Get More Done| Stress And Time Management Tips and Software

Time Management Tips – It Isn’t About Doing More It’s About Being More Effective

Sat, 19 May 2012 02:21:35 +0000

Do you think time management tips are ideas to help you cram more into your day? Are you stressed out, exhausted, and irritable because you’re working so hard? It’s time for a time out.

I hate to tell you this, but you’re focusing on the wrong things. If you think you just need to figure out how to cram more in your day you’ve taken a wrong approach. You’re focusing on efficiency.

Efficiency comes from doing things in the least amount of time. That’s a good thing, but it isn’t the only consideration. If you can develop ways of approaching important tasks in less time you definitely want to do that.

But the more important question for you to answer is whether you should even be doing the task. That’s where effectiveness comes into play. Effectiveness is about doing the right things. And the right things are those actions that produce the greatest results.

You have a finite amount of time just like everyone else and you have to get the most value from your time. That means that your main focus should be on taking the actions that produce the greatest results now. It’s very easy to get caught up thinking you have to take care of a bunch of mundane details that no one but you would ever care if they were done.

Should a sales person be most concerned about having neatly organized client files with meticulously organized notes, or should they be concerned about the next most valuable contact they should make? Sounds pretty obvious, but how often do you allow hours to get wasted away on insignificant tasks? Then there’s always the gray area where you get caught up on activities that appear to be productive, but they aren’t.

Should you spend an hour cold calling from a purchased list, or should you attend a breakfast where you’re prospects are likely to attend? The breakfast is the obvious choice for the most effective development of your time management skills. Yet frequently sales people will get caught up doing these low value activities when they could be involved in a high-value activity instead.

Effectiveness results from both focus and prioritization. You have to focus on the actions that produce the greatest results. And you have to prioritize your actions so you always have time for the actions with the highest value, and you never have time for low value activities.

Ready to get unstuck? Time Management Tips [http://omaha-business-coach.com/time.html].

Ready to achieve Success?

Author: Cheryl Clausen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management Tips – It Isn’t About Doing More It’s About Being More Effective is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Time Management Through Task Templates – Fast Answers to FAQ’s to Get You Started in No Time

Sat, 19 May 2012 02:20:36 +0000

Time management is highly prized by most people – and finding time is even preferred over earning more money, recent studies report. But if you don’t use your time effectively, you simply lose the time you have found.

This is where task templates will help you. These are simple, flexible systems for managing your time and shaping your schedule. Once you start using them, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them!

FAQS:

Q: How will these templates help me?

A: They combine personal effectiveness with stress management by helping you avoid:

Bottlenecks
Late charges
Missed appointments
Under-preparing for key encounters
Reinventing the wheel for recurrent events

These templates capitalize on what your mind does best, which is creating patterns. Those patterns highlight where you want to go and what you want to avoid in a given period of time. Your brain isn’t hardwired to recall, shuffle and re-prioritize multiple items in your head. But the templates you create will put everything in front of you quickly and clearly written out. This frees up your mind to assess your options, prioritize and launch into action. And that frees up your time.

Q: Which activities are task templates best suited for?

A: Any repetitive activity with multiple steps can be streamlined with task templates.

Use them as a framework for your activities. By creating task templates, you develop a simple outline for your projects that you can refer to time after time. For example, they can help you with:

Tax preparation
Holiday planning
Spring cleaning
Packing for trips
Financial reports

Q: How do I get started?

A: Follow this template and see how much time you save.

List activities or projects where a template would be helpful to you, using the examples above for a guide.
Select one project you’d like to work with first.
Jot down each activity associated with this project. If applicable, also include all supplies you will need.
Order them chronologically.
Place all the task templates you create in a loose-leaf notebook or in a dedicated file on your desktop. That will keep them easily accessible.
Put the template you are currently using in the appropriate workspace. If it’s helpful, print out several copies to post in multiple locations.
Review your task templates to see if important areas have been overlooked. Revise accordingly.

Task templates are infinitely flexible systems. The more you utilize them:

The more constructive uses you’ll imagine.
The more confidence you’ll place in them.
The more confidence you’ll have in yourself.

Use task templates to focus your energy. Then draw on additional time management techniques to enhance their effectiveness, such as to-do lists, setting boundaries and visualizing the sequence of tasks.

What are the most effective ways you can combine time management techniques?

