Continual Vigilance

The 2006 Atlantic tropical hurricane season can certainly get in the way of one who likes to set goals and achieve things in their lives. When a major category hurricane comes along many people are forced to evacuate from their homes and leave their lives behind for up to three to four weeks while authorities work to repair the power and the water gets turned back on.

Meanwhile many people who are trying to get things done and achieve things in their lives cannot because there is no way to do it all. If they have career goals in their business where they work, these businesses and buildings may have been destroyed and thus the chances of achieving that are probably not possible. If they have athletic goals sometimes they are under such severe hardship 1000 miles from home, that they cannot get the workouts or the practices to the need to in order to better their skills.

When setting goals one should always remember that there is the possibility that circumstances beyond your control can prevent you from achieving those goals. But someone who achieves and sets goals is likely to overcome these obstacles because goals take precedence over any adversity or barriers which stands in the way including a major category storm by mother nature. If you are one to set goals you should not let the 2006 Atlantic tropical hurricane season stand in your way. Consider this 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The balance sheet is important to business operations in general. It provides a snapshot of what the company owns and what they owe to outside sources. The balance sheet is also known as a profit and loss account. By either name, this special form of financial statement provides great insight into an organization’s holdings.

Breaking Down the Balance Sheet

To clarify, a balance sheet shows how much money the organization has, how much property they own, and most importantly, how much money they owe. This is beneficial for outside sources to view - bankers, investors, and even potential creditors.

The balance sheet is broken down into several sections. Each section is grouped by liquidity - that is, how easily the particular asset can be converted into cash. The first section is short term assets. Within this category, cash is listed first, followed by near cash assets. Near cash assets are assets that can be easily converted into cash. Accounts receivable, money that people owe the organization, is also listed in this category.

The next category is the long term assets. These would include equipment, property, and buildings, along with long term accounts receivable. Generally, long term assets are assets that cannot be easily converted to cash within a year’s time.

After long term assets comes the liabilities category. This category is also divided into short and long term - that is, short and long term liabilities. In this case, time is generally defined in years - less than a year for short term, and more than a year for long term.

Short term liabilities would include items such as mortgage payments for the next year, along with utilities and equipment leases. In addition, short term liabilities include employee wages, usually listed as wages payable. Long term liabilities would include items such as the remainder of the mortgage for future years, along with equipment leases. Items here overlap, as time is the separator, not the specific item.

Uses of the Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is used internally to gain insight into what the company has available at a certain point in time. Potential creditors to use a company’s balance sheet to determine the cash to debt ratio, which would in turn inform them how much risk is involved in lending. Investors can use a company’s balance sheet to judge risk as well. For example, if a company is cash heavy or cash light, this could be an indicator of problems within the company. Size of the balance sheet is also an important factor in determining corporate health. If the balance sheet is large, this is an indicator of lots of activity, which may indicate positive growth. On the other hand, if the balance sheet is small, it may mean that the company is growing stagnant.

Flow and Format of Balance Sheets

The balance sheet is laid out in a specific order for a number of reasons. The first reason is GAAP, or Generally Acceptable Accounting Practices. It is a guideline used by all accountants to formalize the statements and keep communication standardized. If the company is also publicly traded, then the format of the balance sheet is required by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The last reason relates to Sarbanes - Oxley, a set of accounting regulation regarding internal controls designed to minimize fraud. Due to recent corporate scandals, such as Enron and WorldCom, regulations have been stricter, requiring more detail.

In short, balance sheets provide insight into a company’s holdings for all to see. Balance sheets are a highly informative tool, often open for public viewing if the company is traded publicly. Without balance sheets, it becomes difficult to gain a clear insight into the health of the company.

Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster of Finance Alley the best place to find financial articles covering topics such as accounting, money and loans and all aspects of finance.

Writing a business plan can be a lot of hard work or it can be great fun. An effective plan can help your company to greatness. A poor one can lead you out of business. No plan is like asking to fail before you even start.

