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Launching Mind Tools' "Make Time for Success!"
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Welcome to Mind Tools’
September Newsletter!
The Time Management Issue
This newsletter
keeps you up-to-date on what’s new at Mind Tools
and lets you know about new career skills on the Mind
Tools website.
In this edition, we are very proud to let you know about the launch of Mind Tools new Time Management program, appropriately called Make Time for Success! We share with you important tools used in this program, as well as information that you can put to use today to more effectively manage your time, and your success.
In our 1 July newsletter, we asked for 20 volunteers to test the course out. We would like to thank Benade Baird, Bill McCorkle, Caroline Isted, Christine Koong, Daisy Wright, Dan Ward, Elwood Matthews, Henry Logan, Jennifer Tung, Melissa Morris, Michael G DeMotte, Midgie Thompson, Sandra Feaster and Thomas Russell for their detailed work in beta-testing this course and for their detailed comments and recommendations, which are now integrated within the launch version of the course.
We feel particularly confident that you will find Make Time for Success! to be comprehensive and helpful, with tools and information you can rely on again and again as you work to make the most of your time and your life.
With this in mind, we encourage you to take the quick and simple quiz in the first section of the newsletter. This quiz will help you determine if you manage your time optimally or if you can benefit from our new program.
Read on to find a short review on "Between Trapezes" by best-selling author and motivational speaker Gail Blanke. As a successful executive coach, president and CEO of Lifedesigns, Blanke has put together an exciting plan for actually enjoying those in-between times, such as stretches between jobs. This book is a must read and is packed with useful information that is sure to enhance your life, and transform how you view change - for the better!
In the Success Tools section, we take a look at Goal Setting, which will help you determine your goals and work to achieve them, all the while more effectively managing your time.
You will also find information on listing and tracking short-term actions and long-term goals simultaneously in the Personal Coaching section of the newsletter, which highlights more important information from the Mind Tools Make Time for Success! program.
Finally, we'll let you know about the many new features that we will be launching on Mind Tools over the next few months.
We hope you enjoy these tools and find the new information we have included in this edition useful. We encourage you to let us know what you think and to continue to share with us any products, services or books you wish to see reviewed, as well as tools you wish to see added to the Mind Tools sites. Please continue to contact us at Suggestions@mindtools.com.
In the meantime, enjoy using mindtools.com and stress.mindtools.com!
New on Mind Tools:
Make Time for Success!
“TIME IS LIFE. It is irreversible and irreplaceable.
To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time
is to master your life and make the most of it.”
- Alan Lakein
Do you manage your time optimally? Take this simple quiz:
- Do you feel that you are not able to achieve the optimum return on your efforts?
- Do you feel overwhelmed with tasks?
- Do you find it harder to enjoy life?
- Are you forgetful; do you lose sleep worrying about how you are going to get everything done?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you may very well benefit from stronger time management skills. The Make Time for Success! program helps you acquire these skills and make them a part of your day-to-day life.
Make Time for Success! provides the blueprint for a simple system that will help you win back control of your time, your life. Designed expressly for the millennium era, this program acquaints you with practical, tested strategies that will catapult you to new heights of effectiveness.
Some of the techniques described in Make Time for Success! are easy to follow. This Mind Tools program just shows you ways to incorporate these basic skills more comprehensively and systematically in your daily life.
Of course, the program introduces you to many new, advanced skills, too; but while these are enormously powerful, they are practical and easy to grasp, and sure to bring you the results you desire.
A small shift in attitude is all you need to incorporate our new application methods and techniques in your day-to-day life. And, once you adopt this new behavior set, you will find your efforts yielding immensely higher returns.
The program objectives are to help you:
- Take back control of your time;
- Work faster, smarter and better;
- Maximize your Return on Effort;
- Find time for the things that really matter to you;
- Delegate;
- Tackle procrastination;
- Manage externals;
- Strike an ideal work-life balance; and
- Feel good about yourself.
The Structure of the Course:
The course begins by helping you understand the need for better
time management skills and what these skills can do for you. Next,
it challenges you to identify your own lifetime goals, and helps
you to narrow these down so that you have laser-sharp focus on
the ones that are most important for you.
Once you have identified these goals, the program teaches you how to make the time to achieve these goals. Step-by-step, Make Time for Success! takes you through techniques that not only enable you to tackle your workload more effectively, but also free up quality time to spend with your friends and family, and doing things that you enjoy.
Click here to find out more.
