boundaries - The Time Finder with Paula Eder

The Time Finder with Paula Eder

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

Find Time to Keep Yourself Focused and on Track with This One Simple Tip!

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to stay on track, especially if much of your work must be done on-line, can be a very big challenge. There are so many potential distractions that can pull you away from your planned work. Do you notice that you ‘lose time’ when you’re at your computer? It’s a very common problem and may well be your biggest time drain.

But don’t worry! Here’s one simple and sure-fire way to keep yourself focused and on track when you sit down to work at your computer: Use a timer!

There really is no better way to create time boundaries for yourself so that you can stay focused and on-track. There are lots of different kinds of timers that you can use – some on-line and some of the egg-timer variety. Both can work just fine; I personally prefer the egg-timer type, as I can use it to stay on track, not just at the computer, but when I’m doing other things around the house an farm.

For accomplishing tasks that require a lot of focus, I like to set the timer for no more than 20 or 30-minutes. Then, when it goes off, I get up and walk around a little bit, or do some stretches. It’s important to give yourself frequent “movement breaks” when your work is primarily sedentary. This refreshes your body and your mind, enabling you to return to your task with renewed energy.

I think you’ll find that your ability to stay on track is greatly enhanced when you work in shorter increments and give yourself clear boundaries. You’ll begin to establish a rhythm that both your body and your mind will appreciate.

Not only that, but the more you know that YOU are in charge of your time, the more you can stay focused and on track. As you use your timer to create and maintain your time boundaries you build self-trust around time management and time choices. This makes it easier to let go of that tempting website that you want to explore ‘right now’ – because you know that you will find time to return to it later. Clear time boundaries make that possible for you!

And, here’s something more to consider. Are you an entrepreneur, consultant, or small business owner who’s ready to take the next big step? If you want to learn how to create and to keep a successful business running on your own, then this is for you! “How to Create Credibility as a Freelancer” is a booklet with 70 expert-proven tips that will help you recharge your energy and motivation, increase your visibility, and sharpen those vital organizational and time management skills.

Success is within your reach, so don’t wait, http://optimize.thetimefinder.com/tips-booklet/ and get started today!

Let’s explore time together …

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have no material connection with any of the resources mentioned here, and have not received any compensation for writing this content.

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Find Time for the Top 5 Time Finder Favorites for March

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Paula, under Time After Time.

Finding time to savor the posts that were the favorites for Time Finder readers last month is one of the ways I always greet the new month.

It lets me look back and get a better sense of what you are looking for, as I plan posts for the coming month. And it’s also an opportunity to reflect and bid a grateful farewell to time past, while looking ahead with anticipation!

So, what posts ranked as your Time Finder Favorites for March? Well, our Time and Technology posts shared on Cyber Monday’s were a big hit this past month, with 3 posts making it into the top 5!

Find Time with Zamzar and Evernote Clearly on Cyber Monday ranked #1 and offered two time-saving tools that can both help you be more productive on-line. You can read the post for the details, but here are two quick bullet-points:

Zamzar is an online file conversion service that offers both free and paid options. Files can be converted on the web or via e-mail, and there is a quite extensive list of conversion options.

Evernote Clearly is a web-based tool that is part of the Evernote collection of products. It converts web-based material to a wonderfully readable (and printable) format.

Coming in at #2 was Find Time to Take Charge of Your E-mail (So That It Doesn’t Take Charge of You)! I don’t know anyone for whom the in-box doesn’t present a daily challenge. And that’s especially true if you are an on-line entrepreneur. This post offers some concrete, actionable tips for getting your in-box under control. Ready to start?

Establishing and maintaining time boundaries is one of the keys – and the other involves creating a system for organizing the e-mails that you receive to make them accessible – while housing them someplace other than your in-box.

Find Time for AutoHotKey and … Find More Time! was the third most-read post last month. If you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend this tool. It may look daunting at first, but it’s actually simple to use and can be very helpful, especially with repetitive on-line tasks.

According to my VA, who has explored it extensively, this tool is extremely easy to customize and saves her untold amounts of time.

Find Time to Recover: 3 Keys for Healing and Resilience was a popular post prompted by my recovery from a bad bout of the flu, and focusing on what resilience is (and isn’t)!