Not every business needs a 200 page bound business plan. However every business needs to have some idea of where they want to go and how they are going to get there. This article covers some key insights into writing a business plan that get your business to where you want to be.

The first stage of any plan is ANALYSIS. You need to take a very objective look at a number of factors that may impact your business. There are many factors to consider but the two major ones are competition and your operating environment.

Let’s look first at competition. Every business has competition, even if you think your product or service is unique. How is this? Well it’s quite simple really, people have choices to make. The most fundamental choice they make in most cases is whether to buy what you offer or but something else. For example I could buy a game console or I could buy groceries instead. Customers only have so much money available so you first task is to ask yourself what is my competition like and can I beat them? The more you understand your competition the more you can develop your business strategy of being different and outperforming them.

Now let’s look at operating environment. This is understanding what factors around your area of operation are likely to affect your business performance. For some companies this includes looking around the World in other cases it’s just your local neighbourhood. You need to ask questions such as:

How is the economy going?
What is consumer confidence like?
Where is technology heading in my industry?

After answering all the questions you need to decide how these might negatively or positively influence your performance.

Now you know more about your competition and operating environment it’s time to set some OBJECTIVES. This is what you want to achieve in the period your business plan covers. It is said that good objectives are SMART. That is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targeted. Here’s an example of a SMART objective for a hypothetical business.

“By the end of this year we will have increased sales of product X by 7.5% over the previous year.”

You can see how clear this objective is. It is much easier to achieve high performance with clear objectives.

Now you need to outline your STRATEGY. How are you going to reach you objective(s)? This is where your marketing plan often comes in as it helps describe the programs you will run to achieve your desired objective(s). To continue the example above our strategy may be to gain distribution for our product in one new major retail chain.

To make your strategy work you must then allocate appropriate RESOURCES. Certain things will need to be provided to reach your goal. This could be dollars, people, equipment, etc. Your plan must have included the resources you are allocating and why you believe this is adequate to get the result.

Every business plans also has some PROJECTIONS. This is your basic financials that you plan will deliver. Are you expecting a profit or loss? How much?

Lastly you need to allow for CONTINGENCIES. Things change all the time and your plan needs to consider these possibilities in advance. A good way to do this is to ask What if?

What if a new competitor enters our market?
What if a distributor delists our product?
What if interest rates rise?

Your analysis should give you some idea of likely contingencies. It saves a lot of stress if you have some documented ideas for dealing with them before they become a big problem.

Writing a business plan is never perfect, the plan is on paper and you’re operating in the real world. However a good plan can really guide you in the right direction. Take time to put real thought into preparing your plan an above all make sure you USE YOUR PLAN!

Please visit our site for more information on Writing a Business Plan www.talking-businessplans.com

Microsoft Powerpoint is what I consider the most powerful presentation tool available on the market and whilst there are competitors, it is pretty obvious that Microsoft Powerpoint ranks as the number one presentation tool in the world. Just look at the number of seminars, lectures or presentations you go to and how many people are using Microsoft PowerPoint, in my experience, about 95% of them. Let me ask you a question though. How many times have you seen the same template, presentation after presentation?

Way too many and there is no excuse …

I wanted to set about teaching you in this article the secrets to customising your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and how to change those common Microsoft Powerpoint Templates. See whether you realise it or not, all of the powerpoint template presentations that Microsoft provides are in fact customisable. In fact, most of the presentation templates you find in Microsoft Powerpoint 2000, XP or 2003 are simply built on individual drawing objects or shapes that can be found on the Drawing toolbar under the AutoShapes menu.

Lets look at how you customise Microsoft supplied templates …

First off we have to create a new presentation, which I strongly encourage you to do at this stage by opening Microsoft Powerpoint and using the shortcut keystroke, [Ctrl] + [N]. Next we want to apply one of those common Microsoft templates, seeing I am working in Microsoft Powerpoint 2003 as I am writing this article, I am going to describe changing the Digital Dots template. So you need to apply this template by choosing the Format menu and then choosing Slide Design from the drop down menu. On the right hand side of the screen the Task pane open. Move your mouse pointer over each of the slide designs till you see the one called Digital Dots and click on it once. You should notice this design now applied to your slide.

