Articles
Deciding Where to Start: 21 Different Ways to Prioritize
Why do we do what we do when we do it? What criteria do we use for allocating our time? We have many different ways of deciding what we are going to do at any given point during the day. Following are twenty-one of the most common criteria we use to govern our time: (click to read full article)
Delegation – The Fine Art of Giving It Away
I once heard Stephen Covey say, “There are only two ways to get work done. Do it yourself or get someone else to do it. Masterful delegation is a major leverager of time.” Now we may not be as good as Huck Finn when he got those others to do his fence painting for him, but there are some specific strategies that you can employ when it comes to delegating appropriately.
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Hysteresis – Destruction is Creation
This month’s touch comes from The One Minute Millionaire, by Mark Victor Hansen (of Chicken Soup fame) and real estate guru Robert Allen. It’s the 23rd Aha, called Destruction is Creation:
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One of These Days I’ll Get Organized!
How many times have you heard someone say that before? In fact, how many times were you the one saying it, either out loud or to yourself? As someone who teaches time management principles for a living, and who coaches my clients on it as well, getting organized is one of the most frustrating, perplexing, and confusing subjects I can think of.
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“Pareto Principle” – The 80/20 Rule
Italian economist Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto observed in 1906 that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. Later, he observed this noteworthy ratio seemed to apply to other parts of life, such as gardening: 80 percent of his peas were produced by 20 percent of the peapods. Over time, this concept has come to be known as the “Pareto Principle,” “The 80/20 Rule,” and even “The Vital Few and Trivial Many Rule.”
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The Five Stages of a Business
Stage 1: Formulation
In this stage, you are doing all of your thinking and planning about your business. You put together business plans, budgets, marketing plans, recruiting plans, economic forecasts, etc. You commit to paper everything you can possibly think of about your business. You basically do a brain dump.
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The Importance of Planning
You have heard me say many times how important I think planning is. In fact, you might say I’m a nut case about it. I insist that you plan your week in advance every week. Well, I just read an article in the October 2006 issue of Money Magazine, and while they were referring to planning for retirement, the point is the same. Here is a direct quote from the article entitled “What Works in Retirement Planning:”
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10 Tips for Overcoming Procrastination
“After all is said and done, more is usually said than done.” – Old proverb
Why do we procrastinate? Over the years, here are some of the things I’ve heard people say in my workshop on time management:
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