Does the excitement of arriving at home in the evening get ruined when you open the door to see a pile of unfolded laundry and a week’s worth of newspapers scattered around?

It’s not that you are a slob; at least you don’t want to be. The problem is, you have so little spare time. At the end of the day all you want to do is grab dinner and collapse on the sofa exerting only enough energy to work the remote.

Instead of berating yourself about not having enough time to clean your home, decide which jobs that you are willing to spend time on and which you can delegate. Yes, you can delegate housework.

When you delegate, you free time for what is more important to you. Start with the laundry. Find a full service laundry that’s on the way to work and drop it off weekly. The next day, you pick up clean, folded and pressed clothes. If the laundry doesn’t do dry cleaning, then find a drive-thru drive cleaner that opens early so you can drop the clothes on the way to work.

Stop ordering pizza or Chinese food when you are too tired to cook. You’ll save money and time after work by purchasing frozen dinners that were made just for you with your favorite recipes by a personal chef.

Some personal chefs cook in your kitchen twice monthly while others deliver the foods. What you spend on custom prepared meals frees your time in the evening and offsets all the foods that go to waste in your refrigerator because you don’t have time to cook.

If you do enjoy cooking but only when you have enough time, then use the same concept as the personal chefs do and plan an all-day cooking binge once or twice monthly then freeze the meals.

Hire a maid service to come in once or twice monthly to do the heavy cleaning, floors, carpets, scrubbing and so forth. Then you can keep the place clean with twenty minutes of speed cleaning on alternate days.

Don’t fool yourself by promising to clean all day Saturday. When the weekend comes, you’ll find more interesting ways to spend your time than cleaning. Rather than set yourself up to break a promise to yourself, find a combination of maid service and your cleaning that works within the time you are willing to consistently devote to cleaning.

Gardening and outdoor spaces are wonderful but only if you have the time to keep ahead of the weeds. If gardening is relaxing to you, then you’ll gladly spend the time to do this. But if you simply like the look of a beautiful outdoor space yet lack the passion for gardening, then get help with the yard. You can save money by hiring a student or retiree to weed and prune a small garden. If you have a full yard, hire a lawn service.

Running errands for routine matters can take hours when you are disorganized and too tired to focus on the task. Keep a list in the kitchen where you add items by location. Have a section on the list for groceries, beverages, cosmetics, personal care items and clothing.

Choose stores where a large number of items can be obtained. That saves time and gas. Bring your list and make one shopping trip each day until it’s done. Or spend Saturday as your shopping and fun day, because you’ll have more time after being freed from other routine tasks.

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So often you hear people say, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” You won’t find that definition in the diagnostic manual for psychologists, but there’s still a lot of truth to it.

When you do the same thing over and over hoping that something better will happen, then you are fooling yourself. For example, if you tend to oversleep in the mornings, rush out of the house, arrive at the office and spend an hour digging out the most important to-do tasks from a high paper pile, then you are doing the same ineffective things over and over. If you think that you will magically have a better start to your day without changing any time wasting behaviors, then you are definitely living in a fantasy.

Too often people balk at applying time management systems to their schedules claiming it would “be too much like a straight jacket” or “take too much time to learn to use a schedule.”

The opposite is true. Time management is the way to free yourself by knowing what you have to do and what time is open for personal or social choices. You also can tell at a glance of your calendar whether you can accept an invitation or plan to be part of a group activity.

As for taking too much time to learn, you don’t have to have a complex system. Start with a basic day planner and follow the suggestions for organization. As you use it for awhile, you can refine that system. Just make certain that you are consistent in applying your system.

If you have children then you absolutely must have a time management system to keep up with your activities and theirs. You need to know when to bring four dozen cupcakes for the class party, when it’s your turn to drive the car pool and what the dates are for the school play practices. The older children get, the more that you need to manage the time for the family so that there is time spent together as well as time attending school and after-school activities.

When you know how much time you have available, you can choose how to fill that time. If you want to go shopping, you can decide which day to go based on the amount of time available.

To find a day when you have enough time to cook a big dinner and invite friends over, look at your day planner and you’ll know in a glance. Before long you will say, ”let me check my day planner” instead of saying “yes” to an invitation only to realize later than you don’t really have time for it. That technique alone will save you from over-commitment and the frustration that goes with it.

A key reason that some people rebel against using a time management system is that it wipes out excuses. You can no longer claim that you ran out of time to complete the research for that report or help out with the children’s holiday project. After all, if you don’t have a time management system, then you can continue to use the “no time” excuse. The problem is that you also don’t know how to plan time to do the things that you actually want to do.

