Week 2: Time Mastery + Decisiveness

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Reynold Paul
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1 Week 2: Time Mastery + Decisiveness Week Two Action Steps 1. Complete your Weekly Action Planner You ll stay on track and accomplish more when you plan your weeks. Begin each week by completing your weekly planner located on Page 2 of this packet. 2. Take Control of Your Time Complete a time audit designed to shine a light on your choices and your perception of time. 3. Apply the Prioritization Exercise Follow the action steps outlined during the call and in this packet to prioritize your projects over the next 8 weeks. 4. Read this Week s Featured Articles How to Make More Time for What You Want by Dallas Travers INFO-GRAPHIC: How to Be More Productive by Ana Vital 5. Bonus Training*: TAC Foundation Training Video: How I Get More Stuff Done TAC Foundation Training Video: How to Make Room for What Matters Most *You can find your bonus training videos at breakthrough-bonus-videos Week Two Page 1 of 10

2 Mindset - Week Two Action Planner - This week, I want to feel: In order to feel that way, I commit to the following action. My mantra: Create a Firm Foundation Successes from Last Week This is a Success Because... Next Steps + Follow Through To Do To Done Actions to Take This Week x Cool Stuff I Did Without Even Planning On It *Weeks 3-8 Only* This Week, I ll Share My Goal With: Week Two Page 2 of 10

3 Clarify Your Priorities 1. Download your mental to-do list. 2. Select a specific time frame to evaluate each item on your list. 3. Rate each item according to it s level of urgency within the timeframe you selected. 4. Rate each item according to it s level of importance within the timeframe you selected. 5. Add up your rating totals to identify which items are back burner, immediate actions, and down-the-road items. 6. Cross off any items that equal a rating of 5 or lower. 7. Look at your highest ratings and identify an action you will take equivalent to the score the item received. 8. Schedule each action. 9. Follow the Complete It or Delete It rule! Week Two Page 3 of 10

4 Take Control of Your Time Inspired by Robert Palignari s book, The Other 8 Hours, this assignment is swiped designed to give you a clear picture of how you spend you time and where to redirect your energy. We re going to dissect your average day and look for time wasters you can eliminate, noncritical tasks you can reduce, and pockets of opportunity you can seize. STEP 1 - BIG PICTURE Time is the great equalizer. We re all given the same 24 hours in a day. It s not about how much time you have, it is how they invest their time that makes the difference. According to Robert Palignari, we each of a set of 8 extra hours in the day we can devote to what matters must when we develop an awareness of our choices. He breaks it down like this: Sleep: 8 hours J.O.B: 8 hours Extra: 8 hours - how do you spend this time? The truth is that no one really has a full 8 EXTRA hours. It takes time to get ready in the morning, drive to work, eat, pee and mow the lawn. Nobody is forcing us to do the dishes, but we need to do them anyway. So, what do you do during the other 8 hours? I m sure some of this time is put to good use and some of it is wasted. The only way to know for sure is to take inventory of the way you spend your time. Complete the worksheet below, but keep in mind the following tips before you get started Guess. This ain t NASA, folks. Put down the calculator. We re just trying to get a rough idea of where your typical day goes. Include only workdays. Don t include weekends. Unless you work on the weekends, those days are all yours! Average it out. If you work out three days a week for an hour, calculate the average per day by turning the hours into minutes (3 hours X 60 minutes=180 minutes), and then divide by 5 (180 minutes 5 days = 36 minutes) to get the average number of minutes per day. (Yes, I know I just told you to put away your calculator.) Week Two Page 4 of 10

5 Don t cheat. This is a tool to help you determine how you actually spend your time, not how you d like to spend your time (we ll get to that later). So, if your goal is to work out for an hour three days a week, but you never do it, time spent exercising would be zero. Pick the primary task. Most people do several things at once. For example, you might call a friend while driving to work or read a magazine while on the elliptical. How should you count this time? Only count the primary task. So, for our examples, you d count your time as spent driving and exercising. STEP 2 - TASKS Within each time category (for example, Socializing), write down all the things you do during this time. For example, talking on the phone, meeting friends for coffee, texting, ing. Try to think about all of the tasks within each category. As another example, let s say you watch four hours of TV a night. List the shows you watch. See the chart provided on the last page of this action packet. STEP 3 - TIME SPENT ON EACH TASK Next, write down approximately how much time you spend on each task. Do you watch the local evening news for an hour each night? Do you blog for thirty minutes a day? STEP 4 - PERK: POSTPONE, ELIMINATE, REDUCE, OR KEEP This is where things get interesting. For every task, you must select from one of the following: Postpone, Eliminate, Reduce, or Keep. Postpone - This is when you can shift the task into the future. For example, to create free time to complete a project, gain a new skill, or take a class, you might want to hit the pause button on another task. For me, I really want to become fluent in Spanish, but I also wanted to write this book. I could have done both, but it would have taken a lot longer to write the book and to learn Spanish. I made a conscious decision to postpone Spanish to focus more time on the book. Week Two Page 5 of 10