To take your next step, sign up for our free gift, “The New Finding Time Boundary Template: 9 Simple, Sequential Steps to Find More Time and Recharge Your Energy!” at http://www.thetimefinder.com

This time template will help you move beyond overwhelm, disappointment, and frustration. Using a workbook format, with room to record your answers, you will discover that 24 hours really are enough!

Offered by Paula Eder, Ph.D. The Time Finder Expert.

Author: Paula Eder
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management Through Task Templates – Fast Answers to FAQ’s to Get You Started in No Time is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Addicted to Lists? Part One – A New Way of Thinking About Time Managment

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:20:44 +0000

Imagine a day without making a to-do list. Would you feel lost? Unfocused? Would you get anything done? Would you feel unproductive because you didn’t cross something off your list?

Now imagine a day where you don’t need to make a to-do list. Are you nervous? Scared?

Are you addicted to lists?

Now imagine feeling no guilt at the end of the day after not completing everything on your list. In fact, imagine a day without making lists at all. You are happy, free, productive.Is that possible?

A day without making lists is possible when you replace your time management system with a time prosperity plan.

Time Management versus Time Prosperity

The older you get the faster time passes. Time is the most precious gift you have-as precious as life itself. So why become slaves to time or a time management system? Practicing time prosperity results in a perception of expanded time while increasing poise, confidence, focus, and hope. With a time prosperity plan, you gain a new appreciation of time as the gift it truly is.

Traditional time management that utilizes lists and prioritizing can induce feelings of guilt, failure, and stress and results in the perception of a time shortage. Be honest with yourself: Are your lists really working? Is everything you do each day going onto your list? Your life is more than a list of things to do. A time prosperity plan, however, gives honorable position to career and calling, friends and family, spiritual and personal nurturing, and the order of your home space. Traditional time management imposes linear order onto a naive world that expects defined priorities do not change as the day progresses. There is an assumption that “priority interruptions” don’t exist and that career is the primary focus of the time managed.

Today’s newer lifestyles in which fathers are functioning parents, moms work from home, both parents work outside the home, and the increase of home-based businesses-more flexibility, balance, and reality is required than what oversimplified listing and prioritizing offers. Time prosperity acknowledges and balances the four basic dimensions of your life-home space, friends and family, spiritual and personal nurturing, and career and calling. To the extent just one of these areas is weakened or ignored your time prosperity is compromised. Balancing these dimensions equally leads to the realization that time is plentiful and bountiful, revealing time as the powerful gift it truly is.

Ms Nelson is a writer/creative entrpreneur and owner of several businesses including The AdStuff Company (http://www.theadstuffcompany.com), and Dana Susan Beasley runs Angel Arts (http://www.angelarts.biz) Ms. Beasley and Ms. Nelson have developed a new model for time management that is more user friendly for creative people, work at home mothers, and people running home-based businesses who have lots of different roles to juggle. They host a unique workshop entitled “Its About Time Prosperity,” and may be contacted at info@timeprosperity.com

Author: Deborah Catherine Nelson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Addicted to Lists? Part One – A New Way of Thinking About Time Managment is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

“You Are What You Time” a Whole New Approach to Time Management

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:20:31 +0000

Being half a century in age, I have given the subject of time management a lot of thought. I am endlessly fascinated, entertained, and humbled by it. As an entrepreneur, I have often speculated~ “If only I could bottle and market it, I would be richer than Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola put together!” I would be Deborah Nelson, the original time-bottler, a Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Martha Stuart, all rolled into one. I would be the wealthiest person ever to walk the earth-even more wealthy than Solomon who was granted wisdom and wealth by God. But who can bottle time? It is a rebellious demon wretch. Nothing less than a life long quest could put that Genie into a bottle, and it would take none one less than God Himself to do it.

Time Ticks Me Off!

Time causes problems. When you need something in a hurry, there’s an instant shortage. Tempers flair. Road Rage is born, car wrecks happen, sirens scream, dangerously challenging the bounds of time even further. Time seems uncooperative. Whether you are waiting for a teenager to come home from a party, a late arrival to show up, or simply caught in a daily traffic jam, time ticking off, ticks us off!

But my purpose is not to complain even though time seems to get the brunt of all our complaints. “I didn’t have enough time,” “Our marriage is on the rocks because we don’t have time for each other.” Teacher, I didn’t finish my homework, because I ran out of time.” “My checks bounced because I didn’t get the deposit to the bank on time.” Time gets all of our excuses doesn’t it? Time really ticks us off.

You Are What You Eat?