It is especially important to remember that resilience is a process not a character trait! Indeed, the last thing you need when going through a tough time is to feel that you are somehow flawed because you are not bouncing back fast enough!

And last, but not least by any stretch, came Find Time for Empowered Compassion™ – a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and a foundational part of Heart-Based Time Management™.

When you bring compassion to any situation you make it possible to also bring your full and authentic presence to it. Accepting YOU, you can let yourself BE! And starting from that solid and real foundation, anything becomes possible.

Is your favorite Time Finder post listed here? Are there subjects that you’d like me to write more about? Please feel invited to drop me a line – I’d love to hear from you and serve your time finding needs!

And in the meantime, want to learn more about how you can expand and deepen your time and efforts … in whatever areas you choose? Here’s a great way to explore avenues to increasing your time skills and heart-based power – whether it’s in your business, or your personal life. I am so pleased to be able to offer my expertise and support as The Official SelfGrowth.com Guide to “Time Management”.

You can visit by clicking the link, and when you do you’ll find lots of time management articles by experts in the field, along with a vibrant and welcoming on-line community. Stop by my Expert Page and leave a comment or question … or just say hello. There are lots of ways to connect … let’s get started!

Find Time for February’s Time Finder Favorites (thetimefinder.com)
Find Time for January’s Time Finder Favorites (thetimefinder.com)
Find Time for Time Finder Favorites-December 2011 (thetimefinder.com)

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Find Time to Fuel Your Resilience With Empowered Compassion™

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Paula, under Time and Energy, Time Transformation.

Finding time to deal with life’s ups and downs, staying on track and keeping your eye on the prize, even as circumstances shift can be a big challenge. Empowered Compassion™ can help you bounce back, no matter what kinds of changes confront you. How?

Well, Empowered Compassion™ gains power from its underlying paradox. It embraces – even celebrates – opposites.

Empowered Compassion™ embodies yin and yang, inhalation and exhalation, acceptance and striving …

Empowerment, of course, is the masculine, or yang, component. When you empower yourself, your core strengths support you, keeping you upright yet flexible. Empowerment works like toned core muscles, keeping you steady no matter what comes your way.

You embrace challenges, knowing that solving problems supports your evolution.
You are defined and focused as you tend your boundaries. These boundaries protect the hours of your day as a force field of intentionality.
You are realistic and alert to life’s constant changes.
You take pleasure in creating goals, large or small.

Compassion is the feminine, receptive yin. And it’s important to note that it enhances your strength just as much as the yang – but in very different ways. Here are some examples:

Your empathy towards yourself and others helps you to create and maintain a balanced perspective.
Compassion provides a natural antidote to perfectionism. Self-acceptance overpowers a swarm of perfectionist pests like fearful people-pleasing, procrastination, and over-polishing work. Think of how that can free up both your energy and your time!
Because compassion sees and accepts everything without judging or punishing, it becomes easier for you to befriend and learn from mistakes. So you approach challenges with curiosity rather than fear.

Empowered Compassion™ is a central component of Heart Based Time Management™. Stay tuned, because I’ll be sharing more about this key value in the months to come. Empowered Compassion™ provides each of us with a method for bringing our integrated strengths into every moment.

Are you interested in exploring your resilience further and learning more about the Heart-Based Time Management™ Path? Here’s one way that you can transform and deepen your relationship to time in the Heart-Based Way … I invite you to explore Secrets of Heart-Based Time Management™ – my chapter in the book I co-authored - Stepping Stones to Success! In it I share my proven system for exploring and harnessing the power of your mind, your body and your spirit to help you deepen your experience of time and of your life.

As you work with the ideas I offer, you’ll explore your patterns, clarify your values, identify and prioritize your goals … and create your path for achieving them. You can give yourself the gift of this wonderful resource today, and get started on your journey toward success, Stepping Stone by Stepping Stone …just click this link to get the details!

Find Time to Recover: 3 Keys for Healing and Resilience (thetimefinder.com)
Finding Time to Stop Living Someone Else’s Life (thetimefinder.com)
Find Time to Be Yourself, Respect Yourself, and Do What You Can: 3 Timely Tips-Part 1 (thetimefinder.com)
Find Time to Listen and Learn What You Need (thetimefinder.com)

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Find Time to Take Charge of Your E-mail (So That It Doesn’t Take Charge of You)!

