The Time Finder with Paula Eder

The way you use your time is the way you live your life.

Home
About

Find Time to Keep Your Routine Fresh

Posted on July 3, 2009, under Time and Energy.

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/digg_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/reddit_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/stumbleupon_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/delicious_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/furl_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/newsvine_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/technorati_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/google_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/myspace_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/facebook_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/yahoobuzz_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/mixx_24.png

http://thetimefinder.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/twitter_24.png

Finding time to keep your routines and rituals alive for yourself can be a challenge.

And yet, this is a key piece in ensuring your engagement in the moment and your follow-through over time. So how can you keep things fresh for yourself?

One of the things that I often think about when looking at my routines is this wonderful quotation from Heraclitus:

You cannot step into the same river twice.

No action, no moment, is exactly the same as anything that preceded it – or anything that will follow. Looked at from that vantage point, even the most routine of tasks is absolutely unique.

Looked at from that vantage point, you can arrive at each of your moments fresh – with eyes and heart fully open. Doing the dishes this morning is an entirely different act than doing them yesterday was … or doing them on January 17th, 1989.

Indeed, looked at in this way, our most routine acts are ALWAYS fresh and new! When undertaken mindfully, each represents both a brand new moment and a small anniversary. We can, in our mindful routines, simultaneously celebrate a new beginning and commemorate all of the other times that we have performed that same task.

Our routines become rich benchmarks or touchstones. They mark where we stand in this moment, as well as how we have changed and how our circumstances have evolved as we look back across years of these mundane tasks that are such staples in our lives.

When you perform routine tasks over the coming days, try pausing to be in the moment and connect with its uniqueness as well as its history in your life. What impact does that have on your sense of time? On your attention and energy? Drop me a line – I’d love to know!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! You are invited to sign up and download The New Finding Time Boundary Template. It’s FREE, and when you sign up you will also receive (if you don’t already) my FREE, weekly Finding Time Tips and my FREE, monthly Award-Winning Finding Time E-zine!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Find Time to Create a Nurturing Environment

Posted on July 2, 2009, under Self-Care Time.

Finding time for self-care can receive a big boost when your environment is geared to nurture and sustain you. In The Finding Time E-zine we recently explored ways to create nurturing spaces for yourself – and the very significant impact that this has on your life! (For more articles like this, sent straight to your inbox, once a month, sign up to download our FREE Finding Time Boundary Template. When you do you’ll also start receiving our monthly Finding Time E-zine, as well as our weekly Finding Time Tips as additional, FREE bonuses!)

*****

Have you created an uplifting environment in which to spend part of your day, yet stopped short of extending a warm welcome to yourself in other areas? How does this affect the time you spend in each place?

Envision your place of work, for example. Whether you work inside or outside the home, alone or with family or colleagues, you deserve a workspace that invites you to do your best with the maximum of comfort and the minimum of stress.

Describe how you feel when you first enter this space. Is the lighting sufficient? Do you have a comfortable place to stand, move, or sit? Are your work tools adequate, and can you use them without risk of injury?

You can learn a lot by noticing ways you have or have not yet created an optimal space for yourself. Perhaps what is missing in your work environment also undercuts your approach to work. For example, if you mercilessly push yourself, gritting your teeth simply to get through the workday, see if you also push past poor working conditions and unsatisfactory work arrangements.

If, on the other hand, you spend much of your time at work wishing you were elsewhere, you may discover that distractions in your environment constantly command your attention, slowing your progress and making you feel trapped.

Next, picture yourself walking into an environment that welcomes you. In this setting, your shoulders relax, and you feel naturally drawn to open your project. Your creativity is stimulated, you can easily access what’s needed, and distractions are kept to a minimum. You work efficiently and comfortably.

How does this ideal space differ from your current work setting?

How might you modify the colors, the organization, the equipment and boundaries to better support yourself and your work?

In summary: Any change will boost your morale, and no beginning is too small.

*****

Do you see your inner nurturer’s qualities reflected in your living and/or working environment? What impact does that have on your time and energy … and your life? Drop me a line – I’d love to know!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Find Time to Revisit June’s Top 5 Time Finder Favorites

Posted on July 1, 2009, under Time After Time.

Finding time to review the Time Finder posts that readers were most drawn to in the past month always offers me useful and interesting information about common interests and common time challenges. I love sharing them with you, too!