When you first see this template, you may probably think it looks pretty complex, something too difficult to modify. Well do not be fooled. This template is simply made up of a series of lines and circles from your Drawing toolbar. Not a single thing more. I know when I am running my instructor led courses, many of my students say to me “It’s a picture and way too difficult to modify”. Ahh, but its not, it is simply a series of drawing objects that are skillfully coloured to look like a picture.

So how do we modify it…

Very good question, the secret to modifying these templates, is to modify the master slide. The master slide controls the look and feel of your presentation so to do that you must first activate the master slide. To do this simply goto the View menu, choose Master from the drop down menu and then choose Slide Master. In the left hand pane you should see two pictures towards the top of your screen just before the toolbars. These two pictures represent your Title Slide Master and the Slide Master used by the main body of your presentation. The Title Slide Master should be open in front of you and this is the one we will modify. Keep in mind that the rules we do for the Title Slide Master also apply to the other slide masters in your presentation.

What you need to do is to modify the drawing objects in this slide so just click on one of the buttons in the slide that is away from the placeholders. What you should notice is that a square object select marker appears. This tells you that all of the elements you see are a group. So to ungroup these objects, right mouse click and from the shortcut menu choose Grouping and then Ungroup.

You will then see all the individual objects selected in the slide. Simply click away from the select objects and then click on any one object, actually lets change one of the buttons. Once you have selected the button, right mouse click and choose Format Autoshape. You should notice that the Format Autoshape dialog box is similar to the Autoshape dialog box you use for standard drawing object.

Let us change the colour of the object to green by choosing green from the Fill Colour drop down box. To complete your change simply choose the OK button. Now what you should notice is that you have one green button. You could now go through and change every single button and customise the slide master to look the way you require.

You can even go through and customise the background of the Slide master by going to the Format menu and choosing Background from the drop-down menu. When you change the background on the Title Slide Master and the Slide Master, it will be reflected in all the slides in your presentation.

Just a short side bar …

If you want to copy the formatting from one object to another, the simplest way is to first choose the object you want to copy the formatting from. Go upto the Standard toolbar and double click on the Format Painter button and then click on each of the objects you want to copy this formatting to. This tool is really useful especially in this case as you have lots of small objects to be modified.

Once you have finished customising your Title Slide Master and Slide Master simply click once on the Close Master View button on the Slide Master View toolbar. This will take you back to your main presentation. What you should now notice is that your whole presentation has been modified to suit the changes you made to the Slide Masters.

The bottom line is that there is no excuse for you to be using the same powerpoint template as everyone else who has purchased Microsoft Powerpoint. You can now ensure when you do your next presentation, or give your speech at your next seminar that you will have your own customised and unique looking presentation. No longer do we have to see the same boring old templates. Let the Microsoft Powerpoint Template revolution begin.

This TQM article is a continuation of the Part 4a article, the IMPROVE PHASE. In this issue, I will share with you how to use Control Lot and Testing and Pilot the Action / Solution in carry out this TQM project using the D.A.I.C. Methodology as described in my previous article.

Just to recap, tools used in the IMPROVE Phase are listed below. I will deal with tools that are in bold:

Brainstorming of action / solution | Selection Grid | Benchmarking | Cost-Benefit Analysis | Control lot and testing | Pilot the action / solution | Force-Field Analysis | Prevention Planner

How to use Control Lot and Testing

This tool is particularly useful to verify if the corrective action / solution is able to meet the team’s objective. It is also used to confirm certain control parameter of changes in process. If the control lot is to verify process capability, then the parameter of this control lot must meet the desire process capability as well.

