Tips to Own Your Time

1. Clean your desk off every night or every morning before you start work.

2. At that time, write on a pad by your desk the three most important things you need to do that day. Make a fresh page every day. I have a 4″x5″ sticky notepad I use that works really well.

3. Block out a POWER HOUR on your calendar once or twice a week to work on important projects without any interruptions. During that time don’t answer emails or the phone, and even put a Do Not Disturb sign on your door. FOCUS and you’ll make headway!!

This week on Harvard Business Review there is a very thought provoking article titled The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination. Here are some excerpts. I think you might like to print it out (see link below) and read it over your tea or coffee:

Why do we procrastinate?

Because we’re afraid of feeling. Think about it: our greatest fear is that we will feel something unpleasant.

What if you have that scary conversation you’ve been avoiding and it ends the relationship? It would hurt.

Here’s the thing: More often than not, our fear doesn’t help us avoid the feelings; it simply subjects us to them for an agonizingly long time. We feel the suffering of procrastination, or the frustration of a stuck relationship. I know partnerships that drag along painfully for years because no one is willing to speak about the elephant in the room. Taking risks, and falling, is not something to avoid. It’s something to cultivate. But how?

Practice

“Which you get by taking risks, feeling whatever you end up feeling, recognizing that it didn’t kill you, and then getting on the board and paddling back into the surf.”

Here is a link to the complete article: The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination