Part Two-Keys to Time Management

Here's Part Two to Keys to Time Management:

7) Simplify your environment
Clutter in your office or home environment can create stress. It can actually make you feel like you have more work than you really do.

8) Simplify your tasks
This may involve over-responding and/or under-responding. For example, when receiving a fax, which needs only a quick response or a confirmation, write your answer on the faxed document and fax it right back. Or, if someone asks you for something specific, and you know that by offering more help than was originally asked you can avoid the form of a problem, then isn't it worth it to do more? Make a point of over-responding to any situation in which there is an opportunity to solve more than one problem in the process.

9) Really listen to others
When you are preoccupied with other thoughts, you actually create anxiety for yourself about what you are listening to and what you allow to intrude into your thoughts. This anxiety is created because you can not act immediately on either. You are left feeling incomplete with both.

10) Decide what you can give up in order to get what you want
One day has only twenty-four hours in it, and yet, how many times have you borrowed from the next day to finish a project thereby losing valuable sleep, or borrowed from your relationships to pursue a goal, or borrowed from your personal time to work on a project? When we choose among multiple possibilities how we will spend our work and/or personal time, we are almost always asked to choose what we will give up in order to have more. Much pain and suffering around "managing time" could be avoided if this process were respected.

11) Find some time each day for quiet reflection
When you commit to spending some time each day suspending your thoughts and judgments and creating inner stillness, you'll train your body and mind what awareness feels like and you can transform how you experience the flow of time.

Take some time this week to really think about how you can improve your time management skills! You'll be happy that you did!

* These "Keys" to Time Management have been taken from The Coaching Starter Kit by Coachville.com, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.