So if you keep running through your day without a time management plan, you can expect to be frustrated, late, confused and get far less accomplished. Starting the next day the same way will get the same result.

If you are tired of missing appointments, never having time to do the things you want to do or feeling overwhelmed, then you need to set up a time management system. By the end of the month, you’ll have established a new habit of time management and discover the freedom of knowing how you spend the time of your life.

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Be honest, how many times have you said that? Do you say it weekly, daily or several times a day? That’s a red flag indicating that you are either not using any time management strategies or the ones you are using are not working for you.

Either way, time is ticking away and you are running to catch up. At some point, you just can’t run any faster, work any longer or stay up any later. You have to get control of how you use your time each day.

You may insist that you don’t waste time but take a serious look at how you use your time. Do you stretch your lunch an extra half hour or stop and talk to co-workers several times a day on the way to the copy machine?

Add it all up and there’s a potential hour or more of wasted time. What about personal phone calls or personal emails? There goes another half hour. Do you “take a few minutes” to surf the net on work time? Chalk up another half hour to hour or more.

You may be present at work, but you are not using work time efficiently. You are wasting anywhere from half hour to three hours of work time. Not only is that cheating your employer, but it’s putting you behind in your work. So you take work home and get angry about it.

Then you look at the co-worker sitting across from you. She’s taking online university classes gradually working toward her graduate degree. Plus she plays tennis twice weekly for exercise and volunteers one weekend a month with Habitat for Humanity.

She leaves work on time most every day and her in-box is clear. She does it by consistently applying time management strategies. Yet she never appears rushed and you never hear her complain about not having enough time.

Chances are that your active, productive co-worker prefers to live life aligned to her goals rather than reacting to others. When you fail to make a plan for time use, then you’ll let other people fill our time.

“Hey, can you take me to the mall?” “Come on over and watch my new video.” “I’ll pick you up and we’ll just hang out for the day. You can do your work later, you have plenty of time.”

Those are the ways that you allow other people to use your time because you have failed to plan your time. If you ask your co-worker to hang out after work, she is more likely to say, “I have a paper to write for my class, so let’s pick another evening that works for both of us.” She isn’t ignoring you, but she isn’t willing to let your lack of planning change what she needs to do according to her time management plan.

If you are still saying, “I wish I had more time” at home, then look around for ways that you waste time. Do you spend half hour in the morning searching for a particular shirt, finding it in the dirty clothes basket then looking for something else to wear?

You need to plan your outfit the night before and put out all the pieces from shoes to shirt so you can dress quickly. Place everything you need in one place near the door you exit each morning. You can also place your briefcase in your car the night before so you have less to think about in before leaving for work.

Once you know how long it takes you for morning basics, then you take the frantic feel out of mornings. Next you can start to streamline your work hours. Work productively at work and save the personal items for your own time.

When you get your job done within the eight hours, then you have the evening for yourself and don’t need to stay late at the office. Who knows – you might decide to join your colleagues’ tennis group.

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Waking up to a screaming alarm clock is not the same as time management. In fact, if you are a person who sleeps until the last possible moment, throws on clothes and races out the door, you have no time to manage in the mornings. No wonder you feel that your life is out of control and you aren’t getting done everything that needs to be done. Get a better start to get a better result for your day.

Get up twenty minutes earlier. Set your clock ahead. Then set a second clock for five minutes later and place that clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. That’s sneaky but effective!

By waking up earlier, you have time to wake up gradually, take a shower and enjoy a cup of coffee or juice. This is a kinder way to get your body and your brain oriented to the day.

You also have time to check your calendar and have a big picture of what’s happening in the day. You are also more likely to remember to bring the flash drive that you were working on last night and extra clothes to change into for tennis after work. If you don’t remember these things, you’ll waste more time going back to get them.

Here’s the ideal place to add a fifteen-minute mini-workout. Start with stretches then add a few simple exercises. You can also get a video with short workouts to follow. Or you can go outside on the patio or balcony to jump rope.

Fifteen minutes isn’t enough for a serious walk or run but you could take a few laps around the block. You don’t have to wait until you can do a long workout. Even this short workout is great for your body and stimulates your metabolism to run more efficiently for the remainder of the day.

An even better way to turn morning from dread to enjoyable is to get up earlier, even as much as an hour earlier to set the tone for your day. Spend quiet time reading spiritually uplifting material or meditate.

