time finding - 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 Recharge Your Creativity

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Paula, under Ask Paula, Time and Energy.

I received a wonderful question from a reader of The Time Finder last week, and I’ve been looking forward to answering it here ever since!

Mutuo Mbilla is an article writer, and she asked about the following quandary — one that confronts many of us in our writing work:

Paula,

Thanks for your great tips on time finding. I have a question for you, which I struggle with almost every week. I am a writer, and as a writer, I need creative energy. I have noticed though, that after putting lots of creative energy in, I am drained and on some days, just can’t work myself into putting down a single creative line. Sometimes this can happen for two days in a row. Is this bad? Of course it means I don’t get to achieve all my goals, but I am not sure whether its good or bad, and if I should stop it, how I should go about it.

Regards,

Mutuo Mbilla

The first piece of advice that I have for you, Mutuo, is to try to not think about these things as either good or bad. It’s normal to feel drained after spending a lot of creative energy. The key is not to be critical of yourself, but to find solutions — because that kind of self-judgment will just slow you down and also eat up even more of your energy!

Second, I would suggest that you build into your writing schedule a number of regular, small breaks. Step away from your desk and do something to relax your mind and also let your body and your energy move.

Using a timer may be very helpful for you in giving yourself breaks. Especially when one gets on a creative “roll” it can be tempting to keep going – ignoring breaks as you try to ride the creative wave. This is often the beginning of the path to the kind of exhaustion that you describe. So try to discipline yourself to take your scheduled, small breaks no matter what. This will sustain you for the long haul!

You mentioned your goals in your question. My third piece of advice is to take a look at your goals and see whether they are truly realistic. Are there ways that you could make them more flexible for yourself, so that you can take into account your energy levels? It’s okay to back off from time to time. Small chances to refresh yourself will enhance your creative energy over the long term.

I hope you find this helpful, and would love to hear how it goes for you. Have you tried any of these ideas already? Maybe it’s time to take another look at them. Best of luck to you in your creative endeavors, Mutuo!

Other Time Finder readers … do you have suggestions for Mutuo … we’d love to hear!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! You are invited to sign up for your FREE Finding Time Success Kit. It puts 3 key tools for your time success right into your hands! Grab it and see how you can recharge your energy, reduce overwhelm and frustration, and come to learn that 24 hours really ARE enough!

Let’s explore time together …

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Find Time for Cyber Monday on Tuesday This Week!

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to keep up with time-saving technological innovations is always time well spent, isn’t it? Today let’s take a look at one such tool, even if our Top Posts feature yesterday bumped Cyber Monday into Tuesday this week!

Last week David Pogue of the NY Times published his Pogie Awards, citing The Year’s Best Tech Ideas for 2009. Lists and compilations like this can be time-savers because they often give an excellent snapshot of a subject area, leaving you the option of delving more deeply into whatever captures your interest.

In this case, I think (and it sounds like he agrees) Mr. Pogue saved the best ’til last. Readability is a clean, simple, ingenious bookmarklet that you can configure, drag to your toolbar, and use for your reading on the web. I highly recommend it! Here’s how David Pogue describes Readability:

When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.

You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business.

You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.

I have been using Readability since discovering it on David Pogue’s list. The boost that it gives to the reader’s ability to focus while on line is a big time-and-energy-saver. Removing distractions and offering a simple, uncluttered format for the written word has a calming effect that diminishes stress and “static” while clearing and consolidating energy as each of our days unfolds.

Readability is free, easy, and worth a try. I’d love to hear how it saves you time and/or helps focus your energy … so please feel invited to drop me a line!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! You are invited to sign up for the Finding Time Success Kit starting with The New Finding Time Personal 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 … key tools for your time success!

Let’s explore time together …
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have no material connection with the brands, topics, or products that are mentioned here, and have not received any compensation for writing this content.

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Finding Time for 5 of November’s Top Time Finder Favorites!

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Paula, under Time After Time.

Happy December! And welcome to one of my favorite posts of each month – our Top Posts reprise!

November was a banner month at Finding Time, LLC. We had more visitors than ever at The Time Finder, had many of you claim the (free) MP3 of my time boundaries teleclass with Melissa McCreery, and finished up the highly successful launch of our newest time finding product – The Finding Time Relationship Template: 26 Simple, Sequential Steps to Create Successful Boundaries with Your Partner, Your Co-workers, Your Kids … You Name It!

So, which were the posts that caught your eye as fall headed toward winter and the Holiday season got underway?

I was very interested to see that the top post was not about the holidays but about a subject dear to my heart – de-cluttering! Many of you found time for calm with our 3 de-cluttering tips … and I suspect that this is a post that will continue to be very relevant, as December unfolds!

Next on our list? A post for the bloggers amongst us – Find Time to Maintain Your Blog on Cyber Monday – 5 Tips to Get You Started. As we noted in the post, “A blog has a lot of ‘moving parts’, and if they aren’t all working well, they can spell difficulties for you and your readers.” If you haven’t read them, these tips could be key for you!

Find Time to Overcome Overload and Exhaustion focused on the role of boundaries in helping us all to maintain our energy … AND the importance of our tone in setting successful boundaries!