Let’s see how to do it. In a coating line, the team has decided to change the belt speed of a conveyor line but not sure what level of speed is most optimized to obtain the best coating thickness control. A control lot in this case will be run with various speed adjusted manually. At each speed, the coating thickness is recorded. At the end of the control lot / testing, a correlation is done to verify which speed yield the most optimum coating thickness. All these test is done in a controlled environment.

Once the control lot is satisfied, record the optimized belt speed, them the team is ready for a larger lot in full production mode and some controlled environment.

Pilot the solution

Pilot run is a common practice for a new product resting. For this D.A.I.C. Methodology, we use it to double sure changes to the production parameters are well implemented. The objective if this tool is to implement the optimized belt speed during full production run. However, the volume of run is much lesser and more attention is given to ensure the new speed is communicated and set for the pilot production run.

As the production lot for the pilot run is more compared to a control lot, care should be given to ensure all new belt speed is set accordingly. Due to the fact that this is like a full production run, team need to put extra attention to any drastic changes to other production parameters. During the pilot run, team would record the effect of the pilot run in terms of coating thickness and other quality specifications. Once it is confirmed, it is considered as successful.

In summary, this IMPROVE PHASE Control lot and testing and Pilot the action / solution would be critical to prevent any unwanted element occurred when a solution is put in placed for production. This is the “hardware” of the solution. In most case, it can be tested and adjusted until satisfactory. However, this alone does not guarantee the success of the improvement project. The human factor or the “software” within the process must be addressed in order to ensure full implementation of the proposed solution. In my next article, I will share with you how this can be accomplished with the last two tools of the IMPROVE PHASE i.e. Force-Field Analysis and Prevention Planner

—————————————————————-

Disclaimer
All rights reserved. This article is written by the author based on his practical application experience. All definitions and interpretation of terminology are his point of view and has it has no intention to conflict with experts in similar topic. The author holds no responsibility for the use of this article in any way.

—————————————————————–

Free to reprint or re-publish
All rights reserved. You are free to reprint or re-publish this article as long as you include my resource box at the end of this article. Please ensure that the URL in the resource box remain intact and it is linked to the author’s website.

—————————————————————–

For many of us, New Year’s goals are easily set and more
easily sacrificed for those matters we deem more pressing.
Whether it’s reconnecting with old contacts, improving your
financial situation or improving sales in your firm, New
Year’s goals can be very difficult to keep. By working on
the goals you set now, future goals will be easier to
attain. Besides, learning new things or the possibility of
new revenues, reaching goals often leads to improved
self-esteem and confidence.

The following tips can help you set and work towards
reaching your goals, past January 31st:

Believe in Yourself: Realize the New Year is a great excuse
for a fresh start and to review the past year, a bit more
objectively. Be excited at the opportunities that come your
way and see how you can become a catalyst to get things
moving.

Sharpen your Pencils: In order to achieve goals, it helps to
put them in writing. This action allows you to be
accountable to yourself and lets you see what you need to do
when things look harder than they seem. Believe it or not,
writing things down makes goals more achievable than when
there is a jumble of thoughts bouncing around in your head.

Review Last Year’s Goals: Take an objective look at the
business and personal goals you made last year. Evaluate
what you were able to achieve and move forward; learn to let
go of lower level priorities that may be holding you back.
Set Realistic Goals & Objectives: When you think about new
goals and objectives, make sure they’re within your reach.
Be mindful of your time, energy, commitments and resources.
Many people forget that life continues, even when you set
new goals. If you don’t take this into consideration now, it
will lead to unrealistic goal setting.

Develop a Plan: Think about a plan for reaching your goals.
Create a timeline with steps. Set deadlines for each step
and cross them off as you go. Schedule and update meetings
with yourself in a monthly calendar to ensure you are
reviewing and adjusting these steps as it relates to your
life.

Be Flexible: Remember, life is full of change, and as such,
changes will need to be made. Don’t get discouraged. Stay
focused, as long as you are working toward your goals,
things are moving in the right direction.

