Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category
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Deanna
Have you ever procrastinated on something? Of course you have; we all do it at one time or another and some of us suffer from procrastination more than others. If you’re an entrepreneur, procrastination can have some detrimental effects on both you and your organization. Not to worry, there are several straightforward strategies to reduce and eliminate procrastination.
How Procrastination Affects You
We procrastinate for a variety of reasons. Several of them include:
- Fear – we’re worried that the task is going to be complex, we’re going to fail at it, it’s going to be disagreeable, and so on.
- Disinterest – it’s easy to procrastinate when you’re faced with doing something that you simply don’t feel like doing. However, if everyone did that, the dishes would always be dirty and the laundry would pile up.
- Expectations – this parallels fear. When someone is expecting something from us and we’re nervous about not meeting their expectations, it can cause procrastination.
Regardless of the reasons we procrastinate, the conclusion is always the same. We end up in nail biting, sweat inducing crunch time. Now, instead of a week or a month to get something accomplished, we’ve left only a day or even an hour. This creates incredible amounts of unnecessary stress. The stress that procrastination creates is bad for our physical and emotional wellbeing. We can become drained because we don’t take care of ourselves, and some major consequences can be insomnia, depression, and binge eating.
Burn, Baby, Burn
Procrastination also creates burnout. It becomes a vicious circle. You procrastinate because you’re burned out and exhausted and then when you’re under pressure it only prolongs that feeling. The final result is that you’re no longer finding pleasure in what you’re doing and you don’t want to do it. You don’t have the same sense of excitement or enjoyment in your activities and you’re no longer enthusiastic and positive.
Productivity Dwindles
Procrastination also diminishes productivity. When you procrastinate and then are forced to finish the job quickly, the task usually takes much longer to complete because you’re not focusing on it with energy and enthusiasm. You are only focused on completing the task. It becomes a mad dash for the finish line. This uncomfortable scurry usually leads to mistakes which can damage your reputation and ultimately your business.
Effects of Procrastination
Procrastination, as we’ve already talked about, can cause a lack of productivity, burnout and stress. It can also lead to a second-rate final product. If you don’t take pleasure in what you’re doing, you’re troubled about the outcome or you have to hustle through it, the end result can be something you’re just not proud of. And procrastination can also make you lose enthusiasm for an occupation you once loved.
Digging Deep
Procrastination can be reduced and/or eliminated by digging deep and discovering the reasons behind your procrastinating. If it’s due to fear, then you’ll need to determine if it’s a legitimate fear and how you are going to tackle it. If you’re procrastinating because you dislike the task, create a solution. You could:
- Outsource the task to a coworker
- Construct a system that eliminates the task, or
- Find a way to embrace the task and get it done
Procrastination is something that everyone has to deal with from time to time. Learn to understand and control your procrastination tendencies and you will eliminate its effect on you and your business.
Deanna Maio, Business Coach & Consultant, teaches women business owners how to attract more clients, make more sales, stop wasting time, and create a business that acts as a vehicle for living the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to increase your income and client base in your business, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
How can you confidently respond when someone makes a request you'd prefer not to accommodate? The question has just been posed. Pause. Was your inclination to say yes, even though there's a voice deep down saying "no." Well, let's raise the volume on that voice. What possible reasons could there be for saying no?
- It's beyond your means?
- It's beyond your comfort level?
- You have no interest?
Identify all the reasons you have for saying "no." Identify which stem from a lack of confidence, versus a sincere disinterest in fulfilling the request. What would happen if you said yes? Perhaps:
- You would be considered agreeable
- It would make your friends/colleagues/significant other happy
- Your visibility with your prospects, referral partners, or clients would be improved
It's comes down to a simple cost/benefit really. Would the discomfort involved in saying yes outweigh the benefits of possibly going along with the request? Or, do the benefits outweigh your temporary discomforts?
The role of guilt
Saying "no" is hard for many of us. Guilt often comes into play. Whether this guilt has its foundation in religion, a proper upbringing, or a worldview that simply says "it's not nice to say no", we often recognize it and make decisions we'd rather not be making, based upon it.