We have all heard the expression, “You are what you eat,” but I would argue–You are what you spend your time on. “A Nick in Time saves nine.” “Time Heals All Wounds.” “Time waits for no one.” “Time Will Tell.” “Time is Money.” All these are powerful expressions about Time. How we use our time says a lot about who we are doesn’t it? If we want to make a difference in our entrepreneurial and personal life, we need to be honest and admit, “We are what we Time.”

You may wonder, how is Deborah Nelson qualified to give these tips? Surely the experts, Covey, Franklin, and Mr. Day Timer have already done it with their expert time management systems. However, I have wrestled with time as a 24/7 single parent, an entrepreneur, a writer, a homeowner supporting a daughter in a private art college, and as a woman living in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Having had less time and far more challenges than the average person, I have experimented and implemented all the Time Management methods of the day, finding them to be inadequate for my particular life challenges.

Graduating from Time Management to Time Prosperity

I love the expression; “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I finally had to admit that I was not a good time manager. I was doing the same thing over and over again and not getting different results. For Example, I was chasing time, and time was running out on me. I was twenty minutes late to everything, and after trying linear time management for many frustrating years; I was still 10 minutes late to everything. Not good enough.

I had to do something different. I was trying to manage, chase, and conquer time. I had made an enemy of it and I was losing. It was a process, but now I have learned to become a leader of, friend, and partner; and discovered Time Prosperity! Here are 3 Time Prosperity Tips for your to begin this journey. I hope even one of them will transform your relationship with Time. It a whole new way of thinking about it.

Time Prosperity Tip #1:

You can make time your enemy or you can become friends with your it. Think about it, honestly, is Time Your Enemy or Your friend?

Time Prosperity Tip #2

You can chase time, making it run away from you, or you can walk with time side by side. Are you chasing time away, or are you walking with time?

Time Prosperity Tip #3

Time is our most powerful and precious resource-more powerful than money, love, health, and space. How do you perceive time? Is it a Thief, or is it a Gift?

Time in a bottle? I haven’t done that yet. But making friends with time is a great start. My quest now is to tell everyone who will listen how to graduate from time management to time prosperity…Because, “You are What You Time!”

Deborah Nelson does Time Prosperity workshops based on a whole new model for time management. If you want to learn how to really be successful with time, Nelson conducts a workshop entitled “It’s About Time Prosperity.” Nelson also is the Author of Dreams To Reality, a 3 part curriculum that teaches a simple process (but not easy) how to make your dreams come true with the outcome of the 6-week course a published dream plan book! (http://www.AuthorYourDreams.com).

Author: Deborah Catherine Nelson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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“You Are What You Time” a Whole New Approach to Time Management is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Five Time Management Tips You Can Use Right Now

Tue, 15 May 2012 02:17:50 +0000

So what is time management and how can it change the way that you live your life?

Time Management is organizing your time so that each decision you make utilizes that time in a manner that is most beneficial to your life style.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle: Organize the pieces, try a few test fits, and soon you get in a groove, and before you know it, it’s all done. But if you start putting the pieces together without regard to shape, you spend hours and get nowhere (sound familiar? Where has your life taken you?) The bottom line is an overwhelmingly stressful life.

So how are you living? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the vast number of things that you need to do? Make sure you look at both your business and professional life.

Most people live every day in a constant state of being overwhelmed. Why? Your body can not take in and process all of the information that is required of it. More so, you are probably on a constant overload in everything you do, which increases and ingrains the worry, frustration, and – most importantly – lack of concentration.

However, when you are successful at time management, you are able to maximize your use of each precious hour. You do the right things, at the right time, and your worry, frustrations, and anxiety decreases. To do this, you have to make smart decisions about what can be done, and what should be done well. Your goal is to work on the most important parts of your needs. When you focus on what’s important, you will transform the way you think and relieve your stress. In fact, when focusing on those important things, you are making the best decision of your time.

So here are the 5 things you need to do right now:

Learn Patience. Understand and accept that you cannot accomplish everything you want to do at one time. Make Patience your first goal.
Learn Relaxation. You need to be able to focus on what you need to do and how to accomplish it. Learn to Relax your mind from its frantic and overwhelmed state.
Learn to Trust Your Instincts. So what decision needs to be made now? Go with your gut! Trust that instinct! Your body is working hard behind the scenes, and although you may feel overwhelmed, your brain probably already has that right decision. Don’t over think. Trust that instinct.
Learn to List. Successful people make list. To-do lists, shopping lists, laundry lists, the lists go on and on. Make a list of your tasks, force yourself to prioritize, then…do it.
Learn to Plan. Get a planner and plan your work day. Block out each time and plan what you need to do. If you don’t schedule your time, how can you get your tasks accomplished? This one simple step will take you very far in meeting your time management goals.

