Time Management Blog Series

Finding creative ways to maximize our time is always a challenging task.  As a continuation of our Time Management Blog Series, we have five new suggestions to help you become masterful in managing your time.

• Set artificial deadlines for yourself.  "The task expands to fit the time available."  Look at how much you can accomplish when your preparing to go on vacation.
• Make a list of 10 things you do each week you hate.  Brainstorm ways to remove at least half of these items from your list in the next week.
• Have a family meeting to discuss roles and responsibilities around the home.  Distribute duties accordingly.
• Cut your appointment time by one third.  Each one-hour meeting will now only be forty minutes.  Schedule phone meetings that will last only five to fifteen minutes.  You will be surprised by the fact that you can actually accomplish your objectives in this limited time.  List two or three current meetings in which you will try this strategy.
• Produce greater results through others by mastering your Leadership, Management, and Coaching skills.

Barry Demp is a highly-skilled Michigan Business and Personal coach focused on the areas of leadership, management, coaching, team-building, networking, business development, communication skills, relationship building, motivation, time management, life balance, and goal achievement. He specializes in working with business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, and high-potential professionals by helping them significantly increase their productivity, profitability, and life balance.  For more information or assistance, please contact Barry Demp at 248-740-3231 or visit www.dempcoaching.com.

Tactical Time Management Tips

Improving your time management starts with simple steps that act as momentum builders towards greater time use and efficiency.  

Consider implementing one of the time management suggestions below into your life this week and let us know how it is helping you.  Here are some tactical time management tips for you to use:

1. Learn to say "NO" in an appropriate way.  You may be pleasing others at your own expense.  
2. Consider delegating more tasks to co-workers or family members.  Jobs that you are currently doing may actually be developmental opportunities for others.  Select at least two items at work and one at home that you will delegate.  Next week, select more.
3. Consider effectiveness over efficiency.  Whom do you know that accomplishes more in 8 hours than others do in 10 or 12 hours?
4. Discard some of the stuff in your life.  Stuff has to be maintained, and this takes time.  What stuff in your life requires too much maintenance?
5. Let others work for you.  If your time is worth $250.00 per hour, how many services could you hire out for just one hour of your time?  Buy prepared food, have supplies delivered, shop via catalog, pay bills online, stop doing errands, have someone "clean out" your junk mail and your spam e-mail, hire a house-cleaner, a driver, and a personal organizer, etc.  Choose one or two and put this support structure in place by the end of the week.

Barry Demp is a highly-skilled Michigan Business and Personal coach focused on the areas of leadership, management, coaching, team-building, networking, business development, communication skills, relationship building, motivation, time management, life balance, and goal achievement. He specializes in working with business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, and high-potential professionals by helping them significantly increase their productivity, profitability, and life balance.  For more information or assistance, please contact Barry Demp at 248-740-3231 or visit www.dempcoaching.com.

Time Management Detox

Time Management strategies commonly include properly organizing your schedule, as well as, confirming appointments to ensure proper use of your time.  However, one key area to really focus on to optimize your Time Management strategy is to remove toxic behavior patterns.  Here are some thoughts, examples, and tips:   

1. Get rid of toxic people in your life.  They drain you of positive energy and waste your time.  Who are the toxic people in your life?  How could you limit their impact on your time?
2. Get plenty of sleep and exercise, and eat quality foods.  Develop a project action plan with a scoreboard to track your results.  Check out 10 ways to Un-Yuck Yourself.
3. Use the power of momentum.  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.  Starting and stopping often breaks up your momentum.  Grouping "like activities" back to back takes advantage of momentum.
4. Consider a news and media fast.  Stop reading the newspaper and watching the news for at least a week and see what happens.  Important news still will find its way to you.  What else can you eliminate from your daily life that would not be missed?
5. Improve your communication skills so you reduce the need to repeat yourself.

Barry Demp is a highly-skilled Michigan Business and Personal coach focused on the areas of leadership, management, coaching, team-building, networking, business development, communication skills, relationship building, motivation, time management, life balance, and goal achievement. He specializes in working with business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, and high-potential professionals by helping them significantly increase their productivity, profitability, and life balance.  For more information or assistance, please contact Barry Demp at 248-740-3231 or visit www.dempcoaching.com.

Strategies For Better Time Management

We all can benefit from better time management habits in our lives.  However, its consistently using these tools and tactics to keep ourselves on schedule and accountable to the achieving the results that we desire.  Here are some key tips to consider as you evaluate your time management strategies:

1. Structure your telephone time.  Set up times to accept, initiate, and return phone calls.  The best time to accept incoming calls is just prior to lunch or at the end of the workday.  Initiate or return calls early in the morning, just before lunch, or at the end of the day to contact difficult-to-reach individuals.  Consider a phone call a mini-meeting, so be prepared with an agenda and all you will need to be successful.
2. Brian Tracy wrote a book called "Eat That Frong".  It recommends doing the most unpleasant task as the first thing on your list.
3. Scheduling down time in your day helps to recover your mental and physical energy.  The book "The Power of Full Engagement" by Jim Loehr will help you expand on this important concept.
4. Scheduling meetings with yourself is a good way to accomplish key objections.  How can this one idea help you to be more effective with your use of time?
5. Work with your body's natural biological rhythm.  Are you a night owl or morning person?  If you wear out in the mid afternoon consider taking a quick nap to recharge your energy. 

Barry Demp is a highly-skilled Michigan Business and Personal coach focused on the areas of leadership, management, coaching, team-building, networking, business development, communication skills, relationship building, motivation, time management, life balance, and goal achievement. He specializes in working with business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, and high-potential professionals by helping them significantly increase their productivity, profitability, and life balance.  For more information or assistance, please contact Barry Demp at 248-740-3231 or visit www.dempcoaching.com.

Masterful Time Management Tips

Time is such a valuable asset to us all.  Consider what your time is worth to your business or family and then imagine the how you feel when that time is wasted on activities that do not give you a fair exchange of value.

Here are some tips to help you master your time management:

1. Where is your time going?  Do a time log on a daily, weekly, and perhaps monthly basis.  Write your tasks down exactly so you can find the real time-wasters.  Awareness of your actual situation is critical to improving how you use your time.
2. Create a new daily routine - 90% of all human behavior is habitual.  "If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting."  "When patterns are broken new worlds will emerge."
3. Prioritize and stay focused.  What one or two items on your to-do list must absolutely be finished?  What are your priorities today, this week, and this month at home and at work?  Share these priorities with others.
4. Reduce interruptions by creating stronger boundaries.  What are your ideas regarding the establishment of boundaries?  As a reference and helper I like the book - "The Power of The Positive No" by William Ury.

Barry Demp is a highly-skilled Michigan Business and Personal coach focused on the areas of leadership, management, coaching, team-building, networking, business development, communication skills, relationship building, motivation, time management, life balance, and goal achievement. He specializes in working with business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, and high-potential professionals by helping them significantly increase their productivity, profitability, and life balance.  For more information or assistance, please contact Barry Demp at 248-740-3231 or visit www.dempcoaching.com.