What were the most-visited posts in June?

Topping the list was a post from April titled Find Time by Planning Your Time Realistically. Time planning is a perennial challenge, and this post (also a top vote-getter in May) offers good, sound advice …

Once you know how much time an activity takes, I suggest adding in some extra time for each activity right up front, as you plan your day. This builds in a “cushion” for dealing with the unexpected. It also helps relieve you of one source of stress – the stress associated with “falling behind.”

Finding Time and Success with Small Steps was second on your list and reinforces the importance of celebrating increments as you keep your eyes on the prize!

Learning to truly value each and every step anchors you in the moment. It can help relieve some of the pressure to “get there” that our excitement and enthusiasm about our big goals can sometimes exert.

Next on the list we have Find Time to Manage Your E-Mail-5 Tips – a post that addresses a perennial challenge for most of us!

Fourth comes an blog post about an interesting dilemma – how to Find Time When You Have Time – 3 Tips for Making Conscious Time Choices. This is an especially timely post as we enter July!

Finding time when time is short can obviously be a big challenge. However, it can also be a challenge to use time efficiently when you have plenty of it. Indeed, have you ever noticed that when you move into a period of vacation time you are sometimes at loose ends?

Last, but by no means least, readers’ interest in creating and managing time boundaries continues to be strong … as evidenced by your frequent visits to our post titled Find Time by Communicating Your Time Boundaries Clearly. Here we explored some tips for telling people about your boundaries in ways that are likely to help get you the results you’d like.

While good, clear communication can’t guarantee cooperation, describing your boundary up front and in a friendly, clear, and self referenced way should help you enlist others’ support.

Did you have other Time Finder posts that you found especially helpful in June? Are there time management challenges you’d like to hear more about? Drop me a line – I’d love to know!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Find Time With Some Timely Tips from David Pogue

Posted on June 30, 2009, under Time Management Skills, Time and Technology.

Last week a Time Finder reader sent me some time management tips that she had found interesting. They come from The New York Times’ prolific and informative tech writer, David Pogue and offer some great ideas – especially for managing information and work flow.

The article – “Pogue’s Productivity Secrets Revealed” is in response to the following question from one of his readers:

“When will you share your productivity tips with us? Not everyone can write five books a year, file two columns a week, churn out a daily blog, speak 40 times a year and film a video every Thursday. What are your secrets?”

I was certainly interested to read tips from someone so productive!

Among his time management tips was the use of voice recognition software. I have always heard great things about Dragon Naturally Speaking and recently invested in MacSpeech Dictate for myself. I am looking forward to learning and using this technology and anticipate that it will be a big time-saver for me. Have any of you used voice recognition software to help streamline your daily work?

He also writes about typing expansion software – something that I have shared with my VA. She is exploring setting up some keyboard shortcuts for herself using AutoHotkey (one of the programs he recommends). Describing how text expansion software works, Mr. Pogue writes,

… I type only the first couple letters of many common words, and the software expands the rest. Since so much of my writing is technology-related, a lot of these words come up often—and they tend to be long ones.

If you have words or phrases that you find yourself typing frequently, it certainly sounds like using these shortcuts could save you lots of time (not to mention avoiding frustrating typos). I’ll keep you posted on what we learn about this through the summer.

Do you have time-saving tricks, tools, and tricks that you use to help with your daily work flow? What are they? I’d love to hear how they work for you!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Find Time for Twitter AND Everything Else!

Posted on June 29, 2009, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to use and manage all of the social-networking tools available to us can be a major challenge. This is true whether your interest in social networking is to keep in touch with friends and family … or is to expand and deepen your connections in the on-line community.

This Cyber Monday I would like to share with you a tool which I read about this weekend on TwiTip – Darren Rowse’ blog about all things Twitter! This particular post was a reader review by Jeff Russell of a Twitter tool called HootSuite.

As he notes in his post, HootSuite is a tool that he finds can help him “contribute to the twitosphere, but still have time to actually work and spend time with my family.” The way that it does this is by automating a number of Twitter functions.

While there is debate in the twitterverse about things like automating and delegating tweets, there is certainly no debate about the time that it can save. TweetLater is a tool that arrived on the scene earlier and can also be used to do this. It works well for scheduling tweets and has a nice feature whereby you can store draft tweets for later (or repeated) use.

