Every day you deal with time. And how are you doing with that? Maybe it's time to
learn the 5.5 effective time management tips that can literally help
you with your time management to lower your stress. Watch closely.
Time slips away everyday. You get to the end of the day, you wonder where all the
time went. Part of life is learning how to manage the amount of time you're
given each day. It really is a management process. Now, don't worry even though
you're an adult. It doesn't mean that you are well-trained at how to manage that
time. There are experiences that steal your time away. There's
experiences where distractions come in and delay you. And every day, you're
trying to put together your schedule to make it work but yet you get to the end
of the day. It's just been completely pulled apart. It can cause you stress and
it can cause a lot of disappointment. When it's not managed well or not
protected well. I want to help you understand some tips that you can use to
be able to manage and protect your time. So that you can get through your day and
have less stress than what is currently been happening. Why go to bed stressed
over time? Why go to bed stressed over not getting everything done? I really
believe that if we could get better at this, we could actually improve our life.
We can actually feel better. We could actually feel more accomplished and that
you know what that means. A better behavior to the family, a better behavior
to your spouse. And really a better behavior to anybody you come in contact
with. Because you feel good about how you schedule your days. So
let's talk about this using a schedule. I know that there's a lot of schedules we
can use on our phone. I know there's a lot but here's the problem with using a
schedule on the phone. There's no where to write down and pencil in some notes
of what happened. You know, part of not being able to change and improve your
experience with time is, you don't have a journal or notes of what has been
happening to you. Where did the distractions come from? Who was the distraction?
When exactly did this distraction hit? Where did that other experience come
from? Who brought that on? What did you forget? You see I think it's actually
important to get it down to much more basic level of managing your time. So
that you can write notes. Now, I think what would be powerful is to literally
print off a schedule on cardstock. Something that can lasted the day. And
it's got the 6 a.m. or 5 a.m. whichever time you get up clear til your 10
o'clock or 11 o'clock at night when you go to bed. But it's got all the times
longer. But you also can use a pen or pencil to write down notes over on the
side column of this cardstock piece of paper. And for you to be able to track
what is happening. Because you can keep trying to put your schedule together. But
if you don't study the distractions and don't study the frequency. And where you
tend to have distractions show up, you're not going to have the power to be able
to change those things or even predict that it's a possibility to happen again.
I'm going to guess. And I bet I'm right. If you were to track your time and your
schedule and what kind of things are happening to you along the way, you
become much more aware, much more wise to the circumstances, the distractions.
Because when it's untracked, you don't have the power to change. But when you do
track it, your awareness goes really high. I was mentoring a homeschool set of
parents who were running you know home school at their home. And they were
struggling with time. And I proposed the idea to him. I think you guys need to
write this down. But and they said, "Oh, we do write it down, Kirk. We have a
whiteboard, we write down the schedule. But by the end of the day, it's all
erased and changed and everything." And I said, "But where's the notes? Where's the
tracking notes of what did happen?" What what went wrong? What went right? They
didn't have any notes. They had no history written
for them to study. The patterns of their family. Or the patterns of them
individually. Within seven days of writing down on a cardstock piece of
paper. Turns... You know, eight-and-a-half by eleven, this way.
Where they could have the calendar down on one side and then notes down the
other side of the paper, they began tracking those 7 days huge aha's.
They began to notice the behavior of their children. When they would start to
act up and act out. And when they didn't want to follow the calendar and they
didn't want to follow the schedule. They noticed their own behaviors. They started
noticing what time of day they actually didn't want to follow their own calendar.
And they sabotaged it. And they started moving things around. But they couldn't
have made the changes unless they had been tracking what has been happening.
And I proposed the same thing to you. If you were to track it, where you can keep
notes, you're going to find what's happening. But you may do, you may be
doing what everybody else is doing. Just plug it away, pounded it out every day.
Being frustrated, being disappointed. Getting to the end of the day, feeling
like your day and your schedule didn't really go as planned. Track it. You'll get
more aware of what it takes to be able to make it work better. Now, in your
schedule, is there white space? White space means time that is scheduled for
nothing to happen. You know, I when I see somebody who's stressed and they
just are overwhelmed and stressed. I look at their calendar and everything is back
to back. They don't schedule time for driving,
they don't schedule time for preparation. You know, dinner is at 6:00 and their
last appointment ended at 5:30. And are they supposed to make dinner in 30
minutes? Are you kidding? You got to finish what you're doing, get into the
kitchen, calm down for a minute then you start. You're going to be 20 minutes off
making dinner. And then 20 minutes off creates other things to be often. Now
you sabotage your evening. White space means you're thinking about prep time,
travel time, sanity time. Do you have any wearing your
schedule where you actually get to stop and just hold still for 15 minutes. I bet
you don't. Every stressed mom, every overwhelmed dad
I've met doesn't have whitespace. They don't put spaces in there to literally
just chill for a moment. When your mind gets on overload, what happens is you
make irrational decisions. Not rational. You start making decisions based upon
emotions and hunger pains. Yeah. And then then you mess up the day. But without a
time to just stop and chill for a moment, you're setting yourself up for problems.