Celebrate: It’s very important that you reward yourself.
Goal setting and goal reaching is not easy. The fact that
you are considering these steps means you are serious about
bettering your career and even your life. Go out and
celebrate! Celebrations can include going to Starbucks,
getting a manicure or spending time with friends.

The start of the New Year does not have to be the only time
to set and achieve new goals. Whether you are setting
personal, financial or business goals, I wish you all
success on your journey.

Beth Silver has been providing marketing and business strategies (http://www.doubetllc.com/services) to entrepreneurs and small business owner for over 10 years. For more great tips and to sign up for Doubet’s free monthly newsletter, The Target Advocate (http://www.doubetllc.com/newsroom), please visit http://www.doubetllc.com

Most people have no problem setting goals. At the same time, most people have a great deal of trouble getting their goals.

A specific strategy for setting and getting goals

Remember R2D2 and CP3O of Star Wars fame? Well, this strategy is called BD3, which stands for Brainstorm, Decide, Do, and Distinguish.

Brainstorm - Get yourself in a quite place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Let your mind focus on these questions:

What would you like to accomplish in the next two years?
What would you like to change?
What would you like to be?
What would you like to have?
What would you like to do?
Where do you want to go?
What would you like to contribute?

Now spend 5-10 minutes writing down whatever goals come to mind. For this exercise, there are no limits. Let the ideas come freely, without evaluation. Don’t just think about them, write them down. Remember, the weakest ink is better than the strongest memory. Come up with as many goals as you can. Now you are ready to…………

Decide - on two things:

1) Choose one goal from the brainstorming list that you most want to accomplish in the next two years, and

2) Decide it will happen. Decide that no matter what, you will get this goal sometime in the next two years.

This is a very powerful decision to make. Because change can occur in an instant, deciding that you will get this goal begins the process of change, and begins to build momentum.

To continue building momentum, now it’s time to………..

Do - all the necessary things to make it happen. One way to do this is to work backward from your deadline to now. For example, if your goal is to save a certain amount of money by the year 2006, how much will you have to save each year, each quarter, each month, each week, each day? In this way, you are able to break a rather large goal down into daily actions. Remember, once you set and commit to a goal, you can only have two results: you get the goal or you have excuses why you didn’t.

While you are taking daily action toward your goal, it’s crucial to…………

Distinguish - between what is working and what is not. Are your actions moving you closer to your goal or further away from your goal? If what you are doing is working, great for you, keep it up, and perhaps do even more. If what you are doing is not working, change your strategy. Remember, if you keep doing the same things you have always done, you’ll get the same things you have always gotten. Keep changing your strategies until you get the results you want.

Visit SecretsofGreatRelationships.com for tips and tools for creating and growing a great relationship. You can also subscribe to our f*r*e*e 10 day e-program on how to enrich your relationship today, from relationship coach and expert Jeff Herring.

In this changing, challenging, and competitive workplace, we
can’t overestimate the importance of good management.
Good managers will consistently motivate you to perform at
higher levels of productivity. Bad managers will drive you
crazy and eventually out of the organization. Managers with
poor skills will frequently produce the following results:

1. Decreased productivity

2. Increased turnover

3. Increased absences

4. Increased human resources mediation situations

5. Increased customer service complaints

The following are seven secrets to being the “perfect” leader
everyone wants to work for:

1. Create a Vision

The best leaders not only assign tasks or monitor
performance. They plan for the future and motivate others to
see the same vision so they can all thrive to accomplish that
vision.

Instead of dwelling on limited problems, the perfect leaders
look at the big picture. They live the organization’s mission
and implement, motivate, and dedicate all their efforts to
accomplishing the mission.

During hundreds of team building and leadership
workshops, I have asked the following simple question:

What is your organization’s mission statement?

