Good time management is not about creating a perfectly organized life in which nothing ever goes wrong. It’s about having the tools to get back in control whenever you get thrown off track. Prepare to recover from the most common time management traps, with the following quick solutions: 

Mistake:  Thinking of Time as Intangible

Solution: View Time as a Closet

             More and more people are working from home these days—as freelancers, budding entrepreneurs, or even as virtual employees of a larger company.  Working from home often brings with it a lot of freedom – the freedom to make decisions, to set hours, and to determine your own workplace culture. Yet the home-based office has its share of challenges. Space is limited. It’s hard to be productive with unstructured days. You do not have the same support that comes with working at a big company, and the lines often blur between home and work.         

            With just a little organization, you can be productive, efficient, and enjoy all of the advantages of working from home. Here are a few of the core strategies I give my clients to ensure they get things done and feel effective.........

I was recently given a "Woman to Watch" award by Jewish Women International.  The event was quite wonderful--especially to be in the company of the eight other dynamic honorees--including Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, JJ Ramberg of MSNBC's Your Business, and the founder of Spanx!  Yes, we were a varied group.

The turnout of supporters for the organization was so huge, and energizing--and I was soon to learn why:  The work of JWI is quite amazing--helping women and girls live in safe homes.  Check them out www.jwi.org

Before accepting our award, we were each asked to share a "Pearl of Wisdom"--mine was about the benefit of always including something in your schedule that is outside your comfort zone, to help give you the courage and self-confidence to tackle all sorts of challenges in your life.....

It’s that time of the year again.  Time to reconsider your list of resolutions of how to improve your life. What’s different about this year is that we are on the verge of a decade change, a chance for a fresh approach, if ever there was one.

Without a doubt, the Great Recession was a heckuva way to finish a decade.  And, if the saying that we reap what we sow holds true, it’d be interesting to take a moment to reflect on where our heads were 10 years ago.  On the cusp of the Millenium, as I recall, all we were worried about was Y2k and whether or not our computers would crash or our alarm clocks would go off when we woke up on New Year’s Day.  Our main goal was seemingly to make sure our lives just kept humming along, without losing all of our systems.  Not the most long-term or visionary of goals. Quickly assured that everything was intact as of 12:01am Jan 1, 2000, the years that followed were characterized by the continued Pursuit of More... more wealth, status, celebrity, possessions, information and busy-ness—which spun to a frenzied state of chaos and ended in the Great Recession, a crushing collapse under the weight of all of our excesses.

For all of the suffering, the Great Recession has brought some great lessons too. For one, it’s probably wise to have a longer term goal in mind at the beginning of a decade. Two, in the face of losing everything, we learned what really matters to us.....

We live in a fast-paced world filled with infinite possibilities and opportunities. Like

kids in a candy shop, we can easily feel overwhelmed choices on where we spend our time. What’s most important? How do we find time to get things done? How much can we handle? It is tempting to shove more in our day than is humanly possible, and discouraged at the end of the day when we barely got past the second item on our to-do list.    In an overstuffed schedule, we feel out of balance—where one area of our lives monopolizes our time at the expense of other more important things.

Throughout my 20 years as a time management coach , I’ve found that there are certain key skills that make the difference between a day that feels in balance vs. out of balance....

Has organizing your computer files been on your to-do list since last summer? Is there a writing project you've been avoiding like the plague? What about those networking phone calls you've been meaning to get to since the job market got so shaky? What is it that causes you to procrastinate...........?

Now, I’m sure you’ve been meaning to create order in your home for a while. Maybe it was one of your New Years’ Resolutions that you didn’t quite keep. Then, you figured, in honor of Spring Cleaning, you’d conquer the piles…but you never quite got it together then either.  Don’t worry—when it comes to decluttering, everyone procrastinates, and summer is another fresh-start opportunity. 

You know what's great about summer?  Time. The days are easier, the kids don't have homework, and the sun stays out till 9:00pm. Time slows down. We're more relaxed, have more energy and more time to spare. 
 
This summer think about using the extra time on your hands to finally declutter -- to rid yourself of all the stuff weighing you down, getting in your way, and stealing your energy rather than fueling you when you try to relax at home. ...........

Have you noticed a time management backlash to the economic crisis?  Procrastination seems to be at an all time high these days--90% of our clients complain about their ineffectiveness at work these days.  It's hard to get anything done....when people you are doing business with take longer to respond, you've got a bunch of new responsibilities to wrap your head around, and your own to-do list has become a bit of a stranger to you.

Restructuring, hiring freezes, and the unpredictable business climate have created a situation in which it's hard to figure out where to invest your time, to provide value.  How do you prioritize when your to-do list goes on for 7 pages? How do you produce quality work when you are distracted with worry? ..............

This week on CBS Sunday Morning, I had the privilege of working alongside organizer Fern Silvernagle to help contributor Nancy Giles, have an “aha moment” in taming the chaos in her house.  As she confronted the mountains of clutter that had overtaken her hallway closet, she observed that “organizing is a process…it’s a lot like therapy.”  It was fun to work with Fern, a protégé of my inside out method, who believes in helping people find their own motivation for clearing out the chaos.

I’ve always been viewed as more of a clutter whisperer, than a clutter buster.  I don’t advocate the “tough love” approaches  that make for entertaining TV—or that people hear from genuinely well meaning friends, family, and even from inside their own heads: “Don’t think, don’t hesitate, get rid of that junk!  Come on….it’s time to move on! What good is that stuff doing you?!  Throw it all away!”   ........