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We all have full schedules, learning how to determine what is truly important can free us up to enjoy time together with loved ones. A close friend of mine is studying 6-Sigma, which means by default I am studying 6-Sigma. One of the items I have taken away is the “5 why’s.” The basic principle is to ask why five times to find the real reason you are performing a certain task. When we ask our selves why we really do something we can start to move into a direction of balance.

When something new comes across your desk ask why you must be the one to do it. If it can be delegated; delegate it. I know this sounds simple and you have heard this a thousand times but I bet like people I talk to every day you do things just because you; “Want them done right the first time,” or “Done your way,” or some other reason you must be the one to do the task. If you are a sole proprietor; skip to the next paragraph. If you run a business with employees then train one of them to be a substitute you. You need some one you can rely on to handle the task so you can cast the vision and lead the team. If you are running a business and you are the only one who knows how it runs-you will never be able to relax or take a vacation. If you have to be on 24/7 then you are not getting the rest your body needs and it will catch you sometime.

If you are like me and have no one to delegate to then you need a list of things to-do. I use no Day-Timer or calendar system I just lay out on a spiral notebook all the things I need to accomplish that week. Each night I list the thing to-do the next day in order from most important down. If something new comes in I put it on the list, and it may or may not get done that day depending on priority. I check and write email for thirty-minutes in the morning and evening. This gives me the freedom to do all email on my terms. I understand that phone calls come in from customers but do you really have to answer every phone call that comes in, can you get an answering service? I want you to look at all aspects of balancing your time. If you look you can find ways to free yourself up, I promise.

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One of the most important things that you can commit to memory is the value of your time. Your time is the most important asset you have, and it is the only asset you can not get back. If you are self-employed you have more of a sense for the value of your time but if you are a paid employee you may not value your time as much. Either way you need to know what the true value of your time is so when trivial items arise you can manage them more effectively thereby not spending your important time on them.

First, you must make a commitment today to know the value of your time. You can write it out to help remember it or just commit it to memory but commit today to know its value so you can take control of your time usage.

Now that you are committed, make a list. Make a list of everything you need to do. I use a flip notebook but any notebook will do, just do it. This list will include household items, business items, family items, social items, and any other items that I do not have here. This process may take several hours, which is o.k.

Once you have the list finished, for now, you can see what you need to accomplish. If your list is like my first list it looks enormous, but don’t worry about that, it has taken you years to procrastinate all of this on to the list so it may take two to three months to get rid of the majority. I guarantee you; now that you have your master list, items will get done faster than you think because with a list you can prioritize. For example, you are reading this article because me writing it is the most important thing on my list to do now.

Go through and decide what is important and you can use an; a, b, c, or 1, 2, 3 it does not matter just get them in some order. If you use a day-planner great if you are like me and do not great, this method is useful to either type. If you use a day-planner then you can put your most important item at the top of the planner to start first thing in the morning. If you do not use a planner then you will make a list of things to do tomorrow and list them in the order they are to be done. Your first project is the most important so work on it and only it until it is completed or to a point where you can go no further with it. Then you will move on to item number 2 and so forth. What is not done today gets moved to tomorrow and so on.

Two things you need to realize are; first, the list does not stop growing. As new items come up they go on the list. Second, don’t stop. If you just keep going in a positive direction you will make progress. I know everyone gets off track but get back on when you do get off and keep moving forward.

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Each of us is created with certain gifts that we are to use in the time we are here on earth. What I would like for you to see is that no matter who you are, what you put into life is exactly what you get out.

Jesus tells us that a good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree gives bad fruit. Beyond that your attitude will determine how many friends you have and your level of relationships with these people. Your attitude at work will depend on whether or not you are advanced at work or whether you work at all. Your attitude toward learning will determine whether you spend time learning or not.

We are very fortunate in America to live in a free society. We can chose to take advantage of the freedom we have and make a life that we were designed to live in the job we were designed to do. Or we can sit on the sidelines and complain about the lot we were cast and become miserable old curmudgeons who have no true friends and die mostly alone.

Life is uncertain in that we do not know what tomorrow holds, but if you knew you would die on a certain day at a certain time would you choose to live a miserable unfulfilled life or one where you choose to use the talents you were given by God and live a joyful life doing what you were designed to do. Well here is some news, you are going to die someday so why not use the gifts God gave you and make something of what you are.

If you let life happen to you; you will probably lose. Sitting around and waiting to hit the lottery is not a long term goal. You have to start paying attention to the calling that is in your heart, start setting goals, and start reading books to help you see beyond tomorrow when you realize you control your future and you start making better choices, then you will start to see changes in your life that you never thought would happen.

Here is the stuff you do not hear in goal-setting seminars. There will be times when you think you have failed. These time of doubt come into every persons life. Unless you quit you have not failed. Mistakes and setbacks happen but they are not failures and you need to see them for what they are, setbacks. If you keep going you will see success.

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If you have never been to northeast Florida we do not have seasons, just hot and not hot, that’s it. Growing up in a rural town in Arkansas and being around farmers until I left there at twenty to join the Navy I had a sense for what season it was. I knew it was planting season or harvest or when it was time to prepare the ground or leave it alone. Each of us have seasons in our lives and we need to know what season it is and when they change we need to know how to plant seeds, cultivate the ground or harvest our reward.

Yes if you know anything about the Bible you know that Jesus told the parable of the sower and the author of Ecclesiastes told us there is a time for all things. Have you ever stopped to think about those times and what they mean to you?

