Right Attitudes » Ideas for Impact
» by Nagesh Belludi

1. Clear the clutter around you

Disorder and clutter are the primary sources of the feeling of not being on “top of things.” Messy workspaces can quickly get out of hand and drag you down. Conquer clutter by processing each paper or object at your desk by asking, “Why is this here?” Consider throwing things away; ask, “What is the worst that could happen if I dispose of this?” Organize, simplify, and setup an environment that works for you.

2. Stretch at your desk or brisk walk

Interrupt your deskbound lifestyle by practicing a few exercises right at your desk, walking up a few flights by stairs, or brisk walking around your office block. Simple workouts can revive your energy, prevent afternoon slumps, help you think more clearly, and help control anxiety.

3. Get caught-up on your email and remain caught-up

Given the pervasiveness of email in our lives, regulating email, remaining responsive and productive about email are critical soft-skills for any knowledge worker. Empty your inbox everyday by using following productivity guru Merlin Mann’s ‘Process to Zero’ and ‘Inbox Zero’ techniques. Systematize your email habits by deleting, archiving, responding or delegating every email in your inbox.

4. Embark on a “10-Minute Dash” to conquer procrastination

Not finishing what you have started can be a source of stress and anxiety. Pick a task that you have been putting off, turn on your favorite music, sip your favorite beverage, and work on that task for just ten minutes without any interruption. You will probably find that the seemingly difficult task gets easier once you start working on it. This “10-minute dash” technique can build momentum, get you into the “flow,” and motivate you to work and complete the task.

5. Write a “thank-you” note

In today’s fast-paced world, it is easy to forget to repay kindness with gratitude. Thank-you notes not only help people feel appreciated for things they do to for you, but can also motivate them to do more for you in the future (this secondary reason should not be the key motivation for your attitude of gratitude.) When writing a thank-you note, mention what the other person did for you, how it was relevant, and how much you appreciate their help.

6. Tend to your network

Tending to your professional and social network is not as time-consuming as you might expect. Invest ten minutes each day to email or ring a friend or two, perhaps even to say a quick hello. Cultivate and maintain a strong network. Remember people’s birthdays and anniversaries and reach out to them on their special days. Avoid contacting people only when you need something from them.

7. Update your résumé or your list of achievements

Most professionals tend to procrastinate on keeping their résumés updated. Do not expect to pull your résumé together when you need one and expect it to work efficiently. Spend ten minutes updating your résumé by adding details from your latest projects and assignments. Try to review each section and question yourself, “Is this section relevant? Is there anything more worthwhile that I could replace this section with?” Keeping your résumé updated can reduce the anxiety of preparing an impressive résumé at short notice.

8. Walk the floor, talk to your customers, and seek their ideas

Companies and leaders who excel at customer service talk to customers on a regular basis and follow-up scrupulously. Simply walk the floor for ten minutes or pick-up the phone and talk to a customer or two. Ask customers how your product or service has been of value to them, seek to understand their needs, run your ideas past them, and incorporate their views to design/improve your product or service. Going the extra mile to reach out to a customer can have a big impact on customer loyalty.

9. Look for easy ways to simplify your life

Differentiate between activity and achievement. Rather than finding ways to squeeze more activities into your life, find ways to leave out some things. Focus on things that actually need to be done and eliminate anything that does not fit your immediate priorities. Ask for help, delegate, and lower your standards. Plan for the next day or the week ahead and prepare to-do lists to get things off your mind.

10. Take a break and chill out

When you feel overwhelmed, take ten minutes to rest, relax, and clear your mind. Meditate, listen to music, catch up on news or sports, play with your pet, take a short map, look out of the window, or do something else that can benefit you the most. Stepping out of the moment of busyness can lower your blood pressure, slow down your breathing and heart rate, and bring about psychological changes that can reduce the harmful effects of stress and worry.

Bonus: Put your own needs first

When you are overwhelmed with the demands on your time at work and at home, try to examine if you tend to succumb instinctively to the pressure and put others needs ahead of your own. While it is virtuous to be selfless and attend to the needs of others, devoting too much of your own time to others can become an impediment to your own happiness. Consider constructing boundaries on your time and try to think of at least one activity you can stop, or one task that you cancel at once. Do not become a victim of your own generosity. Taking care of your own needs first is not about being selfish; it is rather about being fair to yourself. Exercise your right to protect your own time and interests.

