Are You In the Weeds?

Have you ever had a huge project that has monopolized ALL of your time? Or have you been so sick that you haven’t been able to keep up with your daily responsibilities? When you come out the other end, the list of things that haven’t been done can be huge and overwhelming, so how do you catch up?

First sit down with pen and paper or your computer if you’d rather and do a brain dump, writing down anything and everything that comes to your mind that needs to be done. When you are done, look at your list and prioritize what needs to be done first and foremost. (See my previous blog on to-do lists.) Then just started chipping away at the list. You may find that some items really truly don’t need to be done – life will go on without them.

Most importantly take a deep breath and realize that it will be okay and you will get caught up. We now return you to your regularly scheduled life.

The Secret Word

We’ve been talking about how to better manage your time through the three step process – Prepare, Pass It On and Prioritize.

Today we arrive at the final step which is Prioritize. In order to implement this step you must learn a super-secret word…. Wait for it… you’ll never believe what it is… I know the suspense it intense…. And the word is “no.”

It’s amazing to think that this simple two letter word can make such a difference in your day. But think of it this way, when you saying “Yes” to tasks that others may give you, it often means you are saying “no” to your own priorities.

When new task presents itself to you, a volunteer job at your children’s school for example, ask yourself "What is the wisest and best use of my time right now and what do I have to remove from my schedule in order to make time for this?" And make a determination on whether you can add that task to your life right now.

Look at your to-do list that you have been creating and decide which tasks are necessary (laundry and grocery shopping are just a fact of life, sorry!) and which ones you truly enjoy or that bless your family or further your business. If they don’t fall into these categories, figure out what you can stop doing them or graciously say no to new project. You need to guard your time as a precious commodity. If you don’t, who will?

Remember the ever-stylish Coco Chanel said (and I am paraphrasing), Every day before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one thing. Apply that philosophy to your to do list – delegate task or just delete it all together. You’ll be happier for it.

So there you have it a three step plan to help you get better control of your time and your tasks.

1. Prepare through planning

2. Pass It on by delegating

3. Prioritize by learning to say No

Good luck! And enjoy your time!

Get It Done Through Delegation

We’ve been talking about getting control of your time through a three step process of Prepare, Pass It On and Prioritize. Using a calendar or a planner and smart use of a to-do list helped us through the Prepare stage. Now let’s talk about the Pass It On step.

In the Prepare step you decided what you needed to accomplish at any given time. Now look at that list and decide what can be done by other people. In other words, what can you delegate? Women, in particular, tend to try to do it all – work, raise the kids, keep the house, run the errands, etc, etc….. This leads to overwhelm and burn-out.

What types of things can you delegate? Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

• noncreative, repetitive tasks that are done regularly – washing dishes, bookkeeping

• special projects done once or infrequently – planning a trip or researching a new software package

• tasks you aren’t good at or don’t enjoy – These are my FAVORITE things to delegate!

• tasks that zap your energy and time keeping you from more important tasks


In other words, your kids can make their own beds, your husband can stop by store on way home, hire out your ironing to a neighbor (I just made arrangements for a client to have this done and she was over the moon!) and your assistant can make your travel arrangements.

Once you have decided which items on your to-do list can be delegated to others, discuss the job with the person – what your expectations are and what the outcome should be. Provide training as necessary or at least be available to provide guidance as needed. And finally review and evaluate how the person has done, but don’t MICROMANGE!!! For some this is most difficult part of process. To delegate we have to give up control and our sense of perfection and we also have to ask for help, both of which are difficult. You might be great at doing delegating at work but not at home. However, if you can implement it at home as well it can really take a huge chunk out of your to do lists.