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to manage the volume of e-mail that we receive here at The Time Finder can feel like a full-time job some days. I am sure that many of you can relate to that feeling. (In fact, I recently had an e-mail from a member of the Finding Time Community, which has prompted this post.)

So, today I wanted to share some tips that I and my VA use, to keep things organized – AND to keep from feeling overwhelmed.

Establishing and maintaining time boundaries is one of the keys – and the other involves creating a system for organizing the e-mails that you receive to make them accessible – while housing them someplace other than your in-box.

So, are you ready for a few ideas about how to take charge of your e-mail?

First, decide when you will check your e-mail and how much time you will spend. Then, use a timer to help you stick to your plan. You can use a simple egg timer, or one of the many on-line timers that are available at places like Online Stopwatch.

If you receive a great deal of e-mail, you will do well to schedule e-mail checks several times a day.

When you are not scheduled for a check, I recommend that you shut down your e-mail so that you are not distracted by it.

Make it your end-of-the-day goal to have your inbox cleaned out.

Yes, I hear the incredulous reactions! Empty in-box? That’s not possible! But it truly is, and the reduced stress makes it well worth the effort involved.

Organization is the key – and once you have a concept in mind, technology can step in and help with some of the implementation.

Create folders to organize your e-mail. Do this according to the system that works best for you and/or your business. You might organize e-mails by subject, by person, by any category that is meaningful to you.

In addition to your category folders, one thing I advise for everyone is that you create folders for items that are time-sensitive. For example, I have a folder for e-mails that are “Awaiting Response,” another one where I keep things I want to “Read Today” and another for things to “Read This Weekend” These are folders that I check as frequently as necessary, but not as often as my in-box.

You can have as many subcategories of folders as you wish. So, for example, I have a JV folder with sub-folders titled “Current,” “Completed,” and “Pending.” Within each of those folders I then have other sub-folders with the names of the people I’ve JV’d with.

In most e-mail services, you have the capacity to create e-mail filters. E-mail filters can help you take charge of your e-mail by organizing it before you even lay eyes on it!

eHow.com offers some generic instructions for setting up filters in most e-mail systems. Think about categories of e-mails that you don’t need to see immediately but that you want to collect and save. For example, we receive an e-mail whenever someone signs up for our mailing list. They can overwhelm an in-box quickly, so my VA created a filter that sends those e-mails immediately to our “New Subscribers” folder.

Filters are often highly customizable. You can set them up to filter your e-mails based on words in the subject line, by sender, or combinations of different data points. You can also have filters set to send e-mails to your “Delete” folder if you wish.

I hope that this post gives you some ideas to help take charge of your e-mail. As we’ve implemented these tools and concepts, we have freed up a great deal of time here at The Time Finder!

Bonus Tip: In most e-mail systems that I know of, the folders you create will be listed alphabetically. Whenever you have a folder that you want to move to the top of your list of folders, put an exclamation point in front of its title. That’s a trick I learned from Connie Ragen Green – and it really helps when I want to keep track of something that would otherwise be way at the bottom of my list.

So, do you have a favorite time-saving tool for your web-based work? Share it in a comment – I’d love to hear!

And are you an entrepreneur, consultant, or small business owner who’s ready to take the next big step? If you want to learn how to create and to keep a successful business running on your own, then this is for you! “How to Create Credibility as a Freelancer” is a booklet with 70 expert-proven tips that will help you recharge your energy and motivation, increase your visibility, and sharpen those vital organizational and time management skills.

Success is within your reach, so don’t wait, click this link and get started today! http://bit.ly/FreelanceTips

Let’s explore time together …

Create a Mail Rule or Filter to Track Sent Messages You Want to Follow Up On [Email] (lifehacker.com)
Finding Time to Go Paperless: De-clutter with 3 Time and Productivity Tips (thetimefinder.com)
Find Time to Give Yourself Exactly What You Need Every Single Day! (thetimefinder.com)
How to Archive Gmail Messages (theapptimes.com)

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Find Time to Do What You Can Because You Can Absolutely Thrive in 2012!