Suggested Reading

• Four telltale signs of an unhappy employee
• Self-assessment quiz: How stressed are you?
• Finding work-life balance
• Health and fitness for the sedentary professional
• 7 easy ways to get more done in less time

***See other articles related to productivity, getting things done, happiness, work-life balance

You have probably met corporate people who are five to ten years from retirement and have remained in their bottom-of-the-ladder “contributor” roles (as engineers, programmers, accountants, salespersons, etc.) for decades. Don’t they typically report to managers 10 to 15 years their juniors? Ever wonder why they never assumed managerial or leadership roles? Are they simply incompetent or unenthusiastic? Enquire around and you may be surprised to learn that they may have perhaps never desired to climb the corporate ladder. You will possibly learn that,

• They are not aimless. In reality, at some point in their careers, they made a conscious choice to not pursue the traditional career advancement paths and stay in their roles as “senior contributors.” Their dominant priorities lie elsewhere: usually with family, community, faith, and creative interests. They view their careers as means to other ends. They set goals for what they seek to achieve, create a plan, and relate to their values in the right way, everyday.
• They are quite influential in their organizations. They gain credibility not by virtue of positions or titles, but from years of experience, awareness of processes and historical perspectives. They seek to mentor young engineers and offer their opinions and judgments when consulted by management. They gain an immense sense of satisfaction by helping their organizations grow. They are widely respected.
• Their salaries are quite comparable to people who have identical spans of service in their organizations and have assumed leadership roles. They are highly valuable contributors.

The “senior contributors” are not the only ones who have shunned the corporate ladder. Many women choose to work three days a week once they have kids. Husbands of career-minded moms have relinquished their rewarding careers to become stay-at-home dads and support their wives’ careers. Frequently, executives decline international assignments that could keep them away from family. All these people tend to feel in command of their life and career — they are more contented in their careers and have a stronger sense of work-life balance. For sure, they can teach the rest of us a thing or two about setting the course of our lives.

The long-hours culture is not for everybody

You probably recollect the days when corporate people had reasonably secure jobs, showed up at work every workday, clocked in, worked eight hours, clocked out, stopped thinking about work until the next workday, and enjoyed four weeks of vacation a year. They could maintain a healthy separation between work and personal time. Alas, those days are long over.

In today’s workplace, the demands on our energy, time, and creativity constantly overwhelm us, despite access to technology, computers, and other productivity tools. We have so much on our plates that we only rarely complete things WHEN and AS we would wish to. The workday is longer, the pace of work is faster, and most projects tend to be open-ended. The pressure to learn new skills and pursue higher education like through the top online MBA programs is prominent. A successful corporate career demands a high-level of performance for sustained periods. At what cost, though? Unsurprisingly, the pressure to work harder and longer results in poor physical health, stress, anxiety, lesser time with family and friends, fewer opportunities to pursue hobbies and creative interests, and insufficient rest and relaxation.

Some people get off work and study in online MBA programs to increase their education in hopes they open doors to better career opportunities at better companies. http://www.onlinemba.com

Work or life or both — its your choice

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
* Henry David Thoreau

There is no magic potion or canned method for balancing your work and life. Finding balance is rather an exercise in finding a healthy perspective that works for you. Nobody but you can make the right choices and work out what is best for you to bring about a sense of satisfaction of physical, mental, financial, intellectual, professional, and social well-being.

Everyone has to find his or her own individual balance

The quest for work-life balance begins with defining what balance means to you. Reflect on what you value most in life and prioritize them. Include your family in your contemplations of choices and consequences. Establish a set of boundaries between an adequate amount of effort and return. Consider your personal and professional aspirations, the family and social life you desire, your hobbies and interests and your goals and dreams.

Ask yourself, “How much is adequate?” and, “How much success and money is good enough?” Set boundaries and limits between what you must do and what you want to achieve in the short term and in the long term. The choices you make and your ability to respect the limits your set for yourself should shape your work and career, not the other way around.

