Is Your Life Balance Teetering?

Fairy Godmother, Vicki Winterton writes:

Invest 10 minutes a day in 3 simple techniques to restore your stability!

There was a time when the boundaries between work and home were clear. Today, however, work is likely to invade your personal life — and maintaining a work-life balance is harder than ever. Still, work-life balance isn’t out of reach for you. Murphy’s Law states: “If anything can go wrong, it will”. Sometimes, it seems like this well known saying is built in to the way our world works. I have found that time management solutions can ensure that Murphy’s “drop-by visits” don’t throw a major kink in your day.

As a Utah based productivity coach and professional organizer, I’m excited to share some of my life changing tips to help you learn how to organize your life in a way that restores peace and brings greater balance to your daily routine. In fact, I am so sure these tips work, that I GUARANTEE my clients greater peace once they agree to make these techniques a part of their lives.

1. Plan ahead by prioritizing - Use your favorite daily planner to be sure you make time each day to prioritize. Some tips for prioritizing include:

• Scheduling your time in weekly segments
• Scheduling no more than 70 % of your day (IF you are a mother of young children, 50% is the target)
• Taking 5 minutes today to prioritize tomorrow with your 4 most important tomorrow activities

2. Simplify - Life is easier when you simplify your daily routine. Look twice to see how you might shorten or delete some of the activities you are undertaking such as:

• Low priority items
• Tasks of little consequence if left undone
• Tasks where the cost (time, money, energy) are greater than the benefit received

3. Delegate tasks - If someone else (this includes your children) can complete a task as well or nearly as well as you ONCE THEY ARE TRAINED, then by all means, delegate that task to them. The keys to effective delegating include:

• Making sure your expectations are clearly understood
• Having a good return and report system in place
• Assuring you allow time for a learning curve
• Praise & appreciation for a job well done

Understand that unexpected issues arise on a regular basis. Even the most complex productivity plan can’t withstand Murphy’s Law. You CAN, however, learn how to organize your life and prepare for Murphy’s “drop in” visits. If you manage your time well by applying the tips listed and then EXPECT Murphy’s visits, you will be able to easily move beyond the frustration those visits have brought you in the past.  Click here to view and print my FREE 1 page Life Balance Worksheet. With the investment of a little time in this worksheet and only 10 minutes a week to prioritize, simplify and delegate, greater life balance is not only at your fingertips, but easily attainable…YOU CAN DO THIS!

Click here to watch Vicki’s 6 minute TV segment, Time Management Tips

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Vicki Winterton is a Utah based professional organizer/productivity coach & a Startup Princess fairy godmother who has been highlighted in newspapers, magazines and on television. She is an online organizing expert who co-hosts The Organized Woman Show. Vicki’s professional organizing business is found at www.OrganizingMindOverMatter.com

 

Office Organization Tips

Workplace organizing is a specialty of mine and something that can be learned by 85% of the workforce. You, however, may have never been taught the necessary office organization tips. Research reveals that American firms lose 86 work days a year being unproductive. I ask you these questions: Is disorganization affecting your workplace productivity? Do you waste precious time looking for things you know you have but cannot find? As a Utah based professional organizer and productivity coach, my business clients find that office organizing diminishes the very tangible monetary losses associated with disorganization. Becoming organized also remedies the loss of time, creativity, confidence and peace of mind that disorganization brings.

One of my favorite definitions of “organized” comes from Stephanie Calahan, “Finding what you need when you need it, with little effort”. Organizing your time, space, papers and computer data is worth every bit of time, money and effort it takes.

Office organization is very doable with these 3 organizing strategies. Putting them in place will increase productivity and bring greater order to your worplace environment either at home or in a business office.

• Office Organization Tip #1 Schedule a time to plan. I teach my clients to plan their week on paper before it begins. If you don’t know what you should be doing, how can you get it done? Establish a routine of planning your week the Friday before it actually begins. The weekly plan doesn’t have to be extremely detailed, just include the tasks of greatest importance. Then, use the first 5 minutes of each day to detail that plan further. Streamline by setting specific days for specific tasks as much as possible so your schedule has a routine.
• Office Organization Tip #2 Prioritize your work to-do list by keeping 3 lists of 3. The first list contains 3 things you will do today that are most important to the success of your business. Be sure to differentiate between urgent and important. The second is 3 tasks you’d like to get done, but which aren’t of greatest importance. The third is 3 responsibilities that need to be taken on at some point. If you only have a few hours each day to devote to work related tasks, just stick to the 1^st list of three. Schedule a beginning and ending time for each of the tasks on your list. Stick to that time limit strictly. Accept the fact that you will rarely finish your to-do list. For my clients who are perfectionists this is frustrating. They eventually learn to delegate or delete the non-essential items from their list. As busy working women, learning to delete and delegate can turn our minds from chaos to calm.
• Office Organization Tip #3 Get your office desk, papers, supplies and computer files organized. The National Association of Professional Organizers reports that the average American wastes 55 minutes per day looking for things they have misplaced. A major cause of ineffective time management is disorganization. Although many people claim not to have enough time or money to get organized, the truth is that usually the more organized you are, the less time and money you waste. When my clients know where everything is, they don’t spend their valuable work time searching for things. What could YOU accomplish with 2 ½ extra work weeks a year?

Give my office organization tips a try by scheduling a time to plan and then prioritize with your 3 lists of 3. When your task list is planned and prioritized and your “office stuff” is in its place, you will be a more productive person and your business profits will reflect positively.

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Vicki Winterton is a professional organizer who has been highlighted here at Start-up Princessin newspapers, magazines and on TV. She is an online organizing expert who co-hosts   The Organized Woman Show. Vicki’s Utah based professional organizing business is found at http://www.OrganizingMindOverMatter.com/

Getting Organized at Home with Laura Lawrence and Vicki Winterton of “The Organized Woman Show”

When Professional Organizers Laura Lawrence and Vicki Winterton, Co-Hosts of “The Organized Woman Show” offered to help me organize my home office I said, “Yes, Please!” We were already acquainted because they have been to Startup Princess events and so I already knew that I’d love working Read more