Posts Tagged ‘Planning’

Focus is the Key to Success

June 23rd, 2010

FocusLast week I mentioned focus as one of the attributes of success. Although I consider myself successful, I definitely have trouble staying focused. Since most of my time is spent working with clients, I have very little time available to work in my office on administrative tasks (like writing this blog). If you are challenged in this area as well, maybe you can benefit from some of the things that have helped me stay focused when I‘m working in my office:

I have a clear goal and purpose. I make sure that whatever I’m working on is moving me closer to one of my personal or professional goals. If a task isn’t meaningful in that way, I strongly evaluate why I’m even considering doing it. If I have trouble getting passionate about something once I’ve started it, I step back and re-evaluate whether I should be working on it.

I close my email window. It’s typically much more interesting to see what messages are coming my way than work on the task at hand, so I close my email window to avoid being tempted. Oops, I just closed my email now as I write this.

I set a timer. I set it in 30-minute increments and tell myself I can’t leave my desk or work on anything else until the timer goes off. Knowing that I only have to focus on the task at hand for a half hour makes it easy to avoid interrupting myself to do something else.

I immerse myself in the current task. I organize my workspace, ignore the phone (which is sometimes very hard to do), and stay focused on the goal for each 30-minute session. My goal for this session is to get this blog post written.

I take breaks. After each 30-minute work session I take a break of 10 minutes or so before the next focused session begins. I might grab a snack, make a phone call, or do some quick tasks from my to-do list. Whatever it is, it doesn’t require a lot of brain power or a big chunk of time.

I write down random thoughts. If ideas pop into my head that aren’t related to what I’m working on, I write them on either my master to do list for future scheduling, or in my planner for whatever day I plan to do them. Then I get right back to work.

I meditate. I’ve only recently begun meditating – I never thought it was something I needed and I certainly didn’t think I had time for it. But I took a class to get me started and listen to some guided meditations to help me stay focused. It doesn’t take a lot of time and it helps me clear my head so that I can focus more easily during my workday. Here are a couple of resources I like: Mindful Meditations  and Energetic Solutions

Whew, finished writing with 2 minutes to spare on my timer. I’d love to hear how you stay focused when life is pulling you in a million different directions.

Wishing you simplicity, harmony and freedom,

Signature_Sue

Life Lessons Learned from a Hockey Team

June 16th, 2010

#1 fanMy favorite sports team, the Chicago Blackhawks, recently won the championship trophy for professional hockey – the Stanley Cup. Whether or not you’re a hockey fan, you can learn some important lessons from the Blackhawks:

Surround yourself with people who can help you achieve your vision. In 2004, ESPN named the Blackhawks the worst franchise in professional sports – that’s all professional sports, not just hockey. Personnel changes were made throughout the management ranks at all levels, and just six years later, the Blackhawks have won what is arguably the hardest championship of all professional sports to win. Are the people in your life or business able to support you in being your best?

Let people know you care about them. With new, visionary thinkers at the helm, the Blackhawks changed many of their policies, including how they interacted with their fans and past players. Within the last three years, they’ve held their first fan convention, allowed the games to be televised, and invited past stars to be ambassadors for the team. As a result, game attendance has skyrocketed. Are you treating the people in your life, including family members, employees, customers and vendors in a way that makes them want to support you?

Focus and commitment will get you to your goal.  Several years ago, the Blackhawks adopted a marketing campaign with the slogan “One Goal” – that being the Stanley Cup. Their advertising, as well as their mindset, had them focused on achieving that goal. In fact, when they won several rounds of the playoffs this year, they didn’t allow themselves to celebrate too much, because they hadn’t yet achieved their goal of winning the Stanley Cup. What goals do you have for yourself, and what are you doing to focus on achieving them?

Wishing you succes in achieving your goals,

Signature_Sue

The Job Isn’t Finished Until All Steps are Completed

June 9th, 2010

LAUNDRYA recent client of mine (I’ll call her Donna) struggled mightily with getting her clean laundry put away rather than strewing it across the living room couch. As we worked to understand the causes of her challenge, we discovered that she didn’t view putting the laundry away as being at all related to other steps in the laundry process. Instead, she viewed each step (sort clothes, load washer, run washer, empty washer, load dryer, empty dryer, fold clothes, put clothes away) as separate from and unrelated to any other step in the process. In her view, sorting and washing the clothes without having time to do any of the subsequent steps was better than having a mile high stack of dirty clothes. However, operating in this fashion sometimes (ok, often) caused Donna to have to rewash wrinkled clothes that sat in the dryer for several day, or even moldy clothes that sat wet in the washer for a few days.