Explore alternate arrangements at work

After you reflect on what could constitute a sense of individual balance for you, examine your career objectives. Once you are clear about what you want, consider the potential consequences to your employer. Discuss your options and proposals with a trusted advisor, the human resources / personnel department, and your boss. Most companies care for their employees enough to offer options for part-time or flexible schedules, working from home or sabbaticals.

Lead a life to your own script, not to others’

The world will shape your life, if you let it. Establish what you want to achieve in your life; do not let others impose their proposals for you. Make the right choices and live true to your values. This is, in essence, the key to finding the illusive work-life balance.

Recommended Reading

• 7 easy ways to get more done in less time
• How hard you should work
• Make your weekends feel longer
• Who manages your career?

***See other articles related to happiness, time management, managing priorities, effectiveness, personal organization, getting things done, execution, work-life balance

1. Divide and conquer. Break up large projects into smaller tasks. If you think a task will take less than five minutes, get it done right away. If you can reply to an email in less than two minutes, reply immediately and file or delete the incoming email.
2. Fight procrastination. One of the easiest ways to fight procrastination is to focus on starting your task. Commit to your task for just ten minutes. Avoid distractions and interruptions and continue to work for just ten minutes. By the end of the ten minutes, you probably get absorbed in the tasks, build momentum and can choose to continue working towards completion.
3. Put things in their place. Designate a place at your home and office for everything — your keys, wallet, watch, clothes, electronic gadgets and all personal effects. Always put each item in its proper place. Being orderly prevents you from anxiously searching for these belongings the next time you want to use them.
4. Create checklists for all tasks. Consider preparing checklists for everything from cleaning the home to packing for travel. Checklists help you remember everything critical and thus reduce the persistent worry of forgetting something important.
5. Start planning your day on the prior day. Before you leave office or before you go to bed, plan the next day and prepare a ‘To Do’ list. Check your calendar for meetings, deadlines and commitments. In addition, put out everything you need the night before. Planning ahead not only helps you start the next day with purpose, but also gets things off your mind. You can thus enjoy your time away or sleep better.
6. Pick up after yourself and clean your home and workspace. From time to time, glance through all areas of your home and office for things that are out of place. Tidy up before the clutter gets out of hand. Use the wastebasket liberally. Realize that mess leads to stress.
7. Maintain a ‘On-The-Go’ folder. When you receive your copy of a subscription magazine, tear out all the articles that interest you and dispose of the rest of the magazine. Maintain an “on-the-go” folder and file such articles. Take this folder wherever you go and read these articles during transition times — when you wait for a doctor’s appointment or when your flight is delayed at an airport. Review this folder frequently and toss out everything that is older than six months.

Recommended Reading

• Self-assessment Quiz: how stressed are you?
• The “10-minute Dash” technique to overcoming procrastination
• You have a pile of reading material at your desk?
• Everyday reflections for effective time management
• Seven habits to beat Monday morning blues

***See other articles related to time management, personal organization, productivity, stress management, getting things done, work-life balance

Promotions Can be Stressful

Last year, researchers at the University of Warwick found that the mental health of managers typically deteriorates after a job promotion.  Part of this anxiety is attributable to,

1. the loss of the security of a familiar role and the established relationships around the role,
2. perceived cognitive inadequacies concerning demands of the new position, and,
3. the uncertainty of transition and the innate human resistance to change.

The greater part of this anxiety is a common career mistake. Often, professionals take up new responsibilities for which they are not entirely prepared. Even when management judged them as qualified for the new role, without thinking through a new role before accepting the promotion, these professionals unintentionally position themselves for stressful transitions, bitterness, or eventual failure.

When Is It Time to Move On?

Do not assume that you are ready for a promotion just because you possess the right academic background, you look the part, you have the right contacts within the company, or, you have impressed your management with your capability to develop a few good ideas and articulate them well.

Here are a few questions to reflect on and assess your chance of a successful promotion or a horizontal transition.

