Showing posts with label business coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business coaching. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Five Organizational Myths

You Must Have A Personal Planner
A personal planner is used to organize your personal/business appointments & activities. It is very organized to have all your information documented in one place for a reminder, planning your day or to prevent double scheduling. However, you can use a tablet, a 3 ring binder, online calendar or a desk calendar to document your information. Just make sure to document your information in one place and house it in the same place each time within arms reach to prevent losing it and allows easy accessibility.

You Must Operate With A List
This works like a gem for some but if you do not like list, especially the “to-do” list, because it seems to get longer daily, don’t create a list. Write down your goal or intended outcome, and then make appointments with yourself to complete the action.

You Must Follow A One Size Fits All Time Management System
Time Management is self management, managing you around time. We are all given the same amount of time, 24 hours in a day, but we differ with peak performance levels. You may be a morning person and find that you tend to focus and accomplish tasks well in the morning; someone else is better focus during the noon time hours. We each manage our time differently therefore this is no one solution to time management that will fit everyone. You must learn the tools, change any negative mindsets regarding time (ex. there just isn’t enough time in the day for me to get it all done), work efficiently, prioritize and make it all work for you.

You Must Always Maintain A Clean Office Desk
A spotless desk with no clutter is wonderful for any business owner; however, there are times when the cluttered office desk happens. During those times, make sure projects do not get mixed together, put loose papers in files and label the files, so if it needs to be on your desk it is an orderly pile. If possible, designate an organized cluttered space a distance away from your everyday space, for example, do not have it near the telephone so that you are not tempted to read over information while speaking with a customer/client.


You Must Have A Digital Organizer
Everyone is not techie compatible, so it is okay to have an offline organizer. I love my Blackberry, but I also love my Franklin planner. Electronic hand held devices are handy and offer many features, however use an organizing system that works best for you. If you do decide on a digital organizer, always have a backup system just in case you have any technical difficulties.

© 2007 Bridgette Boudreaux

Visit: www.yourtime2soar.com

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The 3 P's of Successful Performance

The 3 P’s of Successful Performance
By: Bridgette Boudreaux

Here’s a quick formula to maximize your performance:


Pressure

We all experience having an enormous amount of obligations, responsibilities & tasks on a daily basis with little time to accomplish them all. Do you ever feel like you are an octopus with skates on, constantly moving but not going anywhere? If that’s the case, use pressure to your advantage. Think about it, I bet at some point in your business or career you had a deadline or an unexpected project that needed to be completed yesterday and somehow with all your other obligations you pulled it off! It was completed and you wondered, how did I do it? Have you ever realized that a project can be completed in the time allowed?

For example, it’s a given that you typically have 12 months to prepare for your taxes and you just have not found time to accumulate, print, file receipts, track mileage or document business expenses in an orderly fashion for your accountant in 12 months; now it is 3 days before “the big tax day” & miraculously you have prepared & sent all documents required to your accountant in just two days to meet the three day deadline. Remember this is a task that had been on your “to-do” list for 12 months!

Why? How?
Because when we are pressured to complete a task, project, or meet a deadline, we become focused, avoid interruptions, use our time wisely, have a clear vision on what needs to be accomplished and prioritize tasks. We kick up our success performance about 10 notches!

Don’t feel overwhelmed or stressed out when pressured, welcome the opportunity to operate from your highest performance level and adopt those traits to your daily routine.

Prioritize
Among the life of numerous tasks, projects, to-do list, family responsibilities & other obligations, take a step out of overwhelm by simply setting priorities. You will never be able to do everything at once, so quit trying! You must decide which task, project or responsibility needs your immediate attention or has the soonest deadline and that is the task that gets worked on first, put the others in a tickler file according to priority.

But what if there are projects that share the same deadlines?

Get started with the most difficult ones first. For example: a business owner needs to prepare for an upcoming federal contract audit, a speaking engagement and an advisory board meeting: all scheduled for the same day.

Which is priority?

The audit will require the gathering of specific information from the past year, a financial fiscal report with supporting documents and the audit will determine if the business owner will receive additional funding. The speaking engagement speech will be 20 min. in length and can be recycled from a previous speaking engagement or article, just a little rehearsal is needed. The advisory board meeting will require an agenda, previous meeting minutes, and a meeting place to hold a meeting of 10 members.

The audit is the most difficult and will require a little more time than the others, so the business owner should start with the audit and give it the most blocked time during the day, the other projects can be worked on throughout the day as well, but priority is the audit.

Prioritizing brings clarity, gives direction and streamlines your process for completing tasks and projects. When you are juggling multiple tasks, prioritize them from most to least difficult and get the difficult out of the way. Establish a hierarchy for completing tasks and take action.


Stay tune to next “Time 2 Get It Done” newsletter to find out the third and finale P of successful performance.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Lessons From A Checker Game

This is one of my most favorite articles: Everyday through our experiences (good or bad) a lesson is learned. I love to review my day and journal about my day's lesson.
What was your lesson on today?

Lessons From A Checker Game

My 9 year old son loves to play the board game Checkers. At one time playing against him was a snap, because he didn’t really understand the concept of the game, he only enjoyed the family time together sharing an activity. However, after much practice and a graduate student of “Checker Camp” directed by his father, he became an expert player. The once short checker game became a long competitive checker tournament. One evening as I was losing horribly, my son asked me why I had not been focusing on the game. I replied that I didn’t feel the need to do such strategic thinking and planning. His response became my mantra: “It is a waste of time to make a move without a plan or strategy because the consequence will almost always = loser. Always play to win”!

Do you play to win or are you satisfied with the results from minimal effort and persistence? Do you plan your day? Is there blocked time on your daily schedule for action items? Do you have a big picture goal with small reachable daily tasks that will lead you to the bigger picture? Are you spending your days confused about what to do next? Do you operate from a strategic action plan?

If you responded NO to any of the above questions, stop wasting time and play to win.

Incorporate these strategies in you routine to win:

► Always Plan Your Day, Preferably The Night Before

► Develop A Strategy To Get The Results Want

► Visualize The Big Picture

► Complete Daily Bite Size Tasks

► Stay In The Present, Focus Only On The Work At Hand

► Rejoice In The Small Accomplishments

► Create A Successful Environment



Winners do what those who lose do not want to do!