One of the features on HootSuite that sounded interesting was the ability to clip and tweet material right off the web using their Hootlet tool. In addition, HootSuite has the capacity to integrate with your RSS feed(s) and tweet them at intervals you choose. (This is a very nice feature and avoids the phenomenon, which some find annoying, of posting a string of tweets all in a row.)

HootSuite also allows multiple users to work in the same account – a functionality which is likely to be of great interest to larger business organization that are exploring the utility of Twitter!

Do you already use Twitter tools like TweetLater or HootSuite? Are you ready to jump in and see whether they can help you find more time? I’d love to hear how they work for you!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Finding Time and Success with Small Steps!

Posted on June 26, 2009, under Time Choices.

Finding time to plan, implement, and sustain success strategies is a process. It involves both seeing your big goals and following through on the incremental steps that carry you from where you are to where you want to be.

In my recent article on E-zineArticles.com titled Time Management Tips – 3 Golden Rules to Create Big Results Using Small Steps I explore the “brick-by-brick” process of building toward your goals.

To me, this is one of life’s great truths and great mysteries – how the path to transformative change is incremental!

You know the adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Indeed, it was built brick-by-brick. Imagine the challenge of keeping sight of the goal while stacking bricks for months or even years on end! So it is for us, very often, as we build toward our goals.

This is why it is so important to acknowledge and celebrate each step along the way – realizing that no matter how “small” a particular piece of the journey may feel, each piece is an important and necessary part of getting there! Learning to truly value each and every step anchors you in the moment. It can help relieve some of the pressure to “get there” that our excitement and enthusiasm about our big goals can sometimes exert.

Knowing that “getting there” is a process means accepting that a span of time is involved and holding the dual realities of our big goal and our everyday, small steps in balance. This is a recipe for lots of small celebrations as you take each step toward success!

How do you sustain yourself through this process? As you take the small steps, are you able to manage (and celebrate) the daily steps while keeping your goal in sight? I’d love to hear how this works for you!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Finding Time When You Are on Overload-3 Tips

Posted on June 25, 2009, under Time and Energy.

How do you find time when your to do list is full, you’re already rushing, and then some small glitches throw a wrench into your already overloaded plans?

I had just such a morning, not too long ago, and it certainly presented some challenges!

Here are 3 tips that helped me get back on track. I hope that you will find them useful, too!

Most importantly, notice that you are feeling overwhelmed and give yourself the space to pause and take a deep breath. Acknowledging what is happening in the moment is very important. This will get your feet back on the ground and give you an opportunity to recalibrate and do some quick planning.

Quickly scan the tasks on your to do list. Are there some that you can either move down the list or take off entirely? Creating some space on your list will give you breathing room, relieve stress, and open up your energy and creativity again (both of which are constricted and curtailed by stress).

Make an “appointment” with yourself for the end of the day. Think of this as a time to review what happened, look at things that you might have done differently, and celebrate the fact that you made it through! This doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but it is important. It gives you a point of both accountability and self nurturing. A review like this puts a frame around your day. It helps to reinforce the fact that you are in charge. It moves you out of a victim stance, putting things into a positive perspective and relieving the stress of the moment.

These three responses, when you feel on overload, only take a few minutes and can easily change your outlook, your energy, and your productivity — all for the better, I might add! Try them the next time feelings of overwhelm come up. How are things changed, as your day moves ahead? Please drop me a line – I’d love to hear how these tips work for you!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Finding Time to Celebrate and Look Back with Appreciation!

Posted on June 24, 2009, under Time After Time.

Finding time to celebrate anniversaries, accomplishments, and milestones is one way that we find time for what matters most in our lives! The graduation season that many just celebrated is a great example.

These rituals reinforce our values and give us an opportunity to feel our growth, appreciate our connections and relationships, express gratitude, reflect on the past, and make new beginnings. Pausing and finding the time for a mindful experience of these milestones offers an awful lot, doesn’t it?

Here at The Time Finder we are very pleased to celebrate the completion of our first full year of blogging! So much has happened, both in the world and right here at Finding Time, LLC since we first posted on June 24, 2008!

Now here we are, 249 posts later, appreciating new and old friends and feeling glad and grateful for the exploring that we’ve done together.