White space means preparation time, travel time and then also chill time. Add
those three in there. Add those three. Kim and I, my wife and I. When we were grocery
shopping, we thought, "Well let's go grocery shopping. It's going to take a half
an hour." We begin to actually time ourselves. How long it took us to go from
here to the grocery store, do grocery shopping and then get back to the house.
And we started tying ourselves. And we realized we literally were 45 minutes to
an hour off on our timing. And because we realized that it was that off, we then
could appropriately plan the right amount of time the next time we went
grocery shopping. So, we now know that every errand that we... Like, if Kim has a
list. And she has 6 errands. We know that 6 times 45 minutes is how long
all those errands are going to take. And it's like "Well, that's a lot of time." Ah,
there's planning time, preparation time and distraction time. You know, you go out
to do errands, you're not going to get the right parking spot. So, the lines going to be
too long. You can't find the manager to do your returns, you don't have the
receipt, it's going to take longer. It's going to take 30 to 45 minutes. And at least
we're planning time that we know we've budgeted for that moment. So, we don't
come home stressed. We actually come home with extra time. We actually planned
enough time. Do you know that you could actually
schedule a life of calmness. If you would block off a little bit more time for
each activity. Not that the activity goes on longer. But your planning time for
mishaps. Because mishaps happen every day, don't
they? Distractions happen every day, don't they?
But why us is people, plan things so tight and we're stressed and we're like
freaking out and we unload our kids and we have issues and we get upset and then
we get to in the day we go to sleep. "What?" Come on. Now, I have a tight schedule. But
my tight schedule also includes chill time. And I require chill time. Or if not,
I blow a fuse in my head and and my brain doesn't work as well. And I'm going to
make weird decisions during the day. It's just going to happen. But leave space. You'll
notice that you actually have, you actually have calmness that you can
schedule for the day. Now number 4 is priorities. Distractions usually come
from other people's urgencies. Now, that could be unknown urgencies. And sometimes,
other people's urgencies don't become your urgencies. And that's something to
look at is going, "Okay, I am my priority today. I thought my day out, I've planned
my day out. And I'm going to finish these things." But then you're working with
people who don't schedule their day. Who don't plan their day. And then they have
some urgencies. And now you get to play the balance of priorities. But the more
organized you are, the more white space you create, you'll have room for one of
those, maybe two of those, and you'll be less stressed when they popped up. When
they pop up. But if you don't have any white space, you're going to fall behind. And
if it's not a priority for you, you don't have to do it. Because just because
somebody else is messed up doesn't mean your day should also be messed up. And I
know there's lots of scenarios behind that. But the idea is for you to plan and
have some whitespace moments and also be able to consider that what you have
planned is really important. The other part is
can you stop? Do you have somewhere in your schedule that says stop? Is it 7
o'clock at night, 9 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock at night. Where in that day
schedule does this say stop, you're done? Or do you have to pass out?
Or do you have to end up at the desk with drool coming out of your off the
side of your face? Or are you found on the couch half on the couch? Half off the
couch because you just finally just fell asleep.
Or can you say stop? A person who cannot say stop is going to struggle managing
your calendar. So, one of the first things to put in your calendar is a stop time.
The other part is to honor the start. If you can put a stop, it'll help you have
power to start. Now, when I say honor the start, you know
and I know that this is a struggle for you. You set the alarm for 5:00 but you
get up at 6:15. You set the alarm for 6:00 but you get up at 7:10. Boy, hitting
that snooze button is so attractive, isn't it? It is so attractive to just
click the button over and over again because when you wake up you go, "What was
I thinking? I'm really tired." But if you don't honor the stop on step 5,
of course it's going to cause you to have problems with your start. That's why
stop is number 5 and start is number 5.5. For us to have the
ability to perform better in the morning of getting up and honoring the start of
the day, the way we had it designed. The way we had a design. We thought it
through. If I get up at this time, my schedule is going to work during the day.
But what if you sleep in another 45 minutes? What have you sleep in an hour?
You go through that whole trickery of thinking, "Oh, I can still make it." And you
don't. You don't. You caused your own stress that day. And where did it come
from? Not stopping the night before. I know this is an important part of your
schedule. How you're going to manage time. Is to be
able to have your stop time and you stop. Gives you the power to be able to get up
when you said you're going to get up. Because that's what's going to play out
your schedule for the rest of the day. But honor the start. You were thinking
wisely the day before. You really were. You had already gone through the day,
you've gone through many days. And you know what time to get up that will
matter to you, that will help you for the day. And when you're ahead of your
schedule in the morning, when you're on and ahead of your schedule in the
morning, you feel like a million bucks, don't you? Yeah, I know it. You feel like a
million bucks. You feel like you can conquer the world
because you got up, you got ready, you did your things in the morning and you're on.
But man, when you get up and you're behind, it can set the tone for the whole
day. So stop when you said stop the night before. And practice honoring the start.
Those two parts of your day the stop and the start. The stop from the night before
and the start of the next day, really sets the tone. So these time management
tips I know can make a difference for you. Right here today. They really can
help you. And that's what we do here in this incredible companies. We want to
make a difference to be able to support you in having a better understanding
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