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10 Ways to Take Back Your Time
By Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach
I've divided my tips into two sections — 5 ways to manage your time and 5 ways
to take back your time. Both offer daily or regular practices to try out in
your life right now.
The first section focuses more on easing the time pressures
in your life, to deal with all of the things you've gotten yourself
into ;)
The second section focuses on making overall changes to your
life. When you take back your time you also take back your CHOICE.
When we're feeling
time
pressured and stressed out it's easy to forget that we have any say in
the matter. And we do!
5 Ways to Manage Your Time
- Choose specific times to look at email during the day —
seeing emails as they come in can really distract you from what
you're
trying to accomplish
and you'll end up losing time as you go back and forth between
activities.
- The 15-minute strategy. This will not only helps motivate
you by breaking down large jobs into smaller pieces, it also
makes good use of your time. The
strategy is to spend 15-minutes on a task and then move on the next. You
can come back to the first one as many times as you need to until
it's done.
- Find a system that works for you for making and meeting
deadlines and appointments — a calendar or day-timer. I use a
Palm Pilot and have been really happy with
it.
- Plan and cook meals ahead of time. A huge time-saver and
also makes it much easier to eat healthier. It could be as simple
as cooking an extra portion
of dinner and having it for lunch the next day, or you could plan out seven
days at a time (which is what I do).
- Keep up with things — whether it's tidying up your papers,
doing the dishes or working on a report, doing things a bit at
a time (see tip #2) instead of
letting them pile up to the point of taking you all day, is much more manageable.
5 Ways to Take Back Your Time
- Set and keep your boundaries — if you work for someone
else, be clear about over-time and taking work home with you.
If you work for yourself,
establish the times of day that are no-work zones; good places to
start are breaks for meals and deciding when you will start and
stop work for
the day.
- Make one day a week "timeless" — rise and
shine when you feel like it, eat when you're hungry and let your
inner child (or your actual
child!) plan your day's activities. Warning: This may conflict with the
tip below ;)
- Cut your T.V. time — try limiting it
to one hour per day. Or try cutting it out completely for one
week.
- Buddy up and find someone to take back time with. Whether
it's your spouse, best friend, family member or work colleague,
if you're both committed you
won't let each other bow out.
- Take your holidays! Whether you're self-employed or work
for someone else it's important to take time off to rejuvenate.
You will be more productive
for it in the long run.
Where do you need to take back time in your life? Where do you need to manage
your time better? •
© Copyright 2005, Genuine Coaching Services. 05/01/05
 About the Author | More by Linda Dessau
Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, helps artists enhance their creativity by addressing their unique self-care issues. Feel like your creativity is blocked? Sign-up for the free e-course, "Roadblocks to Creativity" by visiting www.genuinecoaching.com.
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