6 Go through each of your tasks and see if you can postpone any of them. If you can, you will free up valuable time to focus on your more important goals. Eliminate - This means you can completely remove this task from your life. I want you to start cutting and slashing like a machete-wielding tribesman going through a jungle. Buh-bye. What can you eliminate? Better yet, what can t you eliminate? We do so much crap and make so many commitments that our natural reaction is to protest that we can t eliminate anything. But doing what you ve always done will get you what you ve always got. Don t be a big wuss. Start eliminating. Will you die if you cancel your Twitter account or if you stop watching Lost? For those things that you can t bring yourself to eliminate entirely, decide just to eliminate them for three weeks. If at the end of the three weeks you want to resurrect the task, go for it. Reduce - Maybe you just can t bring yourself to eliminate something completely, but can you reduce it? Absolutely. Go through your tasks and ask yourself if you really need to spend that much time on it. Can you cut it back a bit? You can reclaim so much of your life just by reducing unimportant and unsatisfying tasks. There s probably something in your life that sucks up your time that you could eliminate or reduce. Maybe it s fantasy football, celebrity gossip Websites, YouTube, or MySpace? Keep - Undoubtedly there will be some tasks that you don t want to eliminate, reduce, or postpone. That s okay. For these, just check the keep column. STEP 5 - ROCK ON! Now sit back and ponder what you re going to do with all of this new free time you re going to have. An extra thirty minutes a day? An hour? Two or three?!?! Our goal is to take back as many of the other 8 hours as possible. How close did you get? If you re not satisfied, review those tasks you haven t eliminated to see if you can reduce or postpone them further. Week Two Page 6 of 10

7 Activity Hours Minutes Sleeping/Napping - Time you spend sleeping or lying down with the intent to sleep. Total Sleeping Work - Time at your J.O.B. Notice I didn t say time spent working, since this would be a very different number compared to time spent at work. Count lunch and breaks as work. Total Working Driving + Commuting - Basically any time you are in your car, on a train, bus or bicycle. Meals/Snacks - This includes not only eating food, but also preparing it and cleaning up. Don t include shopping here; we ll get to that below. Exercise - Time at the gym, walking, biking, stretching, etc. TV Time - Obviously includes time spent watching TV or Movies Personal Growth - Time spent reading, learning, planning your future, taking courses, acting classes, etc. Home Maintenance - Includes grocery shopping, bill paying, cleaning up. Family - time with your loved ones Spirituality - Time spent at church/temple, meditating, prayer, etc. Helping - All the time you spend helping others without pay such as volunteer work. Socializing - Time with friends, talking on the phone, texting, networking, parties Personal - This is a big category. It includes things such as showering, using the bathroom, getting dressed, and having sex as well as the G-rated, boring things you do such as getting your hair cut, nails done, massage, etc. Other Leisure - A Catch-all category for everything else, such as surfing the Internet, listening to music, blogging, etc. Total Open Time Total Time 24 hrs. Week Two Page 7 of 10

8 How to Make More Time for What You Love by Dallas Travers Recently, a student asked me for tips on working through the day to day errands that often distract you from your true purpose. She wrote, "Since I started to practice the principles you teach, I've truly discovered what I am most passionate about. Now, I find that tending to necessary errands has become particularly difficult because it is so contrary to my Tao. Can you suggest any tips for making these tasks less tedious and painful, and more fun or rewarding?" Once you discover your true passion, you certainly want to devote as much time as possible doing what's most fulfilling. So, how do you manage the day to day busy work that must be done, but isn't always fun to focus on? Here are three tips to effectively manage your errands and leave more time to pursue your passions. Automate Save time by automating as much as possible. List all of your administrative tasks such as paying bills, cleaning your house, going to the post office, buying groceries, and running general errands. Which tasks on your list can be automated? Most banks now offer automatic bill pay, saving your time and energy. You can also automate your mailings with services like AmazingMail.com. Create a schedule for most of your monthly marketing while you're at it. Doing so will free your mind up to focus on your craft and your career. The more you automate, the more time you'll have and the less stress you'll experience. Delegate Don't forget that it is just another form of energy. If you are willing to spend a little money delegating some errands, you'll have more time to focus on what you really want to do. Years ago, I had a roommate who just couldn't keep track of her bills. She was frequently late with her payments and struggled to establish a schedule she could stick to. So, we traded tasks. I kept track of her bills and paid them each Week Two Page 8 of 10

9 month while she took care of all the laundry. Pretty good trade-off, if you ask me! Think about what tasks you can hand off to another person. You might be able to barter away some tasks and perhaps pay someone to remove other jobs from your plate. Do what you're good at and let others take care of the rest. Appreciate Like it or not, you will inevitably have to tackle certain jobs that are often unfulfilling, and tedious. You can easily complete these boring, yet necessary errands by identifying how these tasks serve your bigger purpose. My client, Alicia believed that nothing was as tedious as washing her car. Alicia could list at least fifty things she'd rather do than clean her car. So, she allowed her car to become so dirty that she was embarrassed to be seen in it. Horror overtook her every time she pulled into a parking lot. T. Harv Eckert brought renewed attention to the phrase, "The way you do anything is the way you do everything." So, in effect, Alicia's dirty car reflected the mess in her acting career. Alicia soon connected the dots between her messy car and her acting career. She realized that her car did not reflect the life she wanted to lead. So, she began to treat her car the way she would if she was an A-List actress. Alicia understood that the way she does anything is indeed the way she does everything. Now keeping a clean car is simple for Alicia. Every time she washes it, she knows she's one step closer to acting success. When you can appreciate how today's tedious tasks serve your passion as an artist, you'll soon fall in love with every job you do knowing that it reflects a brighter future. Week Two Page 9 of 10

all-in-one meeting guide How to Gain Control of Your Time

all-in-one meeting guide How to Gain Control of Your Time 1 Overview This guide offers time-management activities adapted from best-selling author Laura Vanderkam s TED Talk. They are designed help you