Tools Reviewed:
Between Trapezes
by best-selling author, Gail Blanke
Reviewed by Kellie Fowler
There is no way it is.
There’s only the way you say it is.
The Universe hasn’t made up its mind about you.
It only knows what you show it today.
You are the Inventor.
Your life is the Invention.
You get to make it up.
So make it up good.- Gail Blanke
You may have already heard of Gail Blanke, author of Between Trapezes. She is an acclaimed motivational speaker and executive coach, president and CEO of Lifedesigns. She is also the author of the best-selling In My Wildest Dreams: Simple Steps to a Fabulous Life. She has appeared on Oprah, and her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Time, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal. Considering all of this, it comes as no surprise that her latest book, Between Trapezes, is inspiring and gives us the information we need to create a safety net when life seems uncertain.
Between Trapezes shows us how to embrace times of uncertainty and change with a sense of curiosity instead of anxiety and trepidation. Blanke relies on the stories of real people, who have successfully faced those dreaded in-between times (between jobs, between lovers, etc.) and dealt with such uncertainty head-on, embracing the change and moving forward with ease and success.
Much like a trapeze artist, we all have to release the bar. It is at this point that we have the ability to fly or fail – when we are between the trapeze bars or between times in our lives.
If you are dealing with change or uncertainty, Blanke provides you with a roadmap for making it to the next trapeze bar, having embraced your time of change and actually enjoying it.
Truly a page-turned, Between Trapezes is a must read for anyone who wants to handle change or times of uncertainty better.
Between Trapezes is exactly what we need to show us how to let go of the need to know. Use Blanke’s book to rejuvenate yourself and reinvent your life during change, instead of crumbling or shutting down.
Perfect for these trying times, Between Trapezes is also a great, motivational read for anyone who is content with where they are now, but looking for helpful tools to better cope with the unknowns down the road.
This book is more than just another motivational book. As Blanke so appropriately says to her readers, take her hand and fly… (and under her expert direction, you undoubtedly will).
For more information on this persuasive, inspirational, practical book, go to www.betweentrapezes.com.
Old Favorites: Setting
Goals
From the Mind Tools' Stress
Management Masterclass
Setting goals, long-term life goals, is the primary tool required to define the “Big Picture”, which is basically a reflection of your wants. And these wants, when acknowledged as goals, take on a very definite, structured form. They no longer remain mere dreams; rather, they become aspirations that give a clear meaning, motivation and direction to your life.
By setting goals on a routine basis, you decide what you want to achieve, and then move step-by-step towards the achievement of these goals. The process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to do it.
Goal setting is a standard technique used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. It gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organize your resources.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set. The process of achieving goals and seeing this achievement gives you confidence that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals.
Many people feel that writing down a goal statement robs life of spontaneity. They claim that setting goals limits one’s options. This is a wrong notion. Defining goals does not mean that you become closed to opportunities; rather, you recognize the right opportunities for what they are. You don’t waste time on low value, low priority tasks. And, of course, the option to revise your goals is always open to you. After all, goal setting is not a static exercise, once done and over with. An intrinsic part of the goal-setting exercise is reviewing them on a periodic basis.
Setting Life Goals helps people bring their future into the present by giving them a clearer view of what their ideal future looks like. Established Life Goals help you:
- Retain perspective;
- Focus efforts;
- Establish priorities;
- Provide motivation; and
- Encourage achievement.
For some people, the process of defining goals can be eye opening, forcing them to focus for the first time on what they really want in life. But for most people, it is less of a surprise than a process of clarification.
To learn more about goal setting and learn how to apply this to your life with proven techniques that will help you both manage your time and meet your goals, go to http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_HTE.htm.
Advertorial: Do
You Need More Time?
By Helaine Iris
"I don't have enough time in my day." If only I received a nickel each time I heard those words. Come to think of it, I do - sort of.
Plenty of smart, successful people hire me to help them deal with the issue of time management. Some have read the latest time management books. Most use the perfect day-planner or latest hand-held computer. Yet, they still struggle with the ever-shrinking twenty-four hour day.
Even I, on occasion, have suspected some sort of global conspiracy to rob me of my most precious commodity. Do each of us really get only 24 hours in each day? I'm certain some fortunate souls get more. And some, it seems, get far less. Have you ever wondered why? Having more time. Is it really as simple as learning a few new skills?
Is it enough to make your daily list, prioritize that list and check them off as they're completed? I don’t think so.
I propose the root of the problem lies not with a lack of time but with how you experience your life in relation to time. How is your experience of time different when your day is filled with things you love to do versus filled with things you feel you HAVE to do.