You might also read a favorite blog, check the online news highlights or add a daily note to your own blog. Just don’t get lost in reading emails or checking work related material because those may throw off your time.
Have coffee, tea or juice while you are getting dressed. Then sit down for quick breakfast. Don’t grab toast and eat it as you are packing the car. You can find several fast options that offer better nutrition and take the time to eat, not inhale it.

As you are sitting down with your bagel, oatmeal, cereal or egg and cheese sandwich, look over your calendar to preview what you need to get done today. Before you insist that you don’t have time to sit down and eat breakfast, realize that you only need fifteen minutes to do this.

Even a quick breakfast is better than shoving food in your mouth while driving. The fifteen minutes that you give your body nourishment to start the day will help you to avoid the mid-morning blood sugar drop.

That low energy time hits just as some businesses are opening and customer traffic is increasing so you will get much more accomplished at work for the investment of 15 minutes to eat a nourishing breakfast.

After just as few days, you’ll see why starting the morning earlier is the best time management option to maximize your productivity for the entire day. So set that clock back and you’ll move forward.

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Time management isn’t a seminar you attend or a book you read. Time management is a process that must be engaged every day to be effective. Some of the most frustrated, disorganized people in any office are the ones with the most time management books on their shelves.

It’s not that these books were ineffective. Rather in their frantic workday, these people “didn’t have time” to read the time management books! In the interest of keeping it simple, these tips could set you on the way to getting serious about time management as you see the value unfold:

1. Get a day planner and use it faithfully. No more sticky notes with reminders and appointments scattered around your desk, car and refrigerator at home. Keep all appointments and reminder in just one place, your day planner.

2. Create a daily “to do” list. If you do this on your computer, you can easily move around items as you prioritize the day. If on paper, you can code the items with numbers or letters for: Urgent, Need to Do Today, Can Do This Week.

3. Read your To-Do list first thing in the morning. Don’t touch newspaper, open email or answer the phone until you see the road map for your day.

4. Review your To-Do list at mid-day and end of day to see what was accomplished and what remains to be completed.

5. At the end of the day, transfer the items remaining to tomorrow’s or Monday’s list. If possible, remove any items that are not significant.

6. Delegate as much as possible to an assistant, colleague or associate. If you work independently, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant for a few hours per week. The price is right and there’s no obligation as with hiring an employee. This is particularly effective if you travel or spend much time outside the office.

7. Attend only the meetings that are absolutely necessary to do your job. Avoid any meetings that you can. Unless a meeting is run well with an agenda, there is usually wasted time chatting.

8. Close your door when you are focusing on a task or put up a sign on your cubicle asking people to stop by later when you are finished with this work.

9. Let voice mail answer your phone while you are focusing on an important task.

10. Say “no” as often as possible when you have reached your work limits. That means saying no to overtime or taking work home. When you are mentally or physically exhausted you don’t do your best work and you need to say so.

It’s easy to stay on track with time management once you commit to changing your daily habits. Just put the above tips into action and you should see more free time throughout your day.

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Think about time management. Is this something that you have been told you need to do or do you really want to get control over your time? You can learn many techniques for time management but you’ll never put them to good use unless you actually believe in the concept. So how to you think of time? Is time something to spend or something to invest?

If you see time as something to spend, then you will fit well into a high structured business where the tasks are established as well as the time frames for task completion. You may want to save time instead of spend it, so you’ll find ways to cut corners at work or rush around doing personal tasks.

You are likely to say, “If I rush through this meal then I’ll have time to go to a movie.” That’s more about allocating minutes to use elsewhere than making choices about the value of the activity compared with the time necessary to do it.

On the other hand, if you prefer to invest your time, then you are more choosey about what you will do with your time. By thinking of how to invest time instead of how to spend it, you give time use a greater long-term value.

You also think of time as the precious commodity that it is. For example, if you want to finish a college degree or start a home based business, you must decide whether to invest your evening and weekend hours in your new venture or watch another video.

It’s easy to decide to crash on the sofa after a hard day’s work. You have to be committed to your dream to get up and walk away from the television or computer game and invest a few hours each evening on your future. Time moves forward, you can’t save it to use later. That’s why you need a plan each day on where to invest your time for maximum advantage.

Perhaps you have said that you don’t have enough time to start a home-based business or go back to school. If you will take a hard look at how you use the time after work in each day and on the weekends, you can probably find at least two to three hours each day and five to eight hours on the weekend to invest in your future goals.

Initially this will seem you are giving up something when you miss the latest episode of some reality show or watch one football game instead of four games. It’s definitely a tradeoff but you are the ultimate winner as you invest time into something will take you farther in life than just sitting on the sofa.

