Juggling the Demands of Your Life
By Deirdra Gross
Finding the balance between work and for play isn’t easy at times. We live in a 24/7/365 society nowadays. We live in a world where anyone, at almost any time, can get a hold of us. Think cell phones, emails and pagers… Not to mention the fact that information is coming at us from everywhere. Newspapers, TV, radio, websites, PDAs, faxes, e-newsletters…the list could go on and on.
Finding the time to work on your relationships with others, at home or at work, is an integral part of whether life seems manageable, enjoyable and balanced. But many of us feel so fragmented and overwhelmed because we aren’t achieving that sense of balance. Like most people, we never seem to have enough hours in the day to get everything done. We start early, we stay up even later and many go into whirlwind mode on the weekends. Is it any wonder we end up feeling worn out, without enough energy to spend quality time with family and friends? We need to remember that we need to manage our own needs in order to meet the needs of others in our life. Taking the time to make productive changes in your life can truly mean the difference between simply making a living and having a LIFE.
1. Get Organized: Take control of your physical surroundings. You can find roughly 333 more hours (Eight 40-hour weeks) in any given year by getting and staying organized. The less time you spend running around searching for things, the more time you will have for what is important to you. Use my S.P.E.C.S. process to help you.
- Sort through small sections of whatever room you are trying to organize. Do not try and take on the whole area. Think of the room as you would a piece of graph paper. Each section of the room is a square within that graph paper. Start with one square and take it through the entire S.P.E.C.S. process before you move to the next section of the room or “square.” If you don’t know where to begin-start with a corner of the room or the “corner square.”
- Prioritize what is truly needed and important to you. Be “ruthless” about what you keep. You have a finite amount of space-use the “real estate” for those things you need and treasure.
- Eliminate what you don’t need. Not everything has to go the way of the dumpster. Donate to a charity or sell the items and allow yourself the freedom from feeling guilty or wasteful. If you aren’t using it, chances are someone else can.
- Contain things properly. I have a saying I teach all of my clients: “If I were a __________, where would I be and who would I be hanging out with?” Think about where you would look for items logically and what sort of like items can be contained right along with them.
-Schedule time to maintain your new-found organized self and surroundings. (see below)
2. Control Your Time: Do not let time control you. Use a day planner, not a calendar. Schedule your appointments but also schedule the to-dos you want to accomplish today. Think of to-dos as appointments with yourself. Do not leave those to-dos languish on a to-do list. Break to-dos down to their smallest action. Instead of taking on a whole project, take the smaller action items on the to-do list and pepper your planner with those, in-between appointments. Use the planner as the game plan for your day instead of trying to cram things in as the day progresses.
Being organized and controlling your time affords you a better quality of life in the form of less stress and more time for loved ones. You can juggle the many priorities in your life-it just takes having a productive plan to get you there
About the Author
Deirdra Gross, owner of MAKK Strategies, is a Personal Productivity Consultant specializing in Professional Organizing and Time Management for both business and residential clients. Deirdra is an award winning entrepreneur, speaker, talk show host, columnist and author of “MAKK’s Top 100 Organizing Tips” and “MAKK’s Top 100 Time Management Tips”, available at www.makkstrategies.com. She hosts the internet talk shows “Juggling the Demands of Your Business”, “Juggling the Demands of Your Life”, “The Organizing Minute” and “The Time Management Minute” on Talkshoe.com.
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