A few days ago I was called by a customer service representative of an internationally known printing and shipping company to be surveyed on my recent business experience.  As I began the 90 seconds of question and answers, I began to get agitated. Sure the service was good, but did I need to have my personal time taken up later for the privileged of using them for business purposes. So this got me to think about our non refundable resource “time”. We all have the same amount, but we can easily waste our precious time.

Today, let’s think about time as water. I mention this as I just had to have a plumber in to fix a leak in my kitchen sink – so leaks must be on my mind.  If you have clients that you work with, try using the leak metaphor regarding time.

Personal Time Leaks in Work Hours

Are you or your clients doing any activities that are non-productive, wasteful or senseless during your working hours? This is not to say we should only be productivity zealots. We do need to plan and schedule in some fun and break time.

Do certain activities consume too much of your work time? Are you  surfing the internet, browsing online catalogs, visiting Facebook, checking personal email, chatting with friends on the phone. These activities, while often pleasant and rewarding, may need to be limited during working hours.

Work Time Leaks in Personal Hours

While we may be good at keeping our work day sacred and productive, we may instead be leaking time out of our personal time bank, using it instead for work or business tasks.  Are you or your clients checking the business email accounts, making after hour calls that could be done during business hours? Don’t let personal time leak away. We are likely to be more balanced and less stressed  if we compartmentalized our time, so that we enjoy our down time or family time.

Create a Leak List

Now is a good time for you or your clients to create a time leak list for home and/or work.  Take a piece of paper and write down five time leaks you have at work, then do the same thing for time leaks at home.  You can also have your clients do this easy exercise on leak observation.

Work on Fixing The Leaks

Once a leak has been identified it can be fixed.  Leaks will usually require changes in patterns of behavior. While this may take time and vigilance, this will help us or our clients prevent the wasteful flow of time. Known leaks are the one’s that need the development of strategies, plans and policies to prevent excessive leakage of time.

Lessen the Leaks and Be more Productive

After all is said and done,  leaking time will never be recovered again. Let’s work on reducing the leaks, at home and at work,  and enjoy more productive use of our time.

You might also enjoy reading these earlier posts.

Rightsize Your Day

When Do we Want to Get Productive?

Get Ready to Get Ready

We can plan our day by getting our “to do” list planned ahead of time, making sure we have the ingredients for healthy eating and include some form of physical activity.  We can also work to connect with loved ones, friends and acquaintances. Some of you may also want to include some spiritual or meditation time.

Here are six elements of  rightsizing  your day!

1) Select tasks that suit the day

When I say a day with enough hours to do the desired tasks at hand, I mean creating a productive and effective “to do” list. One that is doable for the hours we have available, leaving some wiggle room for unexpected issues.

2) Plan to eat right

Create a menu from what you have on hand, or figure out what you need to order to have a healthy kitchen. Make sure you have plenty of water to drink, as water will help energize you and keep you hydrated. Avoid overindulgence. Make good food choices throughout the day and evening.

3) Include daily exercise

Every day needs some form of exercise. Make sure this is part of your day.

4) Cherish your relationships

Work to connect with the ones you love or care about.

5) Include joy and laughter

We all need some fun in our daily life. This can be having a good conversation, or watching a situational comedy to get our laugh on. We can also find joy in nature. Just take some time to enjoy your environment.

6) Work in some spiritual time or meditation

Whatever your beliefs, having some time spent on spiritual devotions or using some time to meditate will serve you well.

Keep the six elements in mind when planning your tomorrow and every day after. Rightsizing your day is the foundation of rightsizing your life.

Seasonal Instincts

January is the month most people start instinctively focusing on organization and a fresh start, but April and September are close seconds in the USA. January is the month of resolutions, and April is a month for spring cleaning and tax preparation. September follows as the month people get ready for  a new start as the traditional school year begins a new term.

Work Pressures

We want to get be more productive when we start a new job. We also seek productive advice and recommendations when we want to improve our performance at a job.  Productivity also comes into play when we are nearing a deadline.

Stress Demands

When we are stressed and have accepted the fact our life has become troublesome, we may also seek to become more productive to get ourselves out of our mess or chaos. This is likely the hardest but potentially the most motivated individual seeking productivity tools and techniques.

Early on everyone need encouragement and some form of accountability. Be sure to help yourself or your client with some form of daily or weekly accountability. Be aware that backsliding will often happen at some point during the process. The road to becoming productive is a bumpy one, but it is worth taking the journey. Whatever the reason for you or your client’s decision to get started, it is a wonderful thing.

In early 1983  I read the book, Making Time, Making Money (St. Martin’s Press) by Rita Davenport. This book had a thirty page workbook built-in which was aptly titled Exercises that Make You a Time Management Winner. From time to time I pull out the book and see how I have succeeded and how I have diverted from some of my earlier goals. After all life is a journey and sometimes we change our destinations.

Having a record of your desires is the first step on that journey. How are you planning to write it down?