Already, I can hear you passionately interjecting, “Helaine, be realistic. How can I only do things I love to do? I have to work. There are mouths to feed, tasks to achieve and responsibilities to fulfill. People rely on me."
I agree, and here’s a taste of some foundational strategies I invite my clients to adopt in conjunction with any time management program. I challenge you to consider how these strategies might positively shift your thinking about not only managing your time but enjoying it.
You Come First
This strategy applies to everyone, but it especially applies to
women. People do rely on you. Which is why it's so important to
take care of you first. Surely, you're aware of the golden goose
idea. It serves no one to starve the goose.
Oprah said it better in a recent "O Magazine" article. "If you allow yourself to be depleted to the point where your emotional and spiritual tank is empty and running on fumes of habit, everybody loses. Especially you."
Our culture teaches otherwise, but the paradox is that you owe it to yourself and those who rely upon you to become more selfish.
Yes, selfish. You can put yourself at the top of your list without
being mean, or without taking away from those who are most important
to you.
Just let the idea sink in. I'll admit that, in practice, it's not easy initially. But try it for 30 days. I can almost guarantee your life will look and feel dramatically more fulfilling than it does today.
The Purpose Driven Life
Yes, it's a recent best-selling book. But it's also a strategy
I've been teaching my clients since long before the book was published.
Your life is always being shaped and driven by something. For
most, it's the past beliefs and habits based upon survival and
fear.
There's another option. You decide what's going to shape and drive your life. You choose the vision for what your life is to be about, the values you hold most sacred and the kind of person you are to be. And you allow those three to shape and drive your actions in each moment. Life becomes much more joyful and productive when you can filter out all the things that are not in alignment with your self-defined life purpose.
Just Say No
Once you’ve determined what’s important to you and
how you want to spend your time, you need to protect it. Despite
my aforementioned conspiracy theory, the fact is everyone gets
the same 24 hours in a day. It's up to you to decide how you'll
invest those hours. And, if you can't say no, you’ll end
up doing some things you don’t want to do, and wasting a
great deal of your valuable time.
Learning to say no creates boundaries that preserve precious time and will serve you and your purpose.
Be Here Now
Ram Dass brought this idea to the fore in the early seventies
with his book, "Be Here Now." As busy humans living
in the 21st century, the concept is no less important. We are
geared and driven to do, do, do. She who gets the most toys wins.
There’s a balancing perspective to add to the formula, however.
Being.
How might your experience of time, regardless of what you’re doing, feel different if you were aware, present in the moment and full of a sense of being? In other words, it means being conscious of you -- your essence, your presence.
Get It Off Your Mind And Into A System
If it’s on your mind, it’s draining your energy. Keeping
what you have to do on your mind creates mental stress. Think
of your brain as the RAM of your computer. There’s only
so much it can hold until it crashes. Not only does your brain
get clogged with the 100 things you have to do, it can’t
differentiate between their level of importance, or their priority.
Utilize a trustworthy collection system for your priorities, projects and tasks. There are many time management systems available. Whether it’s a notebook you carry around, a mini tape recorder or a PDA, use a system to keep your brain available for higher functions. It's important to find one that fits your style and needs. For example, if you are technologically challenged, perhaps a computer-based time management system isn't the best bet for you.
As another example, if you are not a morning person, it might be more prudent to schedule your most important tasks later in the day, if possible.
Think of a time management system as a pair of shoes. Make sure it fits you comfortably, while supporting you as much as possible.
Can you identify which of these foundations would be a good place for you to start? Where do you need the most support? The result of these perspectives could open a new relationship to time and a more purpose driven life. Why not give it a try?
Helaine Iris is a certified Life Coach, writer and teacher
who loves her life. She works with individuals and self-employed
professionals, who want to thrive in their business while crafting
a life that's in absolute alignment with their highest ideals,
deepest values and gracefully masters the complexities of modern
living. For a solution focused, free initial consultation visit
her web site at:
http://www.pathofpurpose.com.
The Action Program - Your Organizational Control Center
From Mind Tools’ Make Time for Success! Program
You are probably aware of the idea of ‘To Do Lists’ – these are important basic time management skills (you can read our article on To Do Lists online).
To Do Lists are great for managing small numbers of tasks. But the problem with them is that for the majority of us a things-to-do list is not really a planned, focused action list. Rather, it is a sort of a catch all for partial reminders of a lot of things that are unresolved and as yet not translated into outcomes.