• Are you enthusiastic about taking on a new role? Does the new role fit into your medium- and long-term career plans?
• Have you been performing your present duties well enough to justify a promotion?
• Do you have a successor in mind for your current role? Have you made yourself replaceable? Are you willing to entrust your current responsibilities to a successor without a significant interruption in pace of work?
• Are you qualified or experienced enough to do no less than, say, 40% of the new role reasonably well?
• Have you demonstrated eagerness to gain knowledge of the new responsibilities?
• Are you familiar with the responsibilities, autonomy, challenges, opportunities, and deliverables of the new role? Do you know how to get things done in the new role? Do you know where to get help?
• Are you proficient with the communication, networking and interpersonal skills needed to make it in the new role? Will you get along with your peers, subordinates, and management at the new role?
• Are you at ease with the demands on the new role: time, travel, pressures, and challenges? Can your family (or other aspects of your personal life) support this transition?
• Can you swallow your pride if you are rejected for the new role? Are you ready to seek honest feedback about how management values you, listen, and make yourself more promotable in the future?

The more questions you answer with a “Yes” to, the better your chances for a successful promotion. Reflect on the questions you answer with a “No” to. Create a growth plan, improve your professional profile, and, ask for feedback from management on what you can do deserve a promotion.

Recommended Reading

• How to write a job description for your present position
• Seeking proactive feedback from your manager
• Do you deserve a raise?
• Seeking proactive feedback from your manager
• Getting recognition to help career advancement

***See other articles related to promotions, job transitions, career planning, managing your career, career success

Last week, Time Magazine discussed research that suggests that using curse words can help cope with physical pain. This reminds me of a 2007 research that implies that regular swearing helps employees better express their feelings in stressful circumstances and boosts team morale.

Such research is misleading in that the findings may be perceived as approving of profanity at work. As work environments have become more laid-back over the years, swearing is more commonplace than in the past, especially in blue-collar environments and certain other workplace cultures.

Harry S. Dennis III of The Executive Committee (TEC) in Wisconsin and Michigan explores two bases for the tolerance of profanity in workplaces.

• The laid-back we-are-all-in-this-together culture is almost like a fraternity environment. The use of profanity somehow communicates a symbolic unity. Employees believe that their degree of comfort with one another means it’s OK to let down their guard. It becomes a casual exchange and falsely suggests a degree of communication intimacy.
• In the hard-driving aggressive environment, employees use profanity to communicate urgency, a need for action. Most swear words are one syllable, so they carry a bullet-like impact and light a fire under the butt of the person on the receiving end so they get the job done. It is, in fact, a terrible negative motivator.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, Bob Nardelli at Home Depot, Carol Betz at Yahoo! and other executives are reported to have cussed at work. When leaders and managers swear without restraint to express annoyance at an employee, colleague, competitor, customer or circumstance, the message they convey to their organizations is that profanity is acceptable. This is akin to potty-mouthed parents hinting that it is probably OK for their watchful kids to use curse words.

Swearing and poor language is not acceptable in any professional setting. Swearing is dysfunctional to the cohesiveness of teams. Many employees find use of expletives as discourteous and quickly lose respect for those using profane language. Managers’ abusive management style can quickly intimidate employees who may hesitate to speak out.

Bad language is unacceptable behavior. Organizations should require that employees exercise common sense and avoid using colorful language. HR must deal with issues of swearing in the workplace as they occur and institute disciplinary procedures to prevent charges of workplace bullying, abuse or discrimination. Leaders and managers should curb their own language and comply privately and publicly. Employees, even high-performing ones, who repeatedly disregard such requirements and undermine the trust and morale of workplace environments must go openly.

Recommended Reading

• What happens when a manager badmouths an employee
• Jack Welch’s four types of managers
• Forced ranking in performance management systems
• Four keys to an excellent relationship with your boss

***See other articles related to communication, work environments, managing people, human resources, workplace cultures

Busy professionals tend to live a deskbound lifestyle. Their hectic schedules develop into easy excuses for abandoning regular exercise patterns. Consequently, their sedentary lifestyles, when combined with insufficient sleep, a disregard for healthful eating and drinking habits and the greater levels of stress in the modern workplace, can lead to fatigue and ill health over time.