Saying "NO"
You've made the decision, after scientifically weighing the results of your cost/benefit analysis, do honestly say "NO". Well, go ahead and say it clearly, and self-assuredly...in the mirror. Look yourself in the eye, and do it. Just say "NO." Say it like you really mean it, and then say it again as you would to whomever made the request of you. When you pretend you're speaking to the person who made the request, does it come out differently? Practice and experiment with different ways to say "NO" until you find one you're comfortable with. Then go, and say "NO."
After you say "NO"
If you're used to giving in to others, then guess what? After all that practice, you may just be surprised to find that they are not willing to accept it! They may push, rephrase the question, or make a new, not altogether different, request. Be prepared for this! Know your boundary - what ARE you willing to do? Revisit the questions you asked yourself before - what would happen if you said no, or yes? If you are serious about saying "NO" then stick to your guns. Tell the individual making the request that you would appreciate it if they respected your wishes, and ask them to refrain from pursuing it further. If you are comfortable expressing your "reasons why" then do so speaking from your personal perspective. "No." is a complete sentence and you don't have to share reasons why if you don't want to.
Tips on how to say your "NO!"
The "Wet lettuce NO"
If you are going to say NO, you must say it in a way that means NO! Saying NO in a quiet, unassuming voice is like a hand shake that is floppy and limp. By saying NO in a non-confident manner it will make you feel as though you have got to convince the other person about your decision and the reasons why you have said it!
The "Mr Angry NO"
This is at the other end of the spectrum in how to say NO. It is done in an aggressive manner and usually said with contempt. It is not an effective way to communicate your NO. Here are a couple of examples:
- "NO. I'm not doing that rubbish. You've got to be joking aren't you"
- "NO. I wouldn't lower myself to do that piece of work"
The assertive NO
This is the best way to say NO! In a firm, yet polite voice say: "No. I will not be able to do that for you." Also, if you want to say the reasons why, keep it short and sweet. "No. I will not be able to do that for you. I will be having my hair done at that time."
Use effective body language
When saying NO remember the power of non-verbal communication:
- Look the person in the eye when you say the NO.
- Shake your head at the same time as saying NO.
- Stand up tall.
- Use a firm tone in your voice.
When all is said and done
Don't forget that when anyone asks a question of you, you are perfectly OK to say, "Can I think about that and get back to you". No-one should be pressured into giving an immediate answer, even if the delay is only a couple of minutes. It will give you some time to think it through and to gather your thoughts. It will also give you some time to think about how you are going to say it, the words to use and your body language.
Saying NO exercise
Practice makes perfect, as they say! What I would like you to do for the next 7 days is to start to say NO more often. So whether it is the double glazing salesman, the cold call, "Would you like fries with that" or the shop assistant - practice saying NO to one person for at least the next 7 days. You will be an expert come the end of the week! What will happen? You will feel much more confident and proud. You will find that practice makes perfect and the more you confidently say "NO" the easier it becomes. Others will respect your wishes and take you seriously the first time you say "NO." You won't find yourself doing things you never wanted to do in the first place. You'll have more time to focus on the things you do want to be involved in. The list goes on from there.
Deanna Maio, Certified Business Coach & Consultant, teaches women business owners how to stop wasting time, start making more money, and create a business that acts as a vehicle for living the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to increase your income and client base in your business, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
Strategy One: Set an Intention
Immediately after waking, spend two to three minutes in bed thinking of five adjectives or traits that you want to embody that day. Then phrase them in statements like: I am a great coach. I am patient. I am joyful. I am confident. I am fearless. Setting an intention gives us focus and gets us on track to being who we want to be with greater and greater frequency.
Strategy Two: Write Morning Pages
After getting coffee, tea, water and maybe visiting the little girls room, get your journal or notebook and start writing morning pages. Morning pages are three hand written pages of anything that comes to your head. Julia Cameron suggests morning pages in her book, The Artist's Way. Compare this to your morning shower; it gets the cobwebs out gets your brain, get's the juices flowing, and gets you ready for the day.
Strategy Three: Eat Breakfast
I know I know, you already know this one. But, seriously, you wouldn't expect your car to run without fuel so why do you expect your body to run without the fuel it needs? Eat something small but healthy if you are in a hurry. Perhaps a piece of fruit, hard boiled egg, a handful of nuts, or something with a little carbohydrates so you've got some energy to start your day.