1. Cultivating – This is a time to make the ground ready. When you cultivate your mind you are reading books and listening to CD’s (MP3’s) and filling your mind with good information to set a solid foundation for what is ahead. Cultivating also has an aspect that makes it the most important area for success. You must cultivate before you plant. You need to study the area you are going to start your endeavor in but also begin to establish personal growth habits by learning to set goals and make lists of important tasks to handle.

This is also the only season that never ends. Steven Covey calls it “sharpening the saw.” You must always be renewing your mind and thought process in order to move forward with what you are called to do. I have put the cart before the horse and tried to reap while I should have been cultivating.

2. Planting – Planting is the time for making contacts adding to lists and developing relationships. This is the time to increase your productivity. Hit the street if you are a sales person, put your book on the internet if you are an infopreneur, or gather names for your list if you are a network marketer. You must increase your output during the planting phase to reap the payoff of the gathering phase.

3. Gathering – This is the time to reap your rewards. Unlike the seasons of planting and sowing; spring and fall, this gathering also coincides with continual planting and cultivating in order to gather in at another time. During this time knowing when to speed up and when to slow down is very important. Keeping a balance is crucial or you will end up off track of your goals or worse burnt out. Know your priorities and know when to just refocus on cultivating and when to start sowing again to reap later.

Stay focused on the big picture and what is really the most important things of all.

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When it comes to living your life the way you believe you were meant to live you need to know what values you base your decision-making on. How can you make good decisions if you do not know why you are making them? If you have goals that are thought through and you know these goals are at your deepest core value, how do you know that to be true if you do not write out your values so you can see them? Here is a good way to define your values.

1. What are you reading? Look at the keywords in the books you read or the tapes you listen to. While you are reading or listening take notes, get a feel for the material. This will help you pick out the value words.

2. What are the subjects that drive you to succeed? What gets your motor running? At one point in my life this value was food. I put food right up with family on my value system and at 270 pounds it showed. Write these items down also.

3. After you have gotten a broad spectrum of what you think you values are write every one of them on a single sheet of paper. Find 12 values that you feel are your top ones and write them on a separate sheet. Fold that piece of paper up and leave it alone for at least one day.

4. When you come back to the 12 values sheet you need to read it, understand it, make a change if you need to. Once these values are in your mind take the three top values and put them on a separate sheet of paper. These will be your guiding values. This may sound easy but it is not, if you really want to know what your values really are.

After you have completed this exercise try matching values to goals. If there are goals you have not been reaching maybe they do not line up with what you really believe. Maybe you will see a trend and be able to set new goals that do line up with your values. Either way knowing what you truly value will help you in your life’s walk.

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We each get exactly 168 hours every week. No scientist or philosopher or great individual of the past has ever gotten more. In today’s world we can get bombarded with interruptions from every side and before you realize it your day then week then year is gone and you can not even remember what you had yesterday for lunch. I hope you guard your time because it is a precious commodity I have gathered a few ideas below that may help keep the guard up.

1. Get away. You must take time for yourself. If you will take one hour per week to plan the next week you will save a day in trying to figure out what to do next. I do not use a day planner to keep time down to the fifteen minute block. I do have a 3X5 card my to-do list for that day only written on it. Remember it this way: one week per year, one day per month, one hour per week and fifteen minute per day. If you take these times to plan your life and set goals you will be more successful than 95% of Americans.

2. If possible put yourself on an information diet. I know this sounds harsh but try to only check your email twice to three times per day. (If you are still reading thanks) If you think about it your email reading and sometimes rereading takes up significant amounts of your time. On my website I tell people that I only check my email in the morning and in the evening so the know that when they send me mail it will not get answered right away. In the last week I have even turned off the auto check feature so if I am at the computer I will not even see that mail has come in.

3. Move to online mail such as Gmail or Yahoo mail or the new windows live which uses Hotmail and forward or set up your online mail to check your work and personal mailboxes. Once you have moved the convenience is that you can check mail from anywhere in the world. If you set up filters for your incoming emails you will know which ones to check and what can wait until later or never at all. (Your can do this with windows outlook also but online is much faster and we will all be there eventually) If you use Firefox as a web browser there is a Getting Things Done (GTD) add-on for Gmail so you can label your mail as it comes in and then act later.

4. When you do check your email do it quickly and efficiently. If it is trash then trash it. If it needs a response respond immediately so you don’t stick yourself with trying to answer all of your email two days after you have received it and then you are bogged down for two hours trying to catch up. Steven Covey says in his book Focus that we should either a) file it; b) act on it; or c) DELETE IT, in my opinion most mail goes in this category.

5. Let the phone go to voice mail. If it is not someone you need to talk to right away then don’t. They will either leave you a voice mail and you can check it like you do your email or they will not and it must not have been that important.

Everything you do needs to be done with this thought in mind. If you are working on a project and you stop to talk to someone it takes you at least five minutes to ramp back up and start your thinking process again. If you are a boss this should apply to your employees also. If you want them to be productive then leave them alone and let them work.

Bonus: Get rid of Nextel or set strict limits on its use. it is the biggest time waster on the planet. Most alerts are for bogus things or just to chit-chat not work. Those of you that use Nextel know what I mean. You will alert someone to ask them what they had for lunch, but you would not call someone and waste cell minutes to ask that. Either ban it or teach people how to use it.

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