Donna struggled with several identified learning disabilities, and as we worked together we discovered another one: challenges with sequencing. She knew darn well what the individual steps in the laundry process were, but didn’t see that they were all connected in a way that required all to be completed before she could consider the job of laundry to be done (although we both sadly acknowledged that laundry is never done!).

Many things that come up in our life are similar to the laundry process in that they involve several steps. For example, eating dinner involves meal planning (even if it’s just staring into an open refrigerator), cooking, setting the table, eating, clearing the table, doing dishes, cleaning the pots and pans, etc. – you get the idea. If we do some of the steps in the process (let’s say, up to the point of eating) but don’t finish the remaining steps, we’ve created more work for ourselves in the long run. In this example, the next time we want to cook dinner we’ll have to first clean the pots and pans from the prior meal, effectively having to start today’s work by finishing yesterday’s tasks. If instead we’d finished each such job through to completion we’d make life a lot easier for ourselves.

I’d love to hear what challenges you face in finishing things through to completion, and how it impacts your life.

Wishing you simplicity, harmony and freedom,

Signature_Sue

Write Things Down to Get Them Done

February 24th, 2010

Write things downA button from my coat had been sitting on my bathroom counter for the past week – it was there to remind me to sew it back on my coat. Unfortunately, I only saw it when I was getting ready for work in the morning and getting ready for bed in the evening. I didn’t have the time or energy at either of those times to take on this straightforward task. So there sat my button, and there I was with my coat flapping in the wind where the button should have been. Recognizing that my “keep it out to remind me” system wasn’t working, I broke down and wrote “sew button” on my calendar.

 Although I counsel my clients to write their to-dos on a master list or right on their calendar, sewing on a button seemed too insignificant to warrant such a “formal” step. Yet as I plowed through my task list yesterday and came across my simple reminder, I marched up the stairs to my sewing supplies and sewed on that pesky button. There was something powerful about making a commitment to do it at a particular time – it represented a pledge to myself to get it done. I also saw the reminder when I had time and energy to act on it.

 I encourage you to move your intentions to commitment by writing them down on a task list or calendar. Get all those random thoughts out of your head and clean up those “reminder” piles by committing to paper or your electronic reminder system what you need to do and when you’ll do it. I’d love to hear what to-dos you’ve been carrying around in your head or tossing into a pile, and when you’re willing to commit to getting them done.

Best wishes,Signature_Sue

Plan Your Day to Achieve More

January 12th, 2010

Time ManagementThe past couple of weeks have put my time management skills to the ultimate test. I’ve had a load of work- and volunteer-related activities, with some personal and social life sprinkled in. As easy as it might be to feel overwhelmed during this very busy time, I’ve done a good job of keeping things under control and so far, nothing has fallen through the cracks (at least nothing that I know of!).  The key factor in my ability to staying on top of things is daily planning.

I liken daily planning to planning a road trip. You have a starting point and an ultimate destination, and you need to determine how to get between the 2 locations. A daily plan serves as the road map that helps you accomplish the things you’d like to get done on a given day. To create your own daily plan, use your planning tool (appointment book, online calendar, phone, etc.) to map out what you want to accomplish that day. Then decide how detailed you want to get – do you need to specifically schedule each phone call, or just block out general phone call time? Do you need to schedule every minute of the day, or just list the top 5 things you want to get done and fit them in whenever the mood strikes you? There is no right or wrong way, just whatever way works best for you.

A common problem for many people is getting to the end of the day with a to-do list that doesn’t seem any shorter than when the day started. Often that’s because we are unrealistic in terms of how time-consuming many tasks are. Using my road trip analogy, that’s like not taking into account how many miles are between two points, as well as how road construction, detours, and other unforeseen hazards may slow you down. To build your time awareness, try this time estimating exercise:

  • Note how long you think each item on your to-do list will take.
  • Pay attention to how long each task actually takes, and jot the actual time down next to your estimate.
  • As you amaze yourself with how much longer things may have taken than you estimated, determine if it’s because you were simply an inexperienced estimator, or because problems, interruptions, or procrastination made you less efficient than you could have been.
  • Use this information to find ways to work more efficiently, as well as to remind yourself to allow more time to get things done in the future and to schedule less each day.

Best wishes as you move towards filling your day with things that leave you fulfilled.

Signature_Sue