Simple Tactics to Boost ROI from Your Investment of Time

Each day offers only 1,440 minutes. Unlike dollars invested in the stock market that we anticipate will give us back more dollars to reinvest, each minute can be spent no more than once. Are you getting the desired return on investing your limited time?

If you're experiencing hiccups, consider these time management tips to boost productivity:

1. Stay true to your priorities, intentionally aligning your actions with those areas of importance and better avoiding burnout. As priorities shift, it’s important to be flexible, shuffling how your time is invested to keep your actions focused on achieving your highest priority goals. It's important to regularly revisit this alignment, assessing how well you are staying focused on what matters most and investing your limited minutes in those priority actions.

2. Learn to say "no". What actions are being asked of you that don't actually need to be done? Are there tasks on your to-do list that could be delegated to someone else who can do them equally well if not even better so you open time for what only you can do? Alternatively, should you consider "not now" for something that can be delayed until a later deadline?

3. Utilize work-life integration for more overall success. Create harmony with goals for home, work, society and yourself by allowing them to complement one another rather than compete with each other. Focus on actions that can accomplish multiple goals at once, plan how you can invest your time with each of your most important priorities at the forefront of your emphasis and maintain pliability to easily address your priorities as they evolve over time.

4. Cut back on distractions with fewer pings and dings. When distracted, it can take us an average of 23 minutes to fully re-engage in the task at hand. Each time we receive a notification for a new email, social media update, text or voice mail, those are the distractions that steal our time. Stop bleeding minutes throughout the day! Turn off the notifications and schedule set times to check each platform. For folks requiring immediate responses, make them VIPs to utilize Do Not Disturb on iOS and Priority Mode on Android.

How do you make sure the limited number of minutes you have in each day is moving you forward in crafting the life you want to live? Make every minute matter!™️

Ways to Keep Productivity Soaring Throughout the Summer Season

With the hours of daylight super long this time of year, it's the perfect time to take steps toward boosting productivity as you enjoy this sensational season...

List out your goals. It's only by knowing what you want to accomplish that you can best integrate all elements of your life for your greatest fulfillment and summer productivity. Therefore, take a few moments to jot down all your must-do activities, projects and tasks for this season. Think of it like a bucket list but take into account your goals for work, home, society as well as your self-care via mind, body and spirit. Once everything is culled into one place, it'll be so much easier to assign time for each and work through your checklist.

Calendar the craziness! Line up calendars for the months of July, August and September on your wall so you can see everything at a glance. These might be wall-hanging paper or dry-erase calendars; the key is to have all three months visible at once. Then, add vacation details for you and your team members, holiday celebrations, impending deadlines and personal or family commitments, including swim meets and camp registrations alike. Include all elements of your life, considering a different color for each bucket. When you know what is coming, you can more proactively invest your time in achieving all of your desired results for each area of life and address "all the things" that matter most for the life you want to craft to achieve your highest priorities.

Establish your non-negotiables from the get-go. As summer schedules tend to become a little more erratic than normal, you and your team need to know which items have less flexibility than others. For me, I absolutely must maintain my weekly strategy session and daily wrap-up, but the good habits that keep each individual on track productively will vary from person to person. Do you expect your team members to have certain hours during which they always work in the office rather than operate remotely? Is there an expectation for how team members should request vacation time or notify the rest of the team about a hiccup related to impending deadlines, which can be especially vital with varying schedules for summer vacations? This would be a good time to communicate leadership's expectations to everyone. Be as clear, concise and transparent as you can. Then, when looking at your personal commitments, which can't be shifted as they help you energize, stay centered and maintain some semblance of sanity? Make sure those are highlighted on the calendars you've hung on your wall and communicate their importance to those who can help you keep them scheduled. Is it getting outside daily or going to the pool? Maybe it's a daily yoga session or movement? Whatever you need, be sure to ask for and commit to those fuel sources.

Focus your efforts on individual activities or tasks, not projects. It's not possible to check a project off your to-do list in one sitting. "Plan a party" is not a single action item; instead, there are many actions that make up that project. As you are mapping out the next three months, take time to break larger goals into smaller, bite-sized action items that can be completed as individual tasks. Make sure these are actions that move you forward with regards to goals in the areas of your life that matter most, avoiding the "shoulds" so you focus on your priorities. Start each task with a verb so as to fuel action, break each task down to as simple of a function as possible, estimate how long each action item will take to complete so you readily know those tasks taking 10 or 30 minutes, and assign a deadline for each task's completion. It is only in the instances that we assign a "when" for each "what" to be accomplished that we get more done so move your "someday" tasks to a specific date and time. Your future self will thank you for this emphasis on crafting the life you want to live.