Here are nine simple suggestions to encourage the busy professional lead a healthier lifestyle at work.

Practice Simple Workouts

• Consider a healthier commute. Bike or walk to work at least once a week. If you ride a bus or train, get off a prior stop and walk the remainder.
• Take stairs instead of elevators. Research suggests that climbing stairs can burn as much as seven times the calories burned when using an elevator.
• Seek out opportunities to stand or walk. Walk up to colleague’s desks instead of instant messaging, emailing, or calling them. Take longer routes to restrooms, water fountains, meetings rooms, and others’ desks.
• Take walks during breaks or after lunch. Consider starting a lunchtime walking group with like-minded coworkers. Walk for twenty minutes at a nearby park, around your office building or in the hallways. Better yet, take the stairs to walk up a few flights. Doing exercises in a group is more enjoyable and helps sustain the habit.
• Stretch at your desk. Adopt a handful of simple exercises to stretch your fingers, wrists, arms, shoulders, chest, neck, back, and legs. Although these activities do not contribute to any form of serious aerobic exercise, they are nevertheless advantageous to promote fitness and reduce anxiety.

Eat and Drink Healthier

• Eat healthy. Do not skip breakfast or lunch. Favor full-service salad bars or healthy choice menus at company cafeterias. Better yet, pack your lunch — it is economical too. Regulate your eating when dining-out with customers, visitors or management — studies suggest that we tend to overindulge in social settings or while on expense accounts.
• Keep a supply of low-calorie, nutritious snacks, raw vegetables and fruits at your desk. These serve as healthier choices to snack food usually stocked in office vending machines.
• Avoid indulging in sugar- and calorie-laden pastries, pies, cakes, cookies doled out on birthdays and anniversaries, or spread out in break rooms.
• Drink more water. Try to limit carbonated beverages and fruit juices to one can/bottle a day. Avoid caffeine in the evenings to prevent sleep deprivation at night — the half-life of caffeine is about six hours.

Recommended Resources

• Stretches you can do in your office (Slide Show from Mayo Clinic)
• Google blog on ergonomics, posture, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other repetitive stress injuries (RSI.)
• 20 simple at-your-desk exercises
• Reasons to drink more water and how much
• Ibrahim’s Spring Fitness Challenge

***See other articles related to wellness, health, well-being, fitness

Preamble

This article is the final article in a series of four articles that presents the basics of diagnosing how you tend to spend your time and how you can develop the discipline of spending your time on what really matters to you. Here is a synopsis of the preceding three articles.

1. The first article established that effective time management is truly not about managing time as such; rather, it is about managing priorities. See full article here.
2. The second article outlined a simple exercise to help you track how you use your hours and minutes during a suitably long period of time, ideally a whole week. See full article here.
3. Yesterday’s article described three steps to tally up your time logs, analyze how you actually use your time, and recognize non-productive tasks and activities. See full article here.

Today’s closing article details a simple process to list your life’s values and priorities and create a time budget to help you center your actions on the truly important aspects of your life and career.

Define Your Values and Priorities

A great deal of anxiety and stress in your life is largely from doing things that are inconsistent with what you believe and what you know you should be doing. Your lack of control over your time stems from doing things that are incoherent with your core values and priorities in life and career.

Matching your actions to the truly important aspects of your life will help you be more focused, more disciplined and more effective. With this objective, spend about 15 minutes to reflect on your life and career, clarify your short- and long-term goals and discover your overriding priorities.

Identify Your Priorities in Life

1. With the help of your spouse or significant other, catalog the core values that you hold dear — the guiding principles of your life. Include personal characteristics, traits and achievements you desire to realize in the short-term and the long-term. Your list many include family, career success, well-being and happiness, prestige, wealth, sense of community or anything else that you feel is important.
2. Rank your values and goals. Sort your list in order of their importance to you. Begin with most important value or goal and end with the least important. Judge between conflicting values to help you commit to ideas and activities that are truly important. Condense your list to 7 to 10 priorities.
3. Rewrite your priorities in terms of actions and achievements that would satisfy each priority or the associated value. Consider the following example.

Example 1: Top Three Priorities of Linda, a Housewife

The previous article on time analysis featured Linda, a housewife who works part-time. Consider this list of her top three priorities in life.

1. Husband and daughter. “Love and care for my husband. Support his career and goals. Nurture our daughter and give her the best upbringing.”
2. Family and friends. “Provide for my aging parents. Support my entrepreneur-brother. Spend more time with dear friends.”
3. Part-time work. “Learn and contribute in my profession as an accountant. Supplement family income.”

Identify Your Priorities at Work

Your desire to be productive at work should begin with understanding your most important tasks in terms of what your role demands of you.

1. Collect your job description, your boss’s and your employees’ job descriptions, your organization’s objectives, any metrics that you report on a regular basis, your recent performance reviews, and your documented career plan. Review these documents.
2. List and rank your priorities. What does your role require of you? What goals have your boss and your organization set for you? What are your key projects and initiatives? How your organizational objectives direct impact your own work? Do not list any more than three major priorities (priorities that require 25% of your time or more) and two minor, comparatively less-significant priorities.

Example 2: Top Priorities of Kumar, a Middle-Level Manager

The previous article on time analysis featured Kumar, a middle-level manager at an aerospace company. Kumar aspires to reorganize his time, adopt productive means to get his work completed by working no more than 45-48 hours per week. Consider the following list of his projects, in order.

1. Project A
2. Project B
3. Coaching and developing team members
4. Initiative M
5. Project C

Realize How Your Current Actions and Priorities are Incoherent

The root of the feeling of being under constant time pressure is the disparity between your actions and priorities. You tend to take advantage of almost every opportunity that comes your way, irrespective of the significance of these opportunities in relation to your core values.

Compare your time log and time analysis report with your list of priorities and decide objectively how much time each of your activities was worth to you in contrast to the time you actually spent on it. You may realize that, perhaps, 80% – 90% of your time is wasted in non-effective activities.

As you review your time analysis report, think about everything that you do that should not be done at all or should not be done by you and recognize all the non-productive, wasteful activities. You will realize that you have been spending time instead of investing time in what really matters.

Resolve to eliminate all activities and commitments that are not aligned to your priorities. For example, Linda — the housewife referred above — spent six hours each week volunteering on the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school “just to be involved.” She realized the lack of value in spending six hours every week on an activity she did not contribute much and decided to withdraw from the committee. Kumar, the middle-level manager, spent way too much time attending meetings. He decided to attend only the most important meetings where his presence was truly required, participated via telephone wherever possible and spared 10 hours on his weekly calendar.

Prepare a Time Budget to Schedule Your Priorities

A time budget helps you decide how your hours should be used given the priorities you have identified for yourself. This is the first step in exercising more control over your time and your life. Preparing a time budget could be as simple as deciding how many hours you would devote to each of your priorities, or could be as complex as setting up your weekly calendar to reflect your priorities.

1. Beginning with your top priority, setup appointments in your calendar and block-off as many hours of the week that are necessary for your priorities. If your most important priority in life is family (it should be,) first allot time for all the activities you desire to do or share your family — set aside time to coach your kids in basketball, set aside time to help your spouse with chores around the home, etc. At work, schedule time to work on your most important projects and initiatives.
2. Locate your most important tasks hours when you tend to be most efficient. For example, if you tend to work best in the mornings, schedule your most important projects for the mornings.
3. Schedule time for your minor projects and lower priorities around your major projects and higher priorities. Decide on the right time to do email, run errands, conduct regular staff meetings, etc.

Your time budget should essentially serve as a guide for how you will spend your time. As with a financial budget, you may not necessarily comply with your time budget. Nevertheless, it is important to prepare a time budget to help you direct how you should spend your time.

Your time budget will help you decide how you can live your priorities. You will realize that by complying with your time budget, your use of your personal time improves dramatically; you are able to focus and reduce anxiety.

Example 1: Time Budget for Linda, the Housewife

Linda prepared the following time budget to help her comply with her stated priorities in life. She eliminated or reduced activities that did not directly contribute to her priorities or were not as productive. For example, she

• ‘found’ six hours by quitting from the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school
• saved four hours by seeking her husband’s help to clean her home and hiring a landscaping service to tend to her yard.
• reduced her time watching TV and on the internet.
• ‘discovered’ more time for her family and friends, exercise and well-being.