Simple, right? Yes. The problem is, it’s easier to write this than to execute the plan. Believe me, I the grand guru on knowing how hard it is to execute a plan. But take the time NOW to do the above. It will only take minutes, and you can find yourself in a lot better place than you were a few minutes before.

Michael P. Smith is an internet marketer with over 20 years experience in customer service and training. You can view some of his works on Time Management at [http://www.time-management-howto.com]

Author: Michael P Smith
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Five Time Management Tips You Can Use Right Now is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Time Management Tip – Do You Track Your Sales Funnel?

Tue, 15 May 2012 02:17:44 +0000

Sales can be a hectic business. This time management tip will help you regain control of your time and improve your sales. Your sales funnel is a commonly used phrase to indicate the stage people are in the selling or buying process. With so many people entering and leaving your sales funnel during any given time frame it’s easy to lose track of exactly where the different people you’re working with are in the process. The result is lost prospects or longer than necessary sales cycle times.

In a perfect world you’d like people to enter your sales funnel and exit your sales funnel as a customer in one step. If that were typical you wouldn’t need this time management tip. But in reality few people have such a short sales cycle. Most people have a multi-step sales cycle with varying time gaps. When this is the case you have to take control of the sales funnel by proactively moving your prospects through the sales process.

All sales people know this yet many people haven’t taken the time to clearly define the steps or options in their sales cycle. If you don’t know the next step for advancing a prospect you can’t expect them to, and that’s when you get exactly what you don’t want. You get asked to contact them again in X months. Yuck, now you have the additional work of tracking this so-so prospect for another time span. You can prevent this from happening by mapping out your sales cycle with the options for advancing the sale and the required time frame between next steps.

You need to know where every prospect is at any given point in time. Trying to track this information in your day planner isn’t a good use of your time. That results in having to guess the day you last interacted and flipping through your calendar trying to see if you posted any comments worth reviewing. The better way is to develop one tracking sheet where you record: prospect name and contact information including their preferred method for contact, the stage in the sales process they’re in, notes about your last contact, and next action.

You need to know the results of each action and the next step quickly and at a glance. Having all this information in various folders, calendar, phone comment logs etc. isn’t time efficient. You need to have it all in one reference document and you need all the current information at your finger tips. You need to know the number of people you need in some stage of your sales cycle at all times to generate the results you want. When you track it all on one sheet as soon as you close one sale you know you have to get another prospect to replace the one that just left as a customer.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis [http://omaha-business-coach.com/time.html].

Achieve the Life You Want & Enjoy Every Minute [http://omaha-business-coach.com/Membership.html].

Author: Cheryl Clausen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management Tip – Do You Track Your Sales Funnel? is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Time Management and the Importance of a Schedule

Tue, 15 May 2012 01:20:39 +0000

We are all familiar with the concept of “time”, but when you add the word “management” behind it, things can get a little cloudy. Simply put, time management is the process of managing your time. People can make this more confusing and harder than it has to be when they try to get too technical and start creating “time maps” and flow charts.

When it comes down to it, it is a lot simpler than that. We all have twenty four hours each day. By practicing time management strategies, we are deciding how to use those hours to accomplish all the tasks we have on our to-do lists.

Having a schedule is a fundamental part of time management. You can imagine your schedule as a road-map. It provides important information about where you are going and how you can get there. Without it, you may take a wrong turn somewhere and find yourself lost. Once someone is lost, it may take some time before they get back on track, and they usually arrive to their destination a bit later than they would have liked.

When you have a schedule, you can look at it and see what you need to do each day. You’ll know if you are on track, and if you aren’t, what you need to do to get back on course.

How To Make a Schedule

One of the first things to do when making a schedule is to write down all the things you have to do on a piece of paper. Some people keep separate work and family schedules, and if you decide that would work best for you, you can divvy those tasks up later. For now, simply write out everything that needs to be done on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis.

Once you have everything written out and in front of you, it’s time to start sorting between the common themes. You can do this by assigning a highlighter color to each theme (such as family, work, daily, monthly, weekly) or by taking out another piece of paper and writing those columns on it, and rewriting all the tasks into the appropriate column.