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Paula, under Time Boundaries, Time Choices.

Finding time is always a challenge, and when you have big dreams and goals, it can really feel overwhelming. That’s why I so love the third in our series of quotes … because when you do what you can, absolutely anything is possible.

To do what you can isn’t about skill or ability so much as it is about choice and will. Here is the quotation, the third in our series, from someone who might be called an authority on doing what one can … Helen Keller:

I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I still can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do. Helen Keller

There are 3 keys here, to my mind.

One is to be able to see, in any given moment, what is possible. Sometimes this means “chunking” your tasks into smaller pieces so that they are doable in smaller increments of time. Other times it may mean simply starting in on an item on your To Do List. I know from experience that often a job that looks overwhelming from the outside, becomes quite manageable as soon as you begin. So don’t be afraid to begin!

The second key really reinforces the first. It has to do with boundaries and with fully assimilating and accepting that you are one. You cannot be all things to all people. You are you, and that is plenty. The more you can take this in the better you will be able to keep your eye on what is possible, rather than getting caught up in all of the possibilities!

The third key is to be willing to do what you can. That’s what Helen Keller is speaking about in her final sentence, above.

These two keys: vision and willingness will enable you to thrive during 2012 … and that is my heartfelt wish for you as we travel the path of Heart-Based Time Management™ together. Happy New Year!

And as you embark on 2012, here’s a great way to explore avenues to increasing your time skills and heart-based power – whether it’s in your business, or your personal life. I am so pleased to be able to offer my expertise and support as The Official SelfGrowth.com Guide to “Time Management”.

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Find Time to Be Yourself, Respect Yourself, and Do What You Can: 3 Timely Tips-Part 1

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Paula, under Time Boundaries.

Finding time to savor some quiet as the old year ends and new one is about to begin is a wonderful gift to give yourself.

Yesterday afternoon, as the waning sun’s light burnished the winter treetops golden outside my window, I was doing just that. Enjoying the twilight moment, I started clearing up some files on the bookshelf behind my desk and came upon three quotations that I’d saved to use on the blog one day.

“What better day than now!” I thought … so here they are:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. Dr. Seuss

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. Abraham Joshua Heschel

I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I still can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do. Helen Keller

What a rich smorgasbord of wisdom to consider and carry into 2012! And I was interested to note that each insight relates to boundaries. Boundaries are one of the core elements of Heart-Based Time Management™ – and one of my very favorite time management subjects!

Let’s start exploring with that first quotation from Dr. Seuss, about finding time to be yourself. What does that have to do with boundaries, you might ask?

Well, what I would say is that the more comfortable you are with your boundaries, the more at ease and confident you’re going to be with sharing yourself, your ideas, and your feelings with other people. That’s because when you have good, strong boundaries, you know that you are okay, no matter what.

Boundaries tell you where you end and the other person begins. So, when your boundaries are strong and clear, you know, right in your bones, that another person’s feeling or opinion about you is theirs and really says nothing about you. Secure in yourself, you can share authentically and allow others the space to share in the same way.

It’s a misconception to think of boundaries as barriers. In reality, knowing yourself and your boundaries frees you to relate much more openly … it’s the heart-based way! Stay tuned – I’ll be sharing more about these quotations in upcoming posts.

In the meantime, I’m so pleased to share that The Time Finder was, for the second year in a row, featured as one of the Top 50 Productivity Blogs of 2011 by Evan Carmichael. We are so pleased about this terrific honor … and privileged to be part of Evan Carmichael’s fantastic collection of productivity blogs. We have posted the badge in our sidebar, so that you can visit the collection whenever you want – it’s an excellent resource for productivity ideas, information and tools.

And if you are interested in learning more about the Heart-Based Path, here’s one way that you can transform and deepen your relationship to time in the Heart-Based Way … I invite you to explore Secrets of Heart-Based Time Management™ – my chapter in the book I co-authored - Stepping Stones to Success! In it I share my proven system for exploring and harnessing the power of your mind, your body and your spirit to help you deepen your experience of time and of your life.

Let’s explore time together …