A small example of the delegation process is when I decided it was time for my then 7-year old son to make his own bed every day. One day I told him I wanted him to help me make his bed and we walked through the process – pull up the sheets, pull up the blankets, pull of the quilt, put the pillows on top, put your stuffed animals on top. Over the next few weeks we went from him helping me to him doing it himself. The hardest part of the process for me was letting him do it himself and trying to be happy with the final product because the bed made by a 7 year old doesn’t look like a bed out of Pottery Barn kids! I have learned to give up that piece of perfectionism and in doing so I am teaching him to be self-reliant and I have one less thing on my to-do list! Smiles all around (or at least for mom!)!

If you want to get your kids more involved in your daily to-do list, Kathy Peel, The Family Manager, has a great resource for age-appropriate chores - http://dld.bz/MNvW . By the way, Kathy’s website and books are great resources for a busy family.

So the final word on this step, is that you CAN’T do it all nor SHOULD you try to do it all! Delegate, delegate, delegate and pass it on! You’ll feel lighter for it!

Plan It with Your To-Do List

Yesterday we talked about the importance of having one calendar or planner to record all of your appointments and obligations. Today I’ll talk a little about the second part of the planning/preparing process (say THAT 3 times fast!) in our time management discussion – the To-Do List.

There are really two kinds of to-do lists – a master to-do list and a daily to-do list. Things that would be on your master to-do list are large scale or long term projects that can be broken down into smaller steps, for instance, painting the living room. As a single to-do, it is overwhelming but when broken down into its smaller components, it’s not so bad. For example, your smaller steps that will eventually migrate to your daily to-do list might be:

1) Visit home store to pick out paint sample

2) Look at paint samples in living room

3) Decide on paint color

4) Review painting supplies and decide if new supplies are needed

5) Visit home store to buy paint and other necessary supplies

6) Decide when you will do the painting and schedule it on your calendar

7) On day of painting, move furniture away from walls getting help as needed

8) Clean walls and woodwork as necessary

9) Lay down drop clothes

10) PAINT!

11) Repeat #10 as necessary

12) Clean & store painting supplies

13) Return furniture to original position

14) Enjoy!

See, it’s not so overwhelming if you can focus on just 1 part of the entire process at a time. Small bites are always more easily digestible than huge gulps!

The second type of to-do list you will utilize is your daily to-do list. This is the list you reference every day (hopefully) to get what needs to be done, done - in other words the tasks of daily life (Buy milk, make doctor’s appointment, send present to sister) in addition to those smaller bites of your master to-do list. That being said your daily to-do list should not be 500 lines long!! That is just too much and you will feel overwhelmed and defeated before you even begin. Productivity experts have various techniques to keep your to-do lists under control. One way is to have no more than 7 items on your list every day. Seven seems to be a magic number; when you go over that, the craziness sets in! Another technique is to use a sticky note for your to-do list. If your list doesn’t fit on the note, the activities can’t fit in your life!

Once you figure out what needs to be done, figure out how long it will take you to do it and schedule in them in your planner. This is a very important part of the process. It allows you to focus on what is important to accomplish today, leaving other items to be done on another day. One easy way to do this is to group like tasks together – spend one hour a day making phone calls, 20 minutes 3x a day checking and responding to email, or plan to run your errands all at one time. This keeps you from having to change gears and it makes you more efficient. One quick note - if things will take two minutes or less to do, consider doing them right away. You waste at least that much time adding them to the list and worrying about them.

I am not saying to pack your day so tight that you don’t have time to take care of emergencies that might come up. Even most strict schedule needs a little flexibility. And a final note, spend 5-15 minutes at the end of each day to plan what you need to accomplish tomorrow – write tomorrow ’s to-do list. That way you can hit the ground running in the morning!

Plan It!

As I wrote the other day, February is Time Management month. When we struggle with having enough time to do the things we need to accomplish in a day, it’s time to step back and take a look at how we use the time we are given. Remember we all have the same 24 hours!

My 3 step approach to time management is Prepare, Pass It on and Prioritize. Today we’ll talk about the first step – prepare.

The best way to prepare for your day/week/month/year is to plan! You need to plan what you are going to do at any given time. Think of it like this, you wouldn’t take a cross country trip without using your GPS or (gasp!) a road map. So there is no way to think you should proceed in life without a plan.