Invest some time to reflect inward. With erratic schedules during summer, many companies have fewer meetings that would otherwise be held at normal intervals; this can be the ideal time to review and reset some of your organization's key elements. When was the last time your team updated its mission, vision, values, goals, processes and workspace organization? If it has been awhile, block out time during the dog days of summer to look them over, adjust as needed and, thereby, boost productivity for what really matters most. Maybe you'll want to freshen up clients' experiences, update what messages you are conveying across all mediums and put yourself in the client's shoes. Further, this can be an ideal time for a personal audit, where you assess what you have learned and achieved thus far this year, what priorities need attention in the coming months and what "someday" actions need to be scheduled so they move from to-do to done. Do your goals for work, home, community or self-care need to be adjusted, and how can you realign your actions to focus on achieving each?

Make time for fun and frivolity. If you block out time to truly enjoy the season, you'll be less distracted by what you are missing when you are focusing intently on getting things done. Brainstorm what cool things you can do to dive into summer enjoyment; then, once you've blocked off time for those activities, your mind will be less likely to drift from working towards wondering when you'll actually be able to celebrate summer fun. Plus, when you are taking time to enjoy all this season offers, you can truly take a break from everything else since you've planned for when those other goals will be addressed, boosting productivity overall.

What steps can you take today to get the ball rolling? With whom can you partner to hold each other accountable in creating your plan and, then, following through on that plan, even as things might need to be tweaked and your flexibility might get tested?

Top Ten Favorite Time Management Tips

Organize for Success® Turns 10

In honor of 10 years of business for Organize for Success®, I will be posting a "top 10" list to this blog each day through Wednesday, May 31st. Each Sunday, my team will randomly select from those who commented on the prior week's "top 10" blog posts for a gift card giveaway and free download of one eBook from OrganizeForSuccess.biz/shop. The grand prize package for celebrating Organize for Success, LLC's 10 years in business will be awarded on Thursday, June 1st, randomly selecting from all those who commented on any of the month's "top 10" blog posts as well as those who have subscribed to my eNewsletter for a winner to receive downloads of all 5 eBooks, a pass for my Stress and Time Management online video course as well as a 60-minute productivity consultation via video conference.

Today, let's cover my top 10 favorite time management tips:

10. Have clarity on what matters most. Each of us has goals for home, work, the community or society and ourselves, including mind, body and spirit. Knowing how we rank those priorities can guide our decisions for best managing our time. What we classify as priorities will likely fluctuate over time, and we often must trust our guts to know what's important when faced with new options.

9. Learn how and when to say no. Each day offers only 1,440 minutes to accomplish what matters most. Saying yes to doing something means saying no to anything else using that time; no amount of time can be spent twice, and investing time does not give a return of even more time back. However, by saying no to something that isn't a high enough priority to earn time in your schedule, you open up time for successfully completing whichever goals you have ranked as those mattering most.

8. Be proactive, not reactive. When a team goes into a game, its coaches have scouted the opponent, determined which of the team's strengths match up best to the opponent's weaknesses and created a game plan. The plan will be adjusted during the game, but there is at least a foundation from which to get started. The same philosophy applies to your week, where you are at the whim of others' priorities if you are unclear about what matters most to you. Once you know your priorities, create a plan for how to use your limited time in achieving those throughout the week, tweaking it as needed to stay on track. You'll be able to see what you want to accomplish, which will keep you on the path to getting it done.

7. Start with what is most important. If you fill your life with the little things that don't really matter or don't fuel the results you desire, you have little to no time for more meaningful things. Instead, if you purposefully make room in each week or day to address actions driving what matters most, there is still room in your life to fill in with some of those less meaningful actions, but you'll move more rapidly towards achieving your priority goals. Click here for a video illustration using rocks, pebbles, sand and mason jars to visualize this approach to time management.

6. Evaluate each to-do for determining next steps. The Eisenhower Decision Principle provides a matrix created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which groups actions by level of importance and level of urgency. When a task is both important and urgent, follow Nike's advice and "Just do it." When a task is important but not urgent, you must decide when it can get done, including a specific "when" for each "what" to be accomplished. When a task is urgent but not important, consider delegating it; likewise, when a task is not urgent and not important, consider deleting it. Often, I work through my data dump of all that I think should be done by asking these questions: Does this task truly need to be completed? If not, can I delete it? If it must get done, does it need to be done by me? If not, to whom can I delegate it? With this tool, you can move more tasks from to-do to done.

5. Manage tasks more productively. Every project needs to be broken down into smaller, more manageable action steps; each of those actions should be assigned a deadline so there is an associated timeline. When creating each day's to-do list, be sure to include no more than 3 - 5 must-do tasks and start each with a verb to drive action; then, review at the end of each day what should be carried over while creating an equally manageable list for the following day. Incorporate only what must be done by you and take back your time by delegating or deleting anything else.