Specific entries, such as “Call Tina”, exist along with vague observations, such as “Get Started on House Painting Project.” Many a time the real outlines and details of what the list-maker has to “do” are actually missing. (Take for instance the House Painting project; a more precise entry would be buy paints/ choose color scheme/whatever.)
What this means is that they begin to “buckle under load” where you are running many simultaneous projects. In particular, they can lead you to focus all of your attention on single, big, time-consuming, high importance tasks in the top ‘A’ position of your list to the exclusion of other tasks on your list – this makes multi-tasking difficult, and can mean that you miss small but essential maintenance activities when you are under pressure.
Action Programs help you rectify this situation by keeping individual actions small, while still bringing together all of the major projects you are working on. They help you stay on top of both daily jobs and long-term projects simultaneously and take control of your daily to-dos without losing focus on long-term goals.
The Action Program tool is a highly important technique to master as your career develops. It helps you to:
- Take stock of the inputs that flow into your life;
- Translate these inputs into actionable activities, “Next Actions;” and
- Keep track of the “Next Actions” though a two-tier structure that reflects both long-term plans and short-term activities.
Using the Tool:
Follow this four-step procedure to create your Action Program:
1. Collection:
First, take inventory of all the things in your world that require
resolution. Try and collect and write down everything - urgent
or not, big or small, personal or professional - that you feel
is incomplete and needs action from you to get completed.
To an extent, this collection is taking place automatically. E-mailed requests are getting stored in your email account, memos demanding attention are being delivered to your in-tray, mail is reaching your mailbox and messages asking for action are accumulating on your voice mail.
But there is other stuff - stuff that is idling in your head, projects you want to run, things you intend to deal with lying at the bottom of the drawer, ideas noted down on stray bits of paper – that need to be gathered and put in place too. Bring all of these actions and projects together and inventory them in one place.
| Tip 1: Tip 2: By writing down everything on your Action Program, you can empty your mind of these stressful reminders and you make sure you prioritize these actions coherently and consistently. This has the incidental benefit of helping you improve your concentration – simply because you do not have these distractions buzzing around your mind. Tip 3: Tip 4: |
2. Pruning:
Now process your inventory of all those items on your To Do List and look at each item.
Consider what each item is. Decide whether you should actually take action on it. A lot of what comes our way has no real relevance to us. If that is the case, then remove these things from your List.
If you need to take action, ask yourself what the logical next action is. Write this next action down.
In case you feel that you might need to take action on the item at some future date or might need the material as reference later, store the messages in an assigned home (more on this in Module 4).
3. Organization:
Now you need to work through this inventory of stuff and put it
into the right place in your Action Program.
The Action Program is split up into three parts:
- A “Next Action List”, which shows the small next actions that you will take to move your projects forward;
- A “Delegated Actions List”, which shows projects and actions delegated to other people, who they are delegated to, and the next date on which you will review progress; and
- A “Project Catalog” that shows all of the projects you are engaged in and the small individual tasks that you have identified so far that contribute to them.
Incidentally, if you are confused by any of this, refer to our example in a few pages time.
To create your own Action Program, work through your inventory, and categorize stuff as follows:
- If this is a logical next action on a project, put it on your Next Action List. This shows the small next steps that you are going to take to advance your projects. Remember that if you can delegate the action (see module 6), then your next action is the action of delegation. Once you’ve delegated the action, put it on your Delegated Actions List (see below).
| Tip
1: Tip 2: If next actions are larger than this, break them down. For example, if your next action is to write an article, break this down into (for example) research, planning, writing, fact-checking and editing phases. Then make the research phase your next action, and put the rest of the stages in your project catalog. Tip 3: Then monitor your success in dealing with these actions. If you find that actions are ‘stagnating’ on your list, consider whether you should either cancel these projects or put the projects to which they belong on hold, or whether you should raise their priority so that you deal with them. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t have too many actions on your Next Action List. |
- If this is an action you have delegated to someone else, put it on your ‘Delegated Actions List’. Also note down who you’ve delegated the action to and when you’ve agreed your next checkpoint for the action.
- If the item is a project that you must run or want to run, write it down in your project catalog. If the item is part of a project, write it down as a bullet point under the relevant project.
You may also find that as you go, points almost “organize themselves” into projects – this will become clear as you work through. Put them within the project catalog as a project, and promote the most obvious next action to your next action list.
Now review the Next Action List. If it is too cluttered, move some of the less urgent/important jobs down into the project catalog. If it is thin and under-challenging, pull up some of the next actions from the Project Catalog.