Strategy Four: Work from a Task List
Before you do anything, make a list of everything you would like to accomplish that day and put it into priority order. Creating a task list gives you focus and helps you to avoid distractions during your day. As new tasks come up, just write those items at the bottom of the list or you can choose to re-prioritize at that time.
Strategy Five: Eat That Frog
Brian Tracy, world famous sales guru, said that if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else. Do your 'frog task' immediately after writing your list. Do it before listening to voice mails. Do it before checking emails. Do it before opening up the web browser and reading the news. Do it first. Do it immediately. You will feel a huge boost of productivity right away!
Strategy Six: Check Email Only at Pre-identified Times
Check your email at certain times during your day. Don't keep your email open all day long and don't answer emails right as they come in. You'll find your productivity reduced greatly because you stop one thing and pick up another too much. Try instead to check in the morning, midday, and later that afternoon OR better yet, have a virtual assistant or intern manage your inbox and sort your messages into "Needs Action", "Read", or "Archive" folders.
Strategy Seven: Review Tomorrow's Schedule Today
Every evening review your schedule for the next day and take a look at your tasks list. Identify the most important task you need to accomplish the next day. Review your schedule so that you know what is going on, where you need to be and when, and with whom you are going to be interacting.
If you do these seven things each and every workday, you will find you get more done, have less stress, and enjoy work a whole lot more! This week, just try implementing one of the these and see your results skyrocket. Let me know how it goes, I'd love to hear your successes.
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
I know the things I could be doing for my business to keep it growing and successful -- the programs I can't wait to share with my clients, or the affordable products I want to develop. Very exciting stuff, I agree. I can even see the end result in my mind, the money I want to earn, and the number of people I want to reach. But, boy, does it get hard sometimes. For example, I can get bogged down by daily demands that don't really get me to my goals. Or, I get discouraged because I'm not where I want to be. Sometimes it seems so far off, doesn't it? So, what do I do in these dark and distracting times? -- Two simple you know already, dear reader! Yes, they are called Self-Discipline and Persistence. Today we'll examine them to help refresh your memory and remind you of what you already know, and I hope, spark you to take some new action to integrate them more fully into your business.
Self-Discipline: Do You Want to Control Your Destiny?
Building self-discipline takes practice, especially with long-term goals. I know I'm impatient. I want what I want and I wanted it yesterday. Yet things must run their course and some things just take time to develop. Yet, I have to make my plans stay on track and that is directly connected to what I choose to do each day to make it all happen. That's the essence of self-discipline, to make a conscious decision in how I want to control my destiny.
Pause here for a moment:
- Think about how you want to make your own destiny. Go through the business goals you have for yourself, especially for this new year.
- Imagine the choices you'll make from now on as you encounter obstacles, distractions, and temptations.
- Break up your long-term goals into smaller, more manageable mini-goals that you can celebrate each time you achieve every one.
But how do you keep going and going when you start getting tired and are losing your wind? It seems no end is in sight. Things don't seem to be changing even with the conscious choices you've made. This is when you must persevere!
Persistence = One Sexy Tortoise
Persistence is a mental game with yourself. You have to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing even though it's not fun or downright anxiety-inducing. Dangle the carrot of good things coming to you because of what you're putting in. Don't forget to give kudos where kudos is due -- great job! Feeling stuck? Are you sure you're stuck, or are you simply not allowing your actions time to bear fruit? If you see a certain action is not working after all, it's okay to change tactics, to try something new. As a famous general said, "We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."
Some Closing Thoughts
When you know you have to wait for the results from all your effort, it can be an agony. It can be an uncertain period, and this is where hanging onto your goals becomes so important so that they can make your vision for your business a reality. Then, you can continue on for another day. Let me leave you with another inspiring quote from a wise Chinese saying, "If there is no dark and dogged will, there will be no shining accomplishment; if there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement."
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
You probably know them well. Time Takers are the emotional parasites that steal your time and energy and give nothing in return. They are negative, usually depressing people who will bring you down. They don't understand the meaning of give and take relationships, and will take and take and take until there's nothing left. Then they'll move onto someone else.
