Do you ever find yourself just really
struggling with time? Hey, you know
there's some things you're missing. Check
out this training. It's perfect timing
for you.
Have you ever had those moments where
you say to yourself, "I just don't have
enough time. I'm never going to get it all
done." Yeah or maybe you're blaming
somebody else like, "Oh, that person is
just wasting my time." You may need some
help here about how to manage your time.
Because if they don't, you're going to
stress out on your family. This is true.
You're going to stress out on them. It's
going to be your husband's fault, your
wife's fault, your kids fault. And
you're going to blame and you're going to be
irritated. It just turns into a mess and
you know you're not very good at time
management. So, we're going to take a look at
this of why you're having such a problem
with managing time. Have you ever had
issues with managing time? A few times.
Few times. (Laughs) I think it's an ongoing
evolution. You know, of being able to get
good at this. But maybe what they
ought to do is considered you're going
to start to focus on this. And you're
going to start paying attention to what and
how you're literally managing your time.
It's amazing with just a little bit of
focus and intention, how you can begin to
see some of the habits or the patterns
that you do that are causing you to lose
time, to waste time, to not be effective
with your time. And if you don't track
and measure your time, you don't know
when to say no. And you're going to be in big trouble. You're getting in
trouble. When you think that you have all
the time in the world, it is so easy to
continue to say yes to this person and
yes to this person and yes to this
person. And all of a sudden you realize
in a very short amount of time, you have
a bunch of yeses that it is just
literally not possible to accomplish in
the amount of time that you've a lot.
Yeah, so let's look at this scenario here.
You don't know how much time you really
have in a day because you're not
tracking it. So, then you say yes to a
bunch of things. And then now you're late
and now you offend people because of
your timing issues. And you're
hurrying people along because... Stressing
them out. Right, because you're not
prepared in advance. And then at the end
of the day you're frustrated because you
said yes to all these people and you
didn't get it all done.
And then it wears on you.
Does that just sound like a
self-inflicted wound? Yes.
That's just a beat yourself up, hurt
yourself every day kind of thing. All
right. So, what's happening here? Number
1, let's look at number 1 here on our
chart here. We wrote down 3 things to
really begin the process
of managing your time. And the
first one is to accurately schedule and
watch your time. So, what do you use? What
do you do? Well, what do I use? I have a
calendar and as I am saying yes to
things, I immediately put them in my
calendar and I begin to put that on my
to-do list. So that I can start to see
the things I've said yes to and can I
fit that all in? And so, then if I have it
on my calendar and I have it on my to-do
list then I know when the next person
asks me to do something, I can be really
realistic about the time. I might have to
say... If I really want to say yes to that
person, I may be able to say, you know, I'd
love to do that for you and with you but
it's going to need to be in a week or it's
going to need to be in two weeks or maybe
even a month or 3 months because of
the commitments I already have in place.
We, right now, we have about the next
year of our life. Pretty scheduled on a
lot of major events that we're doing.
Just things that we're doing as a family
and also as our company. And some family
members they asked us they said, "So, hey
next year, would you be able to do blah,
blah, blah, blah on such-and-such a day?" We
look at our calendar and we go, "Oh gosh, we
can't make it." And in that moment, they
were like looking at us, t's like, "What do
you mean? How can you make a decision
about this right now?" It's like, "Because
that's how far ahead we're literally
looking at our calendar." We've learned to
do that. And oh, it's did such a difference. But we...
And we we said no. Where to them,
they... They're thinking, "A year out, are you
kidding me?" They don't know what they're doing
that time. And so for us, we've had to
learn that when we say no, we don't...
Not literally offending people,
we're being accurate. And I actually
look at it as respectful. I'm respecting them,
I'm respecting myself by knowing that
it's time for me to say and no. When I
say yes too often, I find that I'm not
respecting myself and I'm not respecting
that other person and I often I'm not
respecting my family or other situations
because I've said yes too many times and
then that all that other stuff that all
the chaos happens in amongst all of the
yeses and then the respect level goes
down. Now, I recently... I got to a
particular day that I had some things
scheduled and I looked at my calendar
and I literally looked at my calendar
went, "What was I thinking
when I planned this day?" Like seriously,
what was I thinking. And sometimes we get
into Superman or superwoman type of
attitudes. And we think like, "Oh yeah, I
can start at 5:00 in the morning. I can
go all day long." It's like, oh man I... So, to
really check in on your calendar and to
evaluate it, you know, as much as possible
is going to help you learn how you're doing
on making your decisions. So, first have a
way to track it. Second here on our chart,
second one is you got to create some
white space. A white space means, there's
nothing scheduled. It means that's time
for lunch or that's time to just have
some veg time. Nothing, because you put
lunch in there. But you have white space
where there's nothing, nothing is
in the calendar. And I don't know if you...