Example 2: Time Budget for Kumar, the Middle-Level Manager

Kumar, who previously could not “get it all done” in over 65 hours each week at work, reorganized his calendar around his most important projects and prepared the following budget for 45-48 hours of productive work per week.

Wrap-up: Managing Priorities (and Time) Effectively

This series of articles on the basics of time management described a simple and effective process of logging and analyzing how you use your time, and budgeting your time around your priorities. This process reveals time wastefulness and provides a structure to help you focus on your chosen priorities.

Your personal and professional values and priorities change often based on your progress in life and career. Plan to perform a detailed time analysis regularly — ideally once every six months, — monitor your time, review your priorities and adjust your time budget. Keep your focus on achieving the top priorities.

In sum, time management is, simply, an orderly discipline of controlling how you spend your most valuable resource. The singular purpose of this quest is to regulate the pace of life, reduce unwarranted stress, organize your actions and responsibilities according to the main values and priorities in your life, and realize a meaningful, purpose-driven life.

Recommended Reading

• Don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘done’
• Overcoming procrastination: the “10-minute dash” technique to get a task going
• Seven habits to beat Monday morning blues

***See other articles related to time management, managing priorities, effectiveness, personal organization, getting things done, execution, time logging, time survey, work-life balance

During the weekdays, we engage in routine life and long for two blissful days during the weekends. Habitually, we tend to over-plan for the weekends and underachieve. By Sunday evenings, we tend to feel that our weekends just fizzle out.

We feel that our weekends are short-lived — that they are inadequate to accomplish everything that we want to. We wish we had relaxed more, completed more errands and spent more time with family and friends.

This article presents five habits that you could consider to make the most out of each weekend and feel more refreshed for a new week ahead.

Habit 1: Wake-up Early, Seize your Mornings

Try to avoid sleeping-in. When you wake-up late on Saturday and Sunday mornings, you tend to feel that almost half of these days are over. Moreover, sleeping-in during the weekends puts your sleep out of the weekday-rhythm and makes it difficult to wake-up promptly on Monday mornings.

Maintain your weekday wake-up times on Saturday and Sunday mornings as well. If you desire to “catch-up with sleep,” consider getting to bed earlier on Friday and Saturday nights or taking small naps on Saturday and Sunday mid-mornings. Try not to indulge yourself in a Sunday afternoon siesta — you will be able to go to bed early on Sunday night and prevent drowsiness on Monday afternoon.

Wake up early and seize the mornings. Spend some quiet time alone or with your family. Laze around, go for a brisk walk, visit the Farmers’ Market, sit in your porch with coffee and newspaper, and enjoy the serenity of the morning.

Habit 2: Shift Chores and Errands to Weekdays

Instead of spending your precious weekend on home projects — laundry, sorting, redecorating, cleaning — and errands, consider redistributing chores and errands among the weekdays. Say, for instance, you tend to spend two hours every weekend on chores, consider spending half an hour each weekday completing these tasks. Set your weekend aside for pleasure.

If you must work on particular home projects and run errands during the weekend, complete them on Saturday. This will enable you to unwind on Sunday. Instead, if you relax on Saturday, you will realize on Sunday morning that you will need to complete various household tasks by Sunday night — you will then hurry through Sunday and exhaust yourself by Sunday night.

Focus on a stress-free, relaxed, fun-filled Sunday with family and friends.

Habit 3: Plan and Prepare; Do Not Over-plan

Consult your family and friends and prepare an outline for your weekend in advance. Do not wait until the weekend to organize the weekend. On or before Thursday, go out shopping and collect all the resources necessary. By preparing in advance, you will be able to execute your plan as soon as your weekend starts instead of spending time wondering what to do.

Avoid any activity, e.g., catching up with work email, that is part of the weekday routine. Do consider, however, spending time working on important matters e.g., planning your investments, that you have been postponing. Vary your activities each week and avoid establishing a routine for your weekends — routines are for weekdays.