If there are forty participants in the workshop, thirty-seven
will look down at their desk, one participant will make a
feeble attempt at reciting what he/she “thinks” is the mission
statement, one participant will make a pretty good attempt
and recite the first one or two sentences of the mission
statement, and finally one student will volunteer to run to the
office (or car) to grab a copy of the statement to bring back
to the workshop. Out of the thousands of workshop
participants I have asked this question, only three knew their
mission statement word for word. The amazing part of this is
that many of these workshop participants have been with
their organization 5-10-20+ years and, they still didn’t know
their mission statement. So my question is this:

How do you lead your employees to accomplish your
organization’s mission if you (as a manager) don’t know
what the mission is?

The perfect leaders live, eat, sleep, and shower with their
mission statement. They know exactly what the mission is
and understand its importance to the team they lead and to
the organization. Most importantly, they communicate the
mission statement to their employees at meetings, coachings,
feedback sessions, and even corrective actions. Their
actions are related to accomplishing the goals of the mission
statement and can communicate the vision of the
organization.

Action Step - Take the mission statement out of the dark
corner in the office. Print the mission statement and its
vision on the top of your meeting agenda and recite it at the
beginning of the meeting. Then talk about how the
employees are helping to realize the goals, values, and vision
of the mission.

2. Understand employee needs

As the old saying goes, “You can’t please all of the people
all of the time.” However, the perfect leaders realize that to
be effective, they must cater to the needs of most of the
team. Good leaders realize that the work environment is not a
popularity contest or, as I say, “Leadership is not
Pleasership.” Perfect leaders treat all employees with respect
and are consistent in their actions and words.

At the same time, they recognize the unique needs of their
employees and use that knowledge for motivation to achieve
a common goal.

3. Communicate concisely and clearly

Poor communication skills are probably the Number #1
reason managers fail. If they can’t talk to and connect with
their employees, they are not serving the needs of the staff.

What is good communication? The following are some
examples:

* Communicate job expectations and standards

* Give ongoing feedback to employees.

* Seek and acknowledge feedback from employees on
decisions that effect them (and take the time to listen to
them).

* Communicate the mission (see Secret #1) on an ongoing
basis.

* Communicate “bad news” in an honest and timely manner.

* Communicate using language that shows a positive
expectation.

* Communicate through a combination of methods: person-
to-person, e-mail, phone, and meetings.

4. Find common ground

Some managers don’t understand they are in the people
business and lack the patience to work and develop their
team members. I even had a supervisor during a coaching
and mentoring workshop make the following statement to me
at break:

“If I had known that I had to communicate with my team, I
would have never taken the job.”

What did this person think? True leaders understand that
their employees’ success is their success. They comprehend
during this journey that some employees will need
assistance, coachings, motivation, feedback, and discipline.
Good leaders will work to find common ground with each
staff member so that everyone wins. Perfect leaders will
understand that some employees will need consistent
managing, and others will need less managing; some
employees need refocusing, while others will be very
focused, etc. Perfect leaders recognize the need to find
common ground with each person.

5. Take others to a new level

Perfect managers are concerned with their staff’s
professional advancement and do everything possible to
help staff members develop their capabilities. These leaders
“see the employees for what they can become, not what they
are now.” These leaders’ actions might range from
improving specific aspects of job performance, to delegating
special assignments, to developing an action plan for
promotions. Perfect leaders must have the ability to assess
the strengths and weaknesses of employees and use that to
coach for continuous improvement.

Ideally the basis for improvement combines the best interest
of the organization and the employee. Many times I am
brought into organizations to assist them with this need:

“I have managers retiring, and we have no one to replace
them.”

These organizations have created a “talent black hole,”
because they didn’t implement a plan to “help others
improve” and be ready to step up when needed. Remember,
you can always replace a chair, a desk, a computer. But you
can’t always replace a talented employee if you don’t have a
plan in place to develop others to take their place when the
time comes.

6. Believe in your staff

Recently, I was presenting the concerns of an employee
workshop to management of an organization at their staff
meeting. One manager looked at the report and questioned
me as to whether the employees really mentioned the items in
the report. I assured the manager the employees did. To
that the manager answered in the meeting, “This must mean
we have smart employees.” Little did this manager realize
that he had a negative attitude toward his employees.
Through his subconscious mind, he is showing his
employees, through words and actions, that he doesn’t
believe in his staff.