Now that you have all of your tasks sorted out, try to give a time estimate to each one. You may even want to time yourself for a week or two on these tasks, as you may be very surprised at how long some things take.

For instance, you may think it only takes 45 minutes to go to the grocery store, but in reality it could take an hour and 15 minutes. You may think it only takes 15 minutes to run up to the school and pick up the kids, but may find it actually takes 25 minutes.

In many cases, people underestimate the time it takes to do things, and this is one of the reasons they think they aren’t getting enough done. By timing yourself, you will get a visual picture of your time. When you see how long it really takes to accomplish your regular tasks, you will be able to see how many things you can fit into a normal day. You won’t constantly be trying to push yourself to do more.

Once you have written down your tasks and estimated the time it takes to accomplish them, you can start planning your schedule. Some people like to have a daily schedule that is very organized with certain tasks assigned to certain times and others prefer to keep a weekly schedule that is more flexible.

Jim Sanderson writes custom articles for an online marketing company. Call today to receive a FREE website marketing strategy for your small business ( http://BusinessMediaPublishing.com ).

Author: Jim Sanderson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management and the Importance of a Schedule is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Time Management Tip – Email Mania

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:06:44 +0000

Email the instant communication highway can be a communication nightmare, and this time management tip will help you to deal with the email mania. Many of you receive literally hundreds of emails in your inbox each and every day. Some are important and need immediate action, some need action at a later date, some require action from someone else, some you need to keep for reference, and many are just a nuisance. So how do you efficiently handle this onslaught of information?

It depends on how important the information is, how transportable you need the information to be, and whether or not you have IT support to bail you out when everything goes to heck. In this time management tip I want to focus on what to do when you’re the only one who can help you when everything goes to heck, and by that I mean when your hard drive crashes and you have to figure out how to get your saved data onto a new computer. When that happens, you want everything you need to be as transportable as possible. If that’s the case and you don’t use an online full backup and restoration service you have to be prepared to deal with this yourself, and without those types of services transferring your email can be an added headache.

Designate specific times throughout the day when you will tackle your email. One of the worst things you can do is allow yourself to become a slave to your email by viewing and responding to each email as it comes in. Prepare a system to deal with your email. If you’re confident that when your system fails you can fully restore your email from the email provided through your operating system create folders within the email system, otherwise you’ll want to create folders as regular document files that you know you can easily back-up and restore. You only need three basic folders. Create folders labeled: action, pending action, and reference. At the designated times or at times when you unexpectedly have a free 15 minutes go to your inbox and do a quick sort. Sort your messages into their proper folders, delete them, or take the needed action. If you can take the needed action in a minute or two do it so you can forget about it.

Determining where to save the message. As you’re sorting and responding to the messages you can take care of quickly you either delete those messages from your inbox, or you save them to one of your other folders. Ideally you never want more than a page full of emails in your inbox at one time. As your sorting you decide where the message gets filed by the next action you need to take. So if you need to act on this message soon, but you can’t do it in just a couple minutes the message goes in your action folder. When you have the time to work on the things in your action folder you know exactly where to go, and as you take the action delete the item or move it to a proper folder. You will have messages that require waiting on someone or something else before you can take your next action, and those messages go in your pending folder. It’s a good idea to include the date you expect to get what you’re waiting for in the file name as you save the message. That way you can track where the things you’re waiting on are. There are messages you need to save for later because they contain important information and these get stored in your reference folders. In the case of reference folders, if you want to store the information long term you may be storing it in a folder with a person’s name, a project name, or a topic.

The reason you don’t want to leave hundreds or thousands of messages in your inbox is that you have to make the same decisions over and over again each time you view your inbox list. That’s a bunch of unnecessary work. Plus when you want to find a message again you have to try to remember how you might search for that message. Most people have multiple email addresses so which one did they use when they sent the message that you’re looking for? Did the message you’re searching for have a good searchable subject line, or is it lost in a whole reply stream and you aren’t exactly sure which of the 25 messages has what you’re looking for? As you properly take care of your messages as they come in you save a lot of time because you know the next actions, you know what’s pending, and you know how to quickly access the information you want when you need it. Plus now that you’ve saved them as regular documents you don’t necessarily have to be online to view them and get the information you need.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis [http://omaha-business-coach.com/time.html].

Success happens one goal at a time find Success here.