This is a modified post from January 2010.

The expression Ready, Set, Go is likely an adaptation of the prompt On Your Mark, Get Set, Go used by a variety of racing fields (swimming, running) to prepare their participants for action.  We can use the Ready, Set, Go to prepare our day or even our life for upcoming changes.

Being Ready

To be ready we can prepare our tools, equipment, and even our physical being for the upcoming action. We can improve our knowledge on the subject, increase our skills and education. We can prepare our body for the upcoming physical actions or anticipated requirements by eating nutritious and healthy foods.

Getting Set

While getting set means getting on the “mark” in the physical racing world, we can get our brain on the mark, by being in the right mindset. This includes being truly focused on what is before us. By avoiding distracting veins of thought we can be instead set on our upcoming event. We can also actively work to prevent beginning conversations in our minds that get our emotional being unsettled.

Going On

The Go part of is the first step on your new path. Take a deep breath and begin. Since you have already done the Ready and the Set it is likely that the Go part will be the easiest.

Getting ready and set are by far the most important parts of making a transition.  Be prepared to spend some time and do some work to fulfill the preparation of “Ready” and “Set”.

Have you used Ready, Set, Go in your life transitions?

I  recently thought I had run out of “thyme’. Yes, that is thyme the herb. So I went to the store to buy some more thyme.  For some reason one of my family members asked me where I was off to, and I replied ” I am going to buy some thyme.”, “Right” they said.” That’s a good one”!

So to make a long story short, let’s think of time as a product.

Buying Time: We all know we can’t actually buy time, but we can ask for more time. This might then allow us to complete something. We are really only buying more. Buying time may cost us a favor in return, or create disharmony with one’s superiors. We can also buy time by asking for some help or assistance with a project or process. Two heads working on a project are often better than one.  Getting others to help us physically on a project can also make the task or work get accomplished.

Running Out of Time: When we run out of time, things usually won’t get completed by the deadline and we will have to face the consequences. By being more aware of our inventory of time, we can solicit help or make changes to improve our productivity along the way.

Giving Away our Time: Sometimes we can give away our time, because we have some available to share. This can be by volunteering,  sharing our expertise or skill set.

Wasting our Time: We can waste our time by focusing on the wrong thing, choosing to procrastinate or avoiding what we really need to do.  Time is easily wasted. We need to be aware of our time and conscious of our usage.

Stocking Up on Time: You can decide to put some time on reserve. By building in time cushions between events you can have available time to spend on unexpected delays or complications in parts of your life or work. You can also choose to set aside periodic project times, which are empty blocks that can then be used wisely for catching up.

I encourage you to think of time as a product over the next few weeks, just like thyme the spice. This may give you a new and productive perspective on time management.

This is an update on a  post of 2010 – I think it is well worth the time to read it again.

Start

Ask yourself what five things are you willing to start in 2012.  You can think about the components of health, wealth and relationships. You can also do this with work projects, hobbies,  knowledge and education.  Things usually get started if you write something down.  So start your start by starting a list.

Stop

We all have things we want to discontinue. This could be for our health,  sanity, self-improvement or relationship improvement. What are five things you want to stop in 2012?

Continue

Think about what is working within your life.  This is the continue list.  On my list I have continue “walking dog daily up the hill”, continue “working on the residential life scale publication“, continue to “improve social media skills”, continue  to “meet weekly with my accountability coach”, and finally  continue to”post on this blog four times a month”.

You or your clients will have a good start on 2012 if you work on this exercise. You can also use my project hand and customize  a hand for each of the three areas –   start, stop and continue.

Having an annual pruning of your workspace is helpful to free up room, clear out the dust and recover empty space. The same applies for our house and living spaces.

What is no longer serving you? What can you prune out of your life to make room for something in the future?

You might search for dust. Dusty things have not been used in a while. You could also look for torn, worn, too small, to big or frayed. If the things in your environment are not in good shape, maybe they need to go.

Pruning allows new growth to begin. So start pruning and get ready for new beginnings and growth.

This is a modified post from my other blog Transition Your Life  - January 2010

Learn to say no. Yes, practice the art of saying no. Don’t accept more when what you really need is less!

Enlist help or share the load. There are often people who are willing to help, if only we think to ask.

Finally, maintain your good self-care practices. This means make sure you eat healthy, sleep a decent amount and get at least a small amount of exercise.

My good friend Fred says “Cultivate a imaginative garden within and escape there frequently when the everyday stresses become overbearing“. Do you have any thoughts about lightening your load?

This is a modified post from 2009.

Don’t let others make you slow. Accept that this is going to be a less productive time when especially when working with colleagues.   Let their delay and dallying be your occasion to work on past and future projects. These times are great for working on organization of past material, future planning, back burner projects and future planning.

This is the perfect time to use my “project hand” to list out the projects that are perfect for the next seasonal delay time.

You may also want to check out my website for monthly tips on organizing ideas for home and work.