Perfect leaders believe in the best qualities of their
employees. They believe their employees are smart enough
to handle tasks and find solutions to challenges if given the
correct guidance and opportunity.

This comes with earned trust from past performances and the
investment by the leaders to ongoing shared coachings and
feedback to give the employees the experience and skills to
succeed in the future.

7. Integrity is best

It is important that employees feel they can trust the
managers’ words and actions. This means honesty, fairness,
and consistency when interacting with employees. If
employees share in private a confidential and sensitive
subject with their managers
in the morning, this must not be known throughout the
organization that afternoon. Or, if managers promise to give
employees an answer by the end of the day and never get
back to the employees, the managers’ integrity is destroyed.

The best leaders realize that their word is their bond and that
actions speak louder than words. Perfect leaders work at
being honest, open, and reliable everyday.

Take the time starting today to apply these seven secrets;
and you, too, can be a “perfect” leader.

Ed Sykes is a professional speaker, author, and leading
expert in the areas of leadership, motivation, stress
management, customer service, and team building. You can
e-mail him at mailto:esykes@thesykesgrp.com, or call him at
(757) 427-7032. Goto his web site,
http://www.thesykesgrp.com, and signup for the newsletter,
OnPoint, and receive the free ebook, “Empowerment and
Stress Secrets for the Busy Professional.”

As a Life Coach, and after coaching many different clients, I have come to realise that to effectively manage time, we need to first realise that time itself cannot be managed! We all get seven days a week and 168 hours within those seven days. This cannot be increased or changed in any way. However, what we can change, improve and manage is ourselves. In essence then, true time management now becomes management of ourselves - “self management!”

So being aware of this, we now know that it’s not the amount of time we have that’s important; it’s how effectively we use that time that makes the difference. Successful people have exactly the same amount of time in the day as each of us. The only difference is they use their time differently - more effectively.

You might say “I don’t have the time to commit to learning some time management skills”. I hear this a lot during life coaching sessions, but the fact is if this were true, do you really think you have the time not to?

Time management principles and techniques are usually quite simple to learn. They do not require deep thinking, a high I.Q or lots of preparation. In fact if you were to put the search term “Time Management Resources” into a search engine you will get dozens of websites offering help, advice, tips and suggestions on how to manage and prioritise your time.

To sum time management up I would say you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I physically have enough time to do the tasks that are required of me? We only have so much time. Sometimes it’s not always physically possible to fit everything in. If this is the case then you need to prioritise and drop some of the low priority task/activities to claim some time back.

2. Do I fully optimise and use my time effectively? If the answer is NO then you
might want to learn and implement some time management principles and techniques.

Below is a list of some time management (self management) techniques and tips that I use during life coaching. You may find a couple of them helpful yourself. They are in no particular order.

• Figure out when (what time of the day?) you work most efficiently.
• Establish your priorities for what you want to get done. Identify the tasks and activities that are the highest priority and eliminate those of low priority.
• Allow more time than you think you will need. This makes your schedule flexible and allows for the unexpected.
• Get into the habit of using your odd five minutes here and there more productively. Don’t just dismiss it as only five minutes - they add up throughout the week!
• Accomplish one or two important tasks rather than lots unimportant ones.
• Keep a calendar/diary. Mark all your important dates/tasks.
• Keep a list of “Things to Do” and mark them off as completed.
• Every day make a list of what you have to do tomorrow.
• When possible do the unpleasant tasks first.
• Tidiness makes your life easier and reduces stress.
• Allow time to relax, recharge and do nothing.
• Leave time in your schedule for un-planned activities.
• Know your strengths, skills and weakness.
• Ask yourself, “What am I doing that someone else could do for me?” Delegate!
• Don’t be scared to ask for help
• Bin things straight away to reduce the clutter (junk mail, newspapers and spam email etc).
• Divide large overwhelming tasks into smaller chunks, and attack them one at a time.
• Complete at least one task each day that you don’t like to do, but know you should.
• Realise that all your email checking, surfing the internet and other procrastinations add up to hours of lost time each week (sometime even each day!)
• Watch less T.V. If you watch T.V for three hours a day from the age of five years old, by the time you are fifty five the amount of T.V you will have watched will be the equivalent to watching non-stop 24 hours a day for six years and three months. If you cut this down by just one hour a day, so then only watch two hours of T.V, you will have gained back over two years worth of time.