Author: Cheryl Clausen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management Tip – Email Mania is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Time Management Tip – You Have to Track the Hand-Offs

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:06:36 +0000

When you delegate or you have to wait for someone else to do something before you can take your next action this time management tip will keep you from having things fall through the cracks. If you’ve found some things you can delegate good for you, but ultimately you’re still responsible. If you have some things someone else has to take action on before you can take your next action, you’re still responsible. But all too often when these hand-offs occur things fall through the cracks and consequently things fall apart, and you have big problems. This happens because you’re counting on someone else to be responsible and you don’t have the same objectives or understanding about the thing being handed-off.

Even when you’re a solopreneur there are things you delegate or hand-off. Consider yourself the quarterback and start the tracking process on your end. Anytime you delegate or hand-off anything record this action in one place that you review at least weekly. If you use as weekly To Do list add the follow-up action on your list. It takes far less time to track your hand-offs than it does to fix the problems that arise when you don’t.

Dates are important because in just a couple days you won’t be certain when you made the hand-off. Record the date of the hand-off, and assign a date for when you expect it back so you can take your next action. Record both dates in your records so there isn’t any guess work. If your handing off a document and retrieving or reproducing that document would be difficult if the receiving part were to lose it, always make a copy of the document and store that copy in your hand-off file folder.

When you make the hand-off never presume the other person has the same understanding of expectations that you do. Clearly communicate your expectations about the action they will take and the time you can expect the hand-off to be returned to you for your action. If the time delay between hand-off and return is longer than a few hours obtain an agreed upon check point where the other person will notify you of any projected delays that will prevent you from getting the hand-off back as expected.

Review your hand-off records at least weekly to make sure everything is on track. Follow-up and follow-through as needed to get the hand-off back so you can proceed and fulfill your responsibilities. Hand-offs can be tricky, but when you take responsibility and track you have far fewer disasters.

Would you like to learn more about your time behaviors? Try this Time Management Analysis [http://omaha-business-coach.com/time.html].

Success happens one goal at a time.

Author: Cheryl Clausen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Time Management Tip – You Have to Track the Hand-Offs is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software

Personal Time Management – Organized Brain Storming may Sound like an Oxymoron

Fri, 11 May 2012 01:05:00 +0000

When you think about brain storming you probably associate it with something you’ve done with a group of people at work. At the time you may even have thought it was kind of stupid and a waste of time as people called out ideas that seemed kind of outlandish to you. This personal time management idea will help you to utilize brain storming to increase your performance and creativity.

As you go about your daily life your brain is working. Sometimes your brain is working on pretty mundane stuff, but at other times your brain is serving up ideas that hold potential value for you if you remember them, and figure out how to implement them. The problem is that most of the time you allow those potentially great ideas to come and go without capturing them or thinking about how you might use them. When you do that often enough your brain begins to give you less of those great ideas because you don’t use them.

There is an easy way to capture these ideas and increase the value of your personal time management. Keep a small notebook with you where you can jot these ideas down as they come up. Don’t associate any value on the idea just write it down. Once a week review your list of ideas and decide which ones you should spend a little more time thinking about. These are the one’s you’ll actually do some brain storming about.

Start with a blank piece of paper or Word document and write the idea you want to think about further in the center of the page. You may even want to circle the idea. Now from this idea begin to think about how this idea could be used to create value for you and record these additional ideas around the main idea on the page. You may even start making sub-ideas from each of these ideas, and connect them with an arrow to show how these ideas relate to each other. You want to do this quickly just letting the ideas flow writing down everything that comes to mind. To this point you’ve been entirely focused on capturing ideas, first in your little notebook and now expanding on the ideas on this page that is for one topic and one topic only. The time value from this activity comes from being able to quickly organize these ideas into actions.

Once you have all your ideas and thoughts laid out and you understand how they all relate to each other you’re ready to organize for action. Sometimes you’ll be organizing for immediate action and other times you’ll be organization for action at a later date. It doesn’t matter. The time you spend now is a good investment because when you’re ready to take action you’ll have everything you need to think about all on this one page. From this page of information you’re now able to begin to organize those thoughts into those that you want to take action on, and those you want to discard. For the ones you want to take action on you can determine action order and action steps. Finally you can decide on start and end dates. At that point you’ve taken what could have been an overlooked opportunity that came from an idea that popped into your head, and turned it into an actionable idea that makes that idea a reality.

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Author: Cheryl Clausen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Personal Time Management – Organized Brain Storming may Sound like an Oxymoron is a post from: Get More Done | Time Management Software