Get Clear on Where You're Going

Have you ever felt that there's just not enough time in the day? Most often, when we run out of time for projects or pursuits, the reason is that we've spent a lot of time lost in ambiguity.

I've been doing a virtual class each month on different topics. The one in May was all about Time Management. Interestingly, the participants pointed out that they had a difficult time pulling away from social media - this is one of their distractions that they feel they've lost control over.

So how do you eliminate time-wasting distractors?

First, deciding when you'll use social media and for what reasons. You may find me selfish when I tell you that I only scroll through social media on Sundays. However, I post for my businesses and in my group daily through an app so its automatically published at certain times. It takes me an hour to set up the posts for the week.

Think of social media scrolling similar to watching the news. We have CNN which is a 24-hour news channel, but do you watch that every hour? I think I'd go insane! Most of us watch the news in the morning or evening just to catch up on what's going on around the world, and you may watch it for 30 minutes. Can't you map the same mindset to social media scrolling?

Second, become supremely clear about where you�۪re going and what you want to do, so there's no time lost. Your actions must be clear and precise, and you can make an AMAZING amount of progress in just a short period of time.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to eliminate the time-management nightmare.

1. Plan Your Work. Take a few moments to determine where you're going and how you plan to get there. You don't have to know all the steps or details; just write down the basic outline as you can see it. The night before, I make a list of what needs to be done the next day and there's something about writing it down and crossing it off after that makes you feel like you're getting somewhere. So stop using your phone as a list maker for now and try the old writing method. I'm a morning person and I find I can be very creative during this time with writing, projects, and such, so I spend my morning hours doing more thinking than mundane stuff like emails and phone calls. When's your peak time?
2. Gather your resources. Get your tools in order. Make sure you have food, water, pen, paper, computer, your files, and anything else you need to get started. What do you need to do this job right? Get it. When I'm working on preparing power point slides for my next webinar, I close my email, have a bottle of water next to my computer and open up the website where I can find free photos and start working. In addition, my mobile phone is outside my office so I don't even look at it when I'm working.
3. Work Your Plan. Give yourself a deadline, then follow your outline step-by-step. If you get lost or distracted, come back to your outline and see what's next. Making an outline, also eliminates overwhelm and keeps you organized. This is the secret of an effective time manager!I use my awesome agenda planner to plan my week, my day and even list what I'm going to delegate. You can read my step-by-step method of how I get things done in this blog post.

Before long you will have a finished project, and plenty of time to relax or do something else... like stare out the window for 20 minutes.

What are YOU going to do TODAY?