There is no need to blame or confront these people yet. Just identify these people, whether they be in your business or your personal life, and start to cut them out of your life or avoid them at all costs. They should be easy to recognize. They are usually contacting you for favors on a regular basis, promising you things and not delivering, and then not coming through for you if you ever ask for something from them.
If you're not careful you could wind up wasting precious time, energy and money on these people, so ignore them, avoid them and start to see them coming before they have a chance to enter your life.
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
It's the word that most entrepreneurs have a hard time saying. It's the word NO.
For various reasons we find ourselves saying YES way too often, to our vendors, to our friends, to our clients and many others. This is a drain on our time because we usually don't consider what's involved when we are asked for something that deals with our time. The end result is normally not good. We get bombarded with things that have nothing to do with making a profit and we end up putting our money making plans on hold until we can accommodate all the YES answers we've handed out. Plus, it's draining. All of the tasks you now must do just saps all of your energy and you're left with little motivation for the things that matter. Instead, try saying NO more often. You don't even have to give a reason. Just say "sorry, I can't do that right now." Or try the YES, NO, YES approach which goes something like: "Yes, I'd love to do that, but I can't right now, so could you come back to me another time and I'll do my best to take care of it then?" This makes people think you're not summarily dismissing their request and leaves the door open for future help down the road. Another way to say NO is to avoid having a knee-jerk YES reaction to anything that comes along.
Practice saying NO to almost everything so you start getting used to how it feels. It may be awkward at first, and you may annoy some people, but when you realize how much time you'll save it will become second nature.
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
You know, everywhere you go you hear about how important it is to have balance in your life, and how, without striking the right balance of work and personal life it will throw everything off. I'm here to tell you that this concept is a myth. Balance does not exist and is likely to never exist. That may be difficult to hear, but let me explain.
Defining Balance
Balance in pure definition means, things are of equal size and shape. It means you spend equal time, energy, and money on each part of your life AND it means that equal parts is desirable. Well, that's just not probable. Do you want to spend the same amount of time working as you do spending time with your family and friends? Probably not!
Fitting it All In
When you have a "work/ life balance" it assumes that's all there is. The time you put in working and the time you put in with your family or other personal issues. Truth be told, your own happiness and fulfillment in life involves finding the right mixture of many ingredients, including (but not limited to) your work, your spouse, your friends, your kids, your hobbies, your personal development, your health, your dreams, your goals, your finances, your spiritual outlook, and the list goes on.
The Perfect Recipe
Like a chef, what YOU decide to put in this life stew to make it taste good on a daily basis is up to you, based on many factors. It really has little or nothing to do with "balance." Things could be completely out of balance and still be quite content. So your plan going forward should be to compile a list of the things in your life that matter most to you and start enjoying them, making time for them, and eliminating, delegating, or reducing the rest. You'll find that this is much easier to do than to constantly be trying to balance.
Balancing Act
Ever spend time standing on a 4-inch-wide balance beam? It's not easy. It's much easier to stay grounded and pull all the parts of your life together that make you the happiest.
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
Time is your most precious commodity. Even more precious than money. The sooner you accept that fact the sooner you’ll start to spend that commodity as wisely as possible.
Wasting time is much worse than wasting money. You can always make more money, but you can never make more time. This is an adage that is repeated in various forms from various time management gurus. And it’s true. You can find ways to make more money, but the only thing you can do with time is manage how you spend it.
To do that, let’s take a look at how you're spending your time and start asking yourself some hard questions, such as:
- Does this activity align with the priorities of my life right now?
- Do I feel energized or drained and regretful by it?
- If I was to measure the time I’m spending on this activity in terms of dollars, how much money am I spending right now?
If you become more mindful of what you’re doing with your time, putting an actual dollar value on it, then you’re more likely to look at that time in a new light. Once you have a better handle on how you spend your time, you can start taking steps to make it work for you instead of against you.
Deanna Maio, Business Development Strategist & Speaker, teaches women business owners how to grow their business significantly while still having time to live a great life. For FREE tips on how to get more results without working harder, attract more clients, and grow your profits, visit http://www.savvygals.com/