When you need more money, you can borrow or charge it. But when you need more time, you have to work within the 24-hour limit. Print two schedules with 24 hours or 24 lines on each page. Start with how you currently use your time.

Block out enough time to drive to and from work or any other transportation time that you need between tasks. Don’t edit, you need to see where your time really goes. After completing the actual time log, use that information to design how you would like to invest your time.

You may not be able to convert to your ideal day immediately, but by having this plan, you can begin to make the changes needed to turn your ideal day plan into your every day plan. When you think of time as an asset to invest in, then you become more likely to follow your ideal day plan and respect your time.

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With so many electronic gadgets and office systems to help with your time management, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. At some point, it’s “paralysis of the plentiful”; or so many options and so little time to use them all.

This is like “analysis paralysis” where a person gets so wrapped up in making the right decision based on endless amounts of information that nothing gets done. The same is true for “paralysis of the plentiful.”

You’ll see these people; they have a cell phone, a Blackberry ™, a wireless headset, online calendar, to-do list on the computer, calendar posted on the refrigerator at home and day planner in hand.

This doesn’t even count the myriad of yellow sticky notes at home and at the office. This person has “paralysis of the plentiful.” If that sounds like you, then you have to make some tough choices.

When you find a new device that claims to save time, you grab it then add it to whatever you are currently using. Before long, you have several time keeping options but you are still running late to meetings or forgetting to prepare reports on the date due. This is a case of working for the time savers instead of making the times savers work for you.

Start by choosing the most comprehensive, easiest to operate scheduling system. Don’t feel like a low-tech co-out if you find the paper and pen day planner is that system for you.

If you are spending time programming an exotic phone or hand held organizer, then you are wasting time. That’s not the point. Another problem you may have encountered is using more than one system.

Maybe you use the electronic planner for work items since it hot syncs with your computer, but you keep the paper day planner for your personal life. That’s a huge mistake. The more systems you have, the greater the chance for forgetting an important appointment.

Do you spend more than ten minutes daily updating your time management system? If you do, you may be working with more than one device or planner and that’s what’s wasting time. Let’s face it, you will not your improve time management by spending more time with “paralysis of the plentiful,” trying to keep all your systems synchronized.

Time management systems once engaged are supposed to give you a sense of relief and security that your schedule is under control. If you have the opposite feeling, take a look at what you are using for your time management.

If you have more than one schedule method, cut back to one and use that until you are confident in the system. Later you can experiment with a new method, just resist the urge to add more and more options. Otherwise the time savers become time wasters when they throw you into “paralysis of the plentiful.”

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When the day seems to get out of your control early and steam roll over you for hours until you leave exhausted, you are probably missing the three “D’s”. These can be difficult to begin yet liberating once you make this part of your regular daily routine.

The three “D’s” are Do, Delegate and Defer. Do you look at a request for information or new project and think, “When do I have time to do this?” A better question is; “Do I have to be the one to do this or do I simply need to arrange to have it done?”

The next question is; “What would happens if this were moved to a later time or scheduled farther in advance? ” Note that these are the essential Do, Delegate and Defer questions.

DO: Which tasks are your job and which are not? Just because something is dropped on your desk or passed along to you does not mean that you have to do it. Even if your boss sends something for your to do which will totally throw off the time planned for a client project, don’t sign and cram more into the day.

Show your boss the time management plan you have for the client project and the new item and ask which is more important to be done first. Make the boss prioritize your time use.

Chances are this “do” project was something that the boss didn’t want to do and just passed it off as part of the job. That’s not actual delegating, that’s avoidance. Stay focused on what you are hired to do because that’s what you will be evaluated on at each review.

DELEGATE: Delegating is not passing off unwanted projects or less important projects. That’s what has given delegating a bad name. Proper use of delegating is to transfer responsibility or a part of a project to another worker to give that worker more experience, challenge or acceptance within the team.

It’s not a “here, you do this” type of task. When you delegate a task, explain what it is and why you have chosen this person to receive this project. If you are a supervisor, this is a golden opportunity to build up your employee by treating delegating as a show of support not a dumping option.

DEFER: Not everything on the desk, in the email or on the phone is urgent. Be clear about what must be done today and what is not necessary. Where you get stuck is with tasks that are nice to do or useful to do but are really not necessary to do. Or they are not necessary to do at this time.

For example, notice how easy it is to be looking up something business related online then get distracted by an intriguing news story or a banner ad for a product that interests you. In moments your focus is lost and you are off doing something that’s useful but not necessary at this time on this day.