“Living is the constant process of deciding what we are going to do” (Jose Ortega y Gasset)

Rich is a full-time freelance Life Coach from the UK. For more information check out his Life Coaching website http://www.startliving.org.uk or alternatively take a look at his Life Coaching Blog at http://www.startliving.org.uk/blogger.html

At the beginning of the year, there’s often an orgy of goal setting. People get into a collective frenzy about setting personal and professional goals.

Traditional goal setting often doesn’t work because we are not in vibrational harmony with our goals. The feelings we have about our goals aren’t aligned with our thoughts. So we often effort and take too much action before we’ve properly aligned our feelings and beliefs.

Here are 4 Steps to Inspired Goal Setting.

1. Know why you want the goal

Many of us to becoming specific about our goals way too early. We haven’t felt the essence of why we want what we want. We really need to feel our desire about our goals.

What is it we really want; more time to spend with loved ones, space, a sense of aliveness, pleasure, joy. If we don’t know why we want what we want, then all the action in the world won’t make any difference.

You could also call it the Vision Thing. To have a bigger vision regarding our lives puts goal setting in context and makes them far easier to achieve. If your goal is a “have to” “must” or an
“ought to”, then it aint gonna happen. You joined that gym because you “had to” lose weight and how often did you go?

2. Gain clarity about your desire

Haven’t you already done that? Well, partially. You can only set personal and professional goals for yourself. If your desire isn’t there, then it aint happening:.)

If your goals aren’t crafted with your true desires in mind, then they’ll go unfulfilled and/or self sabotage is often the result. It’s important to be excited by the possibilities that
working towards your goal will bring.

Also, cultural and social expectations often shape our goals as to what we think we can have as opposed to what we actually want - so need to gain clarity about what is truly your desire and what belongs to other people.

You’ll never be able to do enough to satisfy other people, so stick to satisfying yourself.

3. The Specification

Once you’ve ramped up your desire and feelings about the goal, here is where the SMART model (S = Specific, M= Measurable A= Action orientated R= Realistic, T= Time based) comes in.
Write down your specification in rich feeling detail and then…………

4. …………. Let Go

That’s right. Let go of your judgements, your timing of when it should happen, your attachment to the outcome looking the way you think it ought to look.

Letting go means that you stop efforting and yearning and waiting. This frees you up so that you are not wedded or
attached to a specific outcome, but let the Universe deliver.

From here you start to use your intuition and take inspired action. Inspired action is effortless. You take action from a place of feeling good.

It opens you up to receiving ideas, opportunities and different
kinds of assistance. You may find yourself drawn to call someone,
or someone contacts you out of the blue. For some reason you take a different route to work and you see something that gives you an idea.

You do less as more comes to you. You stop “having” to do things and end up effortlessly achieving your goals.

And if you don’t achieve your goal(s)……………………..

Reframe it - maybe the Universe was telling you that this wasn’t the right path and was leading you to something better, even though you didn’t always see it at the the time. Hasn’t that often happened in your experience?

Follow the above process and you’ll find yourself achieving your goals with much more ease and joy.

Julie Plenty helps creatively self employed people prosper by using the Law of Attraction, because they ARE their business. For more self empowerment and Law of Attraction articles, and to sign up for her Life Design newsletter, visit:

http://www.self-empowerment-zone.com