4. Express your positivity daily. At the end of each day, celebrate all you've accomplished in the day that's ending, acknowledging these wins motivates doing more as success breeds greater success. Likewise, at the same time, make note of that for which you are grateful, whether one item or a list of things, and be sure to include all areas of your life when noting your gratitude.

3. End each day with the next in mind. Plan from where your meals will come, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Will you pack your lunch or eat out? Do you need to put something in the slow-cooker that evening or in the morning? Then, check the forecast as well as the schedule and pick out each detail of what will be necessary for the next day's outfit, including jewelry, undergarments and purse. Finally, make sure you have gas in your car, and leave what you'll need to take with you near your door.

2. Utilize all available resources. As you are filling your productivity toolbox, never limit your options to technology; consider streamlining your workflow processes, creating an organized workspace in which you know where things are stored, hire consultants whose expertise enhance what you already know or do, outsource what needs to be done but not necessarily by you, implement boundaries appropriate for your circumstances and, then, evaluate whether paper or electronic tools might better meet your specific needs for things like meeting notes, time commitments, tasks, contacts and calendaring. Click here for a checklist of what types of tools you might need and to evaluate what holes exist as you're working to get things done.

1. Remember the power of one. Although Three Dog Night claims "One is the loneliest number", I contend one is the most powerful number for productivity. As you implement resources, whether paper or electronic, utilize only one of each type: one calendar for personal and professional commitments, one running data dump of all tasks that funnels into one daily to-do list, one address book for all contacts' information, one set of naming conventions for all files (paper, electronic, email), one place for all which you must remember as well as reference and one strategy session to plan your week that is maintained with one daily wrap-up at the end of each day. Having one of each better ensures your content is kept up-to-date, you know what needs to be done when, nothing falls through the cracks and you don't double-book.

What are your top tactics for making the most of the limited time you have? Are there any on this list that you're planning to try moving forward? How do you deal with time?

Happy New Year 2016!

Let's launch this happy new year with some tidbits to boost your productivity, help you get better organized and encourage greater happiness... Starting today, I'll be posting a visual here as well as on each of Organize for Success, LLC's social media channels with something to make this your best year thus far. Feel free to share with others and leave comments about how each tip impacts you.

With only 1,440 minutes in each day, make each minute matter by focusing on your priorities. Saying "yes" to doing one thing is saying"no" to doing something else; you cannot reinvest your very limited resource of time!

What are your rocks (or top priorities) that need your time the most? How can you better focus each day's 1,440 minutes on those first, working your pebbles and sand around those more important or urgent items?

Using One Calendar to Organize for Success

Whether it's paper or electronic, a single solution enables tracking all commitments (personal & professional) in one place, making it less likely that appointments will be forgotten or that you will double-book. However, how do you make a calendar really operate as a tool to encourage your great success? Here are tips to best utilize a calendar:

1. Use what works for you. Test options to see if your personality meshes best with daily, weekly or monthly and whether paper or electronic is best for you. Find more about the process at http://bit.ly/fkOMOO.

• Electronic calendars give you the option of setting alerts for upcoming events, which is ideal if you tend to forget birthdays, anniversaries or leaving for meetings and appointments. Look for repeat features that let you input daily, weekly, monthly or annual data only once.
• Paper calendars often allow for more easily viewing the entire month at one glance, and the fact that you can write in whatever size you choose enables you to decide how much information fits within each date's box.

2. Color-code your calendar. To have one calendar tool for all facets of your life, use different colors for each (work vs family vs friends vs fitness vs self). Or use a different color for each project being completed, role you fill, person for whom you are responsible or different area of responsibility within your job. Visual cues, like colors, are great for driving action, particularly so you can tell what needs to be done by simply glancing at your calendar solution.

3. Include all pertinent details for each entry. When adding an appointment to your calendar tool, insert the phone number next to the name of the person you are meeting so, if you're running late, you can easily call. Plus, make sure to include the who, what, when, where and why beside each appointment being scheduled on your calendar.

4. Track to-do items amidst appointments. A calendar solution can be so much more than just a place to track appointments. To use your tool most effectively, assign a "when" for each "what" on your to-do list. I have yet to find a "someday" on any calendar, but I have seen how tasks with times scheduled for getting done are completed more regularly.

5. Always expect the unexpected. If you know precisely how long something should take, schedule it in your calendar with a 15-minute or greater buffer. You never know when traffic or another hurdle will delay your plans so approach proactively.

What techniques do you use to maximize your calendar's effectiveness? Please share in the Comments section below.