How you do this but we've kind of
tested and measured how long it takes an
average time for an errand. So, if Kim
says, "Hey, I got about four errands to run."
You know, and in my mind it this seems
like those errands are so easy. That's
going to be like an hour. No. No, it's about
45 minutes per errand. I've actually
had a little
and I've done it enough that Kirk and I
know that we can count on about 30 to 45
minutes per errand depending of course
where those that is. And I write all
my errands down on a piece of paper and
I literally track, I put the time when I
get done with an errand, I get back in
the car and I write the time down. And I
go do the next one and I get back in
the car and I write the time down. And I
do the next errand and I write the time
down. And I've done that enough times to
know that for our family for us, it's
about 45 minutes per errand. And that way,
when I know I've got all these ,you know,
maybe 5 or 6 random errands to do, I
can calculate how much time that's going
to take and then I don't end up over
scheduling myself and thinking, "I'm going to
get all my errands done in an hour and
really it's going to take me 3 hours
and then now I'm late to this and
dinners not done and my family is
waiting for me and things like that
happened." So, it's really been
awesome for us to have that little
calculation. So, as you begin to, you know,
do different things that you do on a
regular basis and you calculate how much
time that takes, it really helps you to
know how to plan your day on your
schedule. The next time you go grocery
shopping, before you leave the house,
write down the time
and then when you come back and you're
in your house, write down the time. And
then when you... If you do that on a pretty
regular basis, you'll begin to find out
what it takes you to do your errands. So,
that's a grocery store. Next one, "Hey, I'm
going to go fill up the gas tank in the car."
Just measure how long that takes. How
long does it take, really, how long does
it take to take the kids to school and
get back. How much time is needed to get
ready in the morning? How many how much
time does it take to mow the lawn? If you
want to be better at time management, you
have to track how long it takes to do
things. Because when you miscalculate, you
are over-promising and you are causing
yourself problems and stress that you
don't really have to do. But have
some white space between your activities
on your calendar because you're
going to run into traffic.
Because you're going to run
into problems in the store. Things you
didn't expect. You are in the store and all
of a sudden, you realize... Or your
your errand and also you realized, "Oh,
there's something else I supposed to do."
But if there's not some white space
between things, you are doing too many
back-to-back and you're going to not be
successful in what you're doing. And then
it causes you to burnout. Burnout. Get
burned out. And what do people do when
they burn out? They blame others. And your
time management problems are your
problems. Not the family's problem. It's
your problem. And so, for you to solve
this, you've got to track and use a
calendar and create some white space. But
we've got one more for you. It's not
okay just to create a calendar for
the week and then assume that all week
long it's going to go as scheduled. Because
things always change, adjusting. You're
going to need to review it in the morning.
And you're going to need to review in the
evening. At least those two different
times. At least those two different times.
Because if we don't coordinate, we don't
coordinate, at least twice a day on the
morning and the evening, she's adjusting
the calendar, I'm adjusting the calendar
and we're going to be off what was happening.
One of my favorite things to do is
before I go to bed at night, I really go
over my calendar for the next day. I look
at my to-do list. I look at what's
important, you know, my goals, what's
important in my life and I look at, you
know, the day and is my day structured
the way I want it to be structured for
the next day. And I look at the things I
want to get accomplished and what's top
priority in my life. And then when I go
to bed that night, I'm not waking up in
the morning wondering what's first for
me to do. I already know because I've
already kind of made a plan that night
before. And I've already been thinking
about it, I've already been processing
how all those things are going to work out.
I've already been processing the
different people I need to, you know, get
in contact with or whatever and... It just
really makes a difference when you look
at that the night before before you go
to bed. And our last thing here is when
you have a problem happen with your
timing and your schedule, back up a
little bit and rethink what happened
there.
If you don't uncover the problems of
what you caused in that scheduling,
you're not going to know what to fix. But
really getting better at time management
really is a personal experience. As long
as you keep blaming kids, spouse, friends
neighbors, co-workers, employees for your
timing issues, you're not going to see where
the adjustments need to be made. But
these 3 simple steps are going to
help you in having some progress and
being a better at time management.
Because when you're better at your time
management, you feel so good and you feel
confident and I feel like you actually
accomplish a lot more in your life.
Because you're managing your time. Get
after it. It's worth it. I hope that
you're going to try one of these techniques
we just taught you. Just write down in
the comments below. Let us know what
you're going to try. Now, you also want to
check out our description down here
below because you want to get involved
with our website. We know what we're
doing and we want to help you get your
life up to that next level.
Definitely.