Your Time Archives - Page 8 of 8

Getting Started with Time Management: Create a Time Map

This post is part 4 in the series Getting Started with Time Management.

You now have a comprehensive list of what you need to do, what you want to do, and estimates for each activity. You’ve also got documentation on your where your time currently goes. It’s time to put it all together!

Enter the time map.

Some people refer to this same tool as a time budget, drawing a nice analogy between planning your time and planning your spending. Either way, the concept is the same — you plan out your day or week by creating a personalized schedule for yourself. Here’s the process: [Read more…]

Getting Started with Time Management: Track Your Time

This post is part 3 in the series Getting Started with Time Management.

At this point, you’ve performed a brain dump of every activity in your life (and the activities you’d like to include in your life) and have quite possibly recoiled in horror at the magnitude of it all. Before we attempt to bring order to the chaotic — and pages long — list, we need to do one more step. In the first post of this series, I said this:

To get on top of your schedule, you need to know what you have, what you don’t have, and what you need. [Tweet.]

Consider this: You want to organize your disaster of a closet. It currently has little to no structure at all, so you know you’ll need to get some closet rods, shelves, bins, and other supplies. Before you make your purchases, you write down a list of things you’d like to put in your closet and things you remember storing there. If you stop there and skip off to The Container Store without looking in your closet, you’re in for trouble. You’ll invariably find 30 clothing items more than you thought you had, along with four-foot stuffed Pooh. Then it’s back to The Container Store for you . . . with less skipping this time.

Likewise, while it’s a critical starting point and gets you flying down the path to success, it’s not enough to write down what you want in your schedule, what you recall having in your schedule, and what amount of time you estimate that each of those activities occupies. In order to create a time management plan that truly works for you, you need to see what’s really occupying your time and how long those tasks are really taking. [Read more…]

Quick Tip: Shrinking Your To-Do List

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Read my policy here.

Floating around in your head, scrawled on a scrap of paper, meticulously documented in a spreadsheet, or penned in a planner is a list of things you need to do this week. It’s not a short list. There’s a significant chance that’s it’s an unachievable list — a list that you can not complete in its entirety this week. Have you inadvertently set yourself up for failure? That’s no way to start your week.

[Read more…]

Getting Started with Time Management: Assess What You’ve Got

This post is part 1 in the series Getting Started with Time Management.

Maybe you’re new to the concept of time management. Maybe life has suddenly become more busy with a new career or a new baby and you need some tools to get on top of your schedule. Maybe you’ve been drowning under your to-do list for a while and are looking for a way out. Time management is the answer, and here are the first steps to getting started with conquering your schedule. [Read more…]

Who Has Time for Time Management?

I get it. You too are insanely, up-to-your-eyeballs busy. Even at this moment, you have five things you should be doing — three of which you probably are doing simultaneously. The last thing you have time to do is engage in something as silly sounding as time management . . . right?

The less time you have, the more you need time management.

Winston Churchill — who ironically saved time by tweaking a quote from Benjamin Franklin — famously stated, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” Often, we hear of time management from our employers’ HR departments. (Naturally, your company wants you to get more done in less time for the same amount of money!) However, time management is an incredible and indispensable approach to making your personal life the best it can be. Here’s why: [Read more…]

Quick Tip: Having Cubed Bread Ready to Go

Now that you’ve got a homemade croutons addiction, you may be looking for a way to streamline the preparation process. An excellent way to increase your efficiency in the kitchen here is to cube a big batch of bread, toss the cubes into a freezer bag, and store the bag in the freezer. Then, when you’re ready to make croutons, just grab the quantity of bread cubes you need from the freezer. [Read more…]

Making Multitasking Work For You

Remember all of those lofty goals and resolutions you made for this year? By now, you may have remembered one of the big reasons you didn’t meet all of last year’s goals — not enough time! Enter multitasking. [Read more…]

Setting Goals for Success

I am a firm believer in the importance of setting goals. Some people believe that creating personal goals is boring and stifling, but I find it to be a liberating experience:

Goals provide a sense of accomplishment. It is truly satisfying to cross a goal — no matter how small — off a written list! At the end of the week, month, or year, you can see just how far you’ve come.
Goals give you purpose. Have you asked yourself, “What should I be doing right now?” or “Is there something more important or more urgent that I should be doing right now?” Know that what you’re doing is exactly what you truly need or to be doing at that moment.
Goals reduce your stress. Write down your goals — and the dates by which you want to accomplish them — and you don’t have to worry about keeping it all straight in your head . . . or missing something.
Shared goals bring people together. Setting goals with your spouse, your kids, and your peers unites you in a common purpose and establishes you as teammates working together.

[Read more…]

Quick Tip: Slicing a Loaf of Bread

A bread knife is a great tool in the kitchen, but it’s caused some major loaf carnage in my kitchen. Sometimes the pressure required to slice homemade or bakery bread — especially when it’s toasty warm — can flatten a previously lovely loaf. Sometimes, wrangling the knife can make it extremely challenging to get even slices of the right thickness and a smooth cut. Even under the best circumstances though, I wind up with piles of crumbs on my counter . . . wasted bread! [Read more…]

4 Ways to Pack for a Trip at Lightning Speed

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Read my policy here.

How familiar is this scenario? It’s 10:00 at night, you’re leaving early to travel, and you haven’t packed a thing.

Back when I was single, my less-than-ideal approach to packing would involve miming my way through each day of my vacation to figure out what I needed to take and packing each item as I went along. Mentally walking through a long weekend though was incredibly time-consuming, and I’d still head out in the morning muttering, “I hope I remembered everything.” It was often the daily essentials I didn’t think about — comb, razor, toothpaste — that would be most likely to be forgotten.

Now with a husband — who seems to require more accessories than I do! — and a kid, I definitely can’t stick with the old approach. To keep my sanity and save a massive amount of time, I’ve whole-heartedly embraced the following tips for getting our family’s packing done in a snap: [Read more…]