Also, it makes sense to prioritize the items in the Next Action List so you know what to focus on. The old ABC system works well here – ‘A’ being marked against top priority tasks, ‘B’ against medium priority and ‘C’ against low priority tasks.
4. “Working” Your Action Program:
An Action Program typically is fairly long, often running onto
several pages. But just because you have a long list does not
mean you have to run through the entire Program every day. Typically,
you will be dealing with just the top page or pages: These are
the pages where your short-term activities are listed. Some activities
may be day-specific/time-specific. They can be either maintained
as the top page of your Action Program or marked on your calendar.
Actually, these pages are just a new form of your old to-do list. It is just that only specific short actions are outlined here, while the major projects to which the actions belong are stored in your Project Catalog.
The purpose of the other pages is that they give you a place to keep track of your medium and long-term projects. Most days, you won’t even have to look beyond Page 3. However, in case something from Page 7 does surface during the course of the day you have a reference point in your list.
What you must do is review the list periodically (put time for this in your schedule), deleting or archiving items you’ve completed, moving items from the Project Catalog to the front pages as you make progress on your project, and adding any new stuff that has come your way.
Let us say you are working on a long-term project. The final outcome of the project is listed in the project catalog section. You can continually draw from it those portions that can be handled in the short-term and move them up to the front.
Example:
Let us go through a slightly simplistic example to get a more
concrete fix on the concept. Take the case of a journalist. He
arrives in the office, opens his email and sees a message from
his editor. The boss wants our journalist to do an article on
health care packages being offered by hospitals.
He runs the editor’s communication through our four-step procedure. The first step, the collection step, has already taken place. The communication was collected in his E-mail account automatically.
He is now ready for the second step. Does he need to take action on it? Yes. What is the next action he can and needs to take on it? Drawing a list of the hospitals around and collecting their numbers seems to be a good starting point.
Moving onto the third step, can he delegate this job to someone else? No. Can he write the list in two minutes? No. Then he should put down the list-making activity under the Next Action head of his Action Program. Next he has to consider the final outcome he hopes to achieve. The article, of course! This gets listed under the Project Catalog head.
Once this activity is done, he can list another Next Action - call X, Y, Z hospitals – to move the project towards completion. The process goes on till he finishes the article and strikes it off his list.
This is shown in the simplified example Action Program below:
| Action Program 23 September 2004
Delegated Actions: (no delegated actions in this example) Project Catalog: |
Summary:
The Action Program is a new, “industrial strength”
version of the old to-do list. It helps you to process inputs
into actionable activities and then list them into a three-tier
structure.
In the short-term context, under the “Next Action List” heading, you list the precise, activity you have decided to undertake on the input.
In the “Delegated Actions List”, you record the projects and actions you have delegated, who you have delegated them to, and when your next review date is.
In the long-term context, under the “Project Catalog” heading, you list the final outcome you want to achieve on the input, and the other actions you have gathered that will contribute to that final outcome.
This approach helps you maintain focus on daily jobs and long-term goals simultaneously. It means that you always have a plan for “next action” that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment: This puts you in control, and gives you a real sense of achievement.
More than this, this approach helps you to multi-task effectively,
helping you to manage complex jobs with a variety of inputs –
the sort of job managed by a typical CEO.
This is just one of the many powerful time management skills explained in Mind Tools' new e-book, Make Time for Success! Click here to find out more about it.
Final note from James - What's next on Mind Tools...
These days, it seems we never have enough time. Forced to multi-task both at home and work, time management skills have become a necessity. This is exactly why we brought the Mind Tools team together to research and write Make Time for Success! We hope you enjoy this program and encourage you to let us know your thoughts on it and the other Mind Tools resources.
This is just one of the resources we are working hard to bring to you.
In the next newsletter we'll launch our MP3 Audio Guide to Mind Tools. We've developed this because some of our visitors have said that while they love the site, they are confused by the sheer volume of information available. The Audio Guide takes you on an audio tour of the site, highlighting the most important articles and putting the tools in their correct context. We will offer this to new subscribers to the newsletter, and will of course will provide this free to you in the next newsletter.
As well as this, we have a raft of new articles and courses coming through on a wide range of new topics, which we will launch in future newsletters. This will include useful tools and techniques in areas like leadership, customer service, management training, team development, performance management and more.
Best wishes, thank you for reading, and have a great month!
James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler
James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler
Click here to email
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