We are also looking ahead with anticipation and renewed energy to what the coming year will bring. Some of it we can predict – like offering new products to help you find time and exploring new media here on The Time Finder! There will also be things that come as a surprise, I am sure. Either way, we are so happy to be sharing this journey through time with you!

What milestones have you celebrated lately? Are there gratitudes, accomplishments or new beginnings that you’d like to share? Please drop me a line – I’d love to hear!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Find Time to Start Freeing Yourself from Perfectionism Now!

Posted on June 23, 2009, under Time and Energy.

Finding time to overcome perfectionism in your life can free you up to be your most creative and productive self. Conversely, allowing perfectionism to shackle you and your energy will leave you frustrated, discouraged, and perpetually spinning your tires. This is because perfection is an illusion, and a harsh one at that! The difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection is something that we explored not long ago on the Time Finder, where we concluded:

Excellence is always evolving and changing. You attain one level of excellence and then strive for the next. Each moment offers new opportunities for excellence.
Perfection, on the other hand, is where you stop. What could follow? There is something about perfection that is, at its core, inimical to the human condition.

Your inner critic thrives on the expectation of perfection. Your creativity, on the other hand, is stifled as fear constricts the free flow of your energy and ideas. This, in turn adds even more fuel for your inner critic’s constant, unhelpful messages. Indeed, the more that perfectionism affects your energy the less you are able to accomplish, enabling this debilitating cycle to perpetuate itself pretty much endlessly.

In our recently-featured article on Solo-E titled “How to Unlock the Shackles of Perfectionism to Win Back Your Time” you can find a quick exercise to help you identify the ways that your self talk (and the illusory beliefs that it springs from) can hold you back.

Is perfectionism something that keeps you stuck and unable to access your fullest energy and richest creative powers? I invite you to begin the process of identifying and unlocking the messages that hold you back, and then freeing yourself from them, one-by-one. Make a start today – and drop me a line. I’d love to hear how it goes!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!

Finding Time To Master Your Inner Game – in Your Work and in Your Life

Posted on June 22, 2009, under Time After Time.

Finding time to attain mastery isn’t easy … nor is accessing the best tools to attain your goals.

That’s why I am very excited to depart slightly from my Cyber Monday routine, to tell you about an exciting opportunity to learn from some of the most skilled, experienced and creative business-building experts I know! To find out more about this opportunity, click here!

They are men and women of incredible depth, talent and integrity – and this week, they are coming together in what they call a “radical experiment.” For one week, they’re practically giving away their premium products and programs to help you grow your business and increase your personal mastery.

The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit gives you 20 business-building products for a tiny fraction of their real cost. I feel so strongly about this toolkit and the people involved that I signed up for mine just before I went live with this post – and I couldn’t pass up the chance to tell you about it, too!

Here’s a sampling of what’s included in the toolkit:

Andrea Lee’s Pink Spoon Marketing gives you a detailed step-by-step roadmap for creating multiple revenue streams and marketing funnels that attract paying customers to your business

Nancy Marmolejo’s Quick and Easy Social Networking is a proven 3-Part System to boost your visibility and expand your network using Facebook and Twitter

David Wood’s Explode Your Practice (6 CDs of material) is chock full of essential strategies and practical how-to information for building a 6-figure coaching practice

Brad Fallon’s “Stomping the Search Engines 2″ is a cutting-edge video training program that will teach you how to use Search Engine Optimization to bring free traffic to your web site

Patricia Fripp’s “Become a Masterful Speaker” includes 4 audio training products that will teach you how to become a masterful speaker with superior sales and presentation skills

Brad Smart’s “World-Class Interviewing and Hiring” video training course will show you how you can identify hire superstar talent for your business

Ken McArthur’s “Information Product Blueprint Workbook and Action Plan” (an incredibly comprehensive, 674-page manual) will show you the step-by-step process for creating your own information product

… and that’s just a small taste of what this Toolkit gives you access to!

The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit is only available through June 26th, because of the massive discount involved. I hope you’ll consider taking advantage of this amazing opportunity to get some of the best courses, programs, and tools for business building available anywhere – and save 95%!

To get all the details, click here. I was very impressed by the value offered in this unique product, and I’m confident that it’ll be worth it to you and your business.

Is finding time and tools for keeping on top of your game a challenge? I urge you to check out The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit … I think you’ll find it a wonderful resource for your work and your life!

Let’s explore time together …

Twitter It Now!