busy people? If so, you’re now able to . . .

Sketch out a plan for every day.
Automate components of your life.
Estimate the amount of time you need to accomplish a task.
Delete, diminish, delegate, and delay non-urgent and non-essential items on your list.
Motivate yourself by matching activities to goals.
Optimize your time by double-dipping in your goals.
Batch like tasks.
Work with your energy levels.
Adapt to intrusions.

If you still feel too busy, focus on these five additional skills for seizing control of your time:
[Read more…]

8 Everyday Products You Can Make for Big Savings

February 21, 2017

There are some things you buy over and over again. And every time you buy them, you’re handing their manufacturer and your retailer a nice profit.

So it stands to reason that you can save a nice wad of cash by skipping the middle men and making those items yourself!

Think you can’t do it? These 8 everyday items are not only inexpensive but easy to make right at home! [Read more…]

Touch It Once

February 6, 2017

What’s one of the best ways to waste your time?

Handling things repeatedly.

Here’s an example:

You grab the mail from your mailbox as you’re arriving home from work, and you dump it on your coffee table. Later, you open up the mail, scan it, and drop it back in the pile. Another time, you realize it’s time to pay some bills, so you sift through your pile to pull out the bills you need.

You return to the pile the next day to dig out your friend’s wedding invitation so that you can R.S.V.P. Finally, company is on its way over, so you grab everything off the table to tidy up and dust. Maybe you recycle the junk mail . . . or maybe you hide the papers under your bed until your guests leave.

(You might forget about them at that point.)

With this method of handling your family’s paperwork, here are just some of the problems you’ve inadvertently created for yourself:

You’ve had to refamiliarize yourself with the contents of your mail every time you touch it.
You’ve set yourself up to miss or forget about important communication.
You’ve started a moving pile of clutter that invites more clutter.

So what’s the solution? [Read more…]