My number one suggestion in planning is to use a planner or a calendar. And when I say “a planner or calendar” I mean ONE planner/calendar for your entire life. Don’t have one for work and one for your personal life. They are intertwined and need to be together when you plan. If you are a stay-at-home mom and think, I don’t need a calendar/planner. My schedule is simple enough I can keep it in my head. Well, the truth is, you can’t. There is always something that will sneak up on you and you will forget. Be safe and write it down!

Your calendar or planner is where you need to record all of your appointments and obligations. It is also where you are going to schedule (yes, I said schedule) time to accomplish the items on your to-do list. (More on that tomorrow) When you are putting all of your obligations into your planner, be sure to coordinate with your significant others like your spouse, other family members and your co-workers. Often their schedules impact ours. I have to be aware of when my husband has scout meetings and weekend duty so I know how to plan my days.

What kind of planner or calendar you want to use is up to you. You can use a very simple paper calendar or a highly complex electronic planner on your smartphone. The key is finding what is best for you and your life style. Professional Organizer Val Sgro has an assessment tool that helps you determine which type would work for you. Her book Organize Your Family’s Schedule… In No Time has some great ideas on time management for your entire family.

The key is to have a calendar/planner and use it – daily! Keep up with it and it will help you keep up with your time. Tomorrow we’ll talk about the second part of the prepare through planning step – the infamous To-Do list!

February is Time Management Month

Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a busy executive, we all share one distinct characteristic – we tend struggle with our time management skills. Time management is defined by Wikipedia as “a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals.” That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

The problem is is that time is elusive. It is notoriously hard to keep up with and it gets away from us. I mean, how many times have you been working at your desk and looked at the clock and thought “It’s 5 o’clock already?!?!? Where did my day go?” There never seems to be enough time – time to get our work done, time to spend with our family, time to take care of ourselves.

But consider this:

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

from Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

So what do these people have that we don’t? They were amazing people with ability to compartmentalize their lives and concentrate on what was important to them. With a few changes to your life you can take back control of your time and maybe, just maybe find more time in your life!

Over the next week I’ll share with you my three pronged approach for taking back control of your time. The three steps are Prepare, Pass it on, and Prioritize. If you can implement these steps, even on a small scale, you can reduce your overwhelm and take back your time!

I’d love to hear about your time management issues.

What Does Organized Mean to You?

When you hear the word organized what do you think? Do you have images of a Martha Stewart perfect pantry with coordinated containers and space between each can? Or are your thoughts of organization more along the lines of “I just want to be able to find my car keys in the morning”?

What I am discovering the longer I work with clients in tackling their organizational issues is that the word “organized” means different things to everyone. Some people want that picture perfect, magazine cover home, while others just want the daily detritus to be under control. Just last week I have had one client who called me to help with her very disorganized children’s rooms and study area. I expected mass chaos – papers and today everywhere, but what I found a very neat home with a few small problem areas. But the client wants everything in its place and neatly ordered – her idea of organized. Another client is drowning in paper and just wants to be able to find the article or paper when she needs it. She is not concerned with anything matching or look picture perfect. Again, this is HER idea of organized.

People often say to me, as an aside, “I bet your house is super-organized.” Well, you know what, it is organized, but I’m not type-A organized. I know where thing are and my children can easily access and put away what they need. To me, that is organized. That’s not to say that chaos and clutter don’t creep in occasionally (okay, more that occasionally). That’s when I rally the troops and we tackle everything.

I am definitely of the state of mind that “good enough” IS, in fact, good enough. My family neither needs or will they maintain a system where all of our DVDs and video games are categorized and alphabetized. We are happy with two baskets in the entertainment center, one for DVDs and one for Wii games. Things have a home and we have routine/schedule that we stick to for the most part.

Just as everyone has different tastes in food, clothes and music, we all also have our own sense of what organized means to us. So what do being organized look like in your mind? Inquiring minds want to know!