Keep an index card with three D’s in bold print as your reminder to put tasks and requests thru the test. Ask those critical questions then decide whether you need to DO, DELEGATE or DEFER. This simple approach will compliment any time management system.

Tags: Time Management

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Granted this states the obvious but it does capture the feeling about time. It’s not that you don’t like having time to get things done or time to spare. That’s not the problem. The reason that “time” evokes such strong feelings is when your calendar is so crowded that time feels more like a curse than a benefit.

The way to take away the frustration over time is to better use the hours that you have. Everyone works with the same 24 hours but some people seem to get more out of it. They certainly aren’t expanding time, that’s not possible. What they do is to use time efficiently and that’s the essence of time management.

The most challenging aspect of time management is to decide that you really do want to manage your time. If you are certain about that, then you have to decide if you are willing to make changes in your schedule and activities.

There is no cosmic shoehorn that allows you to cram 35 hours of work into a 24-hour day. When you hear that someone wants to “make more time,” forget it. There is no way to expand the hours. You simply need to make choices about how to use the hours in each day.

When you think of ways to do more in the same time period, don’t even think about cutting back on sleep. That’s a common mistake. You need seven to eight hours of sleep nightly for health, energy and to work at prime efficiency.

Working late and cutting back to five or six hours might be ok once in a week, but it’s not good to do all week then think you can catch up on the weekend. A sleep-deprived body and exhausted brain are not your best assets. You’ll get much more accomplished by getting a full night’s sleep and tackling that new client proposal or special project in the morning.

If you have more work, family and leisure activities than you can fit into a reasonable day, then you need to make some choices. Before you start to associate time management with giving up something, understand that this is not the point. You can’t manage your time until you decide what goes and what stays.

Even then it’s not about giving up something. You can alternate some activities. For example, if you like to play golf but rush through the course to take the children fishing, then play golf two weekends and set up an all day fishing adventure on the other two weekends. This way you can enjoy both leisure pursuits without being so frantic that the fun is taken out of having fun.

Time management isn’t just about finding more ways to cram in more work. Effective time management also helps you find time for leisure or even to sit around and do nothing. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Imagine if you had time to lounge by the pool, read a novel instead of a company report or ride your bike around the park.

That’s not a fantasy or something that you put off until retirement. Having time for yourself is possible, if you are willing to apply time management techniques to your busy life.

Just get out the eraser because you have to start by trimming back to a manageable amount of activity to fit into a 10-12 hour day with 8 hours to sleep. That leaves 4 to 6 hours to spend each day. If you take away worry time and zoning out in front of the television, you have just found time. Now it’s up to you to manage that time.

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No matter how many time management books you read, one of the most difficult parts is knowing how to make your own schedule. In some workplaces, the time is structured for you. In others, you have more freedom to set your schedule. Either way, you make decisions about how you do what you do and the efficiency of your effort.

Basically, creating a schedule requires that you take a realistic look at the time available and know the tasks that need to be done in that time. You have to allow enough time in your schedule to transition between tasks.

That may mean driving to a different location and dealing with traffic delays. For other tasks, you may have to gather additional research, calculate a budget or meet with a colleague. When you fail to build enough time into your schedule for transitions, then you’re likely to get behind and stay that way.

Another problem in many schedules is over-committing. You only have so many work hours available. Considering the time needed for transitions plus unexpected interruptions with real or perceived urgency, you can’t work too many critical projects back to back without over-commitment. When that happens, something is missed or everything is done half-way. That’s not good time management, that’s a train wreck happening right at your desk.

Remember to schedule time for yourself. You need a lunch break and a few minutes mid-morning and mid-afternoon to take a break. If possible, take a way outdoors or get away from your desk so refresh your mind as well as grab a coffee. You also need to include meetings and community activities related to work.

If you are a manager, then your schedule must include time to coach and motivate your employees or team members. The much applauded “open door policy” can be an invitation to distractions as many visits to your office are more casual than business related. Your schedule may need a period each day for “closed door” work time.

Unless you required to constantly monitor email, then you can schedule email checking two or three times during the work day, not every five minutes. You can also sort email into folders and schedule time for different types of email; orders, client contact, questions, employee contact, personal, other.

You may have a habit that’s common in offices to check email as soon as the envelope notice pops up on your screen. That’s letting a distraction into your workspace. Turn off the automatic notice and schedule the times during the day when you will check email.

Taking charge of your schedule is the first step to effective time management. Your schedule is the framework that tells you where you want to use your time and by reviewing the schedule, you can see if your plan was effective.

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