Habit 4: Improvise and Engage in Life’s Little Pleasures

“The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives – Do Less and Do It Better.”
– Dale E. Turner

As you plan your activities for the weekend, be realistic in what you can achieve. Do not over-plan. Try to prioritize your activities. Rushing around can easily exhaust you.

Allow for spontaneity and improvise your weekends. Engage in life’s little pleasures: spend time outdoors, go for a walk, hike, take a bicycle ride, or tend to your garden. Talk to friends and family you have not been in touch for a while, read magazines and books, or look at old pictures. Or, pursue a hobby, go to the beach, visit a museum, attend a concert, or do anything else that is fun for you and your loved ones.

Habit 5: Reflect and Appreciate

On Sunday evenings, reflect on everything you did during the weekend and appreciate having a good time with family and friends.

Do not fret if you did not complete everything you had planned. There is always another weekend coming-up.

Concluding Thoughts

The key to making your weekend feel longer and having a relaxing time is to reorganize your plans and freeing-up time for your favourite, pleasurable activities during the weekend. By prioritizing, improvising and staying on top of things you can arrive at the end of your weekend contented and full of energy for the fresh week ahead.

Recommended Reading

• Beat Monday morning blues
• Recharge mid-week by taking time-off on Wednesday afternoon

***See other articles related to Recharging, re-energizing, energy management, time-off, relaxation, productivity, work-life, stress management, friends and family

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing.
Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
* Frank Tibolt

Better Management.
Don’t manage stress or nuisances – get rid of them.
* Unknown

Skills are not copyright – they are transferable.
* Unknown

When we remember we are all mad,
the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
* Mark Twain

Better late than never.
* Anonymous

When you can’t change the direction of the wind – adjust your sails.
* H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.
* Ovid

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so.
All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being
inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
* Ludwig Wittgenstein

Our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal silence.
* William Wordsworth

Visit www.Inspiration.RightAttitudes.com for my compilation of inspirational quotations by author and topic. You may also subscribe to the weekly newsletter of inspirational quotations by sending a blank email to iqml-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

*Keyword(s): Inspiration, Quotations

In the age of knowledge work, we are all paid to think — to evaluate solution-paths and solve problems creatively. Yet, we get busy doing and fail to devote part of our days for deep thinking.

In today’s workplace, we all have too much to do in too little time with too few resources at hand. This faster pace of work-life coupled with the emphasis on getting things done has come to accentuate busyness. The result is that we lack a sense of control of our time. We do not take the time out to think and plan.

The Tragedy of Our Times

If I had eight hours to chop a tree,
I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.
* Unknown

Jack Trout, author and business leader, explains that with “No Time to Think,” we have become a world of reactors.

With the world of work getting more complex and difficult, and with the demands of people, cell phones, BlackBerrys or just too much communication, having the quiet and time to sort things out and figure what to do is fast disappearing. We have become a world of reactors, not thinkers, at a time when good thinking is so desperately needed.

Publisher-CEO Michael Hyatt advocates “Finding More ‘Head Time.’”

Most of us don’t spend time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.

The problems we face will not likely be solved by working harder. New gadgets won’t really help either. In fact, I sometimes fear that our many gadgets have only added unnecessary clutter to our lives. What we need is better, more profound thinking.

Call for Action: Book Frequent Quiet-Time

Thinking requires a great deal of time and energy. With frequent interruptions and distractions, dedicating time for deep thinking or intense work can be very challenging. Schedule frequent quiet-times into your day.

During each quiet-time session, completely shut yourself off from your colleagues, from e-mail, phone calls and other distractions. Use this time to focus on challenging or highly-priority tasks. Reserve a conference room in your facility, arrive early at work or work at your local library. Even brief periods of dedicated thinking or work can make your day vastly productive.

In addition to booking frequent quiet time, assess time- and energy-wasters. Filter incoming information, delegate effectively, automate routine tasks, fight-off distractions and frequent interruptions from your colleagues, and, be selective in what meetings you attend.

***See other articles related to time management, personal organization, productivity, ideas for impact, work-life, stress management