Another post for bloggers was fourth on the list – Find Time for Finding Fresh Blog Content – 5 Tips on Cyber Monday. These tips can help you find timely content when you’re stuck for ideas!

Last, but definitely not least, was our post titled Find Time for Boundaries and Self Care During the Holidays. I’ll leave you with one thought from that post (you might want to tape it to your refrigerator):

My advice to you? First and foremost, change your view of self care. It is not an indulgence, it is a responsibility. Making self care your responsibility means that your next job is to find time for yourself.

Want to learn how to set effective boundaries to honor yourself, your time, and your relationships? You can ask for the time and space you need, and get it, too! Claim your FREE MP3, “Honoring Your Time With Boundaries”, and discover tools to move you toward a stronger self and stronger relationships! So, take your next step, click HERE and grab your MP3! When you sign up you will also receive (if you don’t already) our weekly Finding Time Tips, our monthly Award-Winning Finding Time E-zine, and our Finding Time Personal Boundary Template! All FREE – our gifts to you!

Let’s explore time together …

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Finding Time for Another Walk Around the Lake!

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Paula, under Self-Care Time.

Finding time for yourself and for self care is one of the most important – and most-often-neglected – time finding tasks you have! We’ve written about this many times in the past – and will do so many times in the months and years to come, too. It’s THAT important.

Why? Self care is the foundation on which everything else you do is built. The quality of each of your moments depends on how you care for your body, your mind, and your spirit. Each of these aspects of your being affects the perspective and energy that you bring to your life – and, in turn, your energy and perspective affect your actions. It’s a circle that begins and ends with self care.

One of my favorite quotations about the fundamental value of self care comes from Wallace Stevens:

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

When you find time to “walk around the lake” you are giving yourself the space to access your truth. This is not a luxury or an indulgence – I see it as a personal responsibility.

Nurturing and refreshing yourself – mind, body and spirit – is one of the tasks of living. Finding the time to do that is an important priority that often requires a good bit of self-discipline to fulfill.

How often do you find time to take a walk around the lake? Can you make more time for yourself to do this? Please drop me a line – I’d love to hear how you work on this in your life!

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 …

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Find Time with Seesmic Desktop on Cyber Monday

Posted on July 6, 2009 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts has received a boost recently. For those of you who are TweetDeck users, some new upgrades to Seesmic Desktop may make this an application you’ll want to explore and (perhaps) consider switching to.

Here’s a video description of the newest version that outlines some of its features …

Mashable also recently published a head-to-head comparison of TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. Depending on your particular needs and preferences, you may find that one of these excellent tools outshines the other for you. Both can save you lots of time!

I first learned about this application via a fortuitous tweet by @wendyYbailey on Friday. The biggest time saving tool that Seesmic Desktop offers, to my mind, is its easy integration with Facebook. As Jennifer Van Grove notes in her Mashable review:

Seesmic Desktop, however, has been concentrating a lot of its iterative development efforts on further supporting Facebook’s Open Stream API. This means that on top of crossposting to Facebook and viewing status updates, you can also add comments (now with a new @reply feature), like items, view the comment and likes on individual wall posts, and even view photos in friends’ timelines. It’s really a fantastic way to engage with both Facebook and Twitter right from the same app.

My VA has been exploring Seesmic Desktop and finding it to be a very flexible and effective time finding tool. Is this an application that you are familiar with?

Try watching the brief video and exploring its capabilities for yourself. Does it help you to find more time when you’re working on line? Let me know – I’d love to hear!

Let’s explore time together …

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Finding Time by Maintaining Your Time Boundaries-3 Quick Tips

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Paula, under Time Boundaries.

Finding time by setting time boundaries is something that I wrote about yesterday – and have explored here in the past, too. Setting your time boundaries is the first, key step.

The second, equally important, step is maintaining those boundaries. This can be a challenge, whether your boundaries involve you alone, or involve other people. Setting a boundary but not keeping to it erodes trust, ultimately making it that much harder to set and maintain a boundary the next time.

Here are 3 quick tips to help you maintain your boundaries (and your momentum) as you move ahead on your daily tasks and time priorities:

Write down your time priority or task and the related boundary. Suppose your plan is to take 15 minutes between work and dinner time to meditate. When you are planning your day, write this down with your other tasks and priorities. This puts it into the landscape of your day from the outset. Be sure to include the time span and to highlight this activity as requiring a time boundary. Not all of your activities require this, so be clear with yourself.
Be sure to communicate your boundary if there are others who will be affected by it. (This is especially important with children, but is a respectful gesture to anyone affected.) You don’t have to say exactly what you’ll be doing (it’s okay to have boundaries about that, too, if you want). But you can say something like, “I’m going to take 15-minutes for myself after work today. I’ll check in with you after my quiet time.”
When you have followed through with your boundary, be sure to appreciate yourself for maintaining it! Each time you set and follow through on a time boundary you are strengthening your relationship with yourself. Aside from the benefit that your activity conveys, the relationship you are building with yourself is fundamental to your well-being as you move through your life.

A further benefit of setting and maintaining time boundaries is that you model this behavior for those around you. As they begin to see the benefits, they may be moved to try it as well!

Do you use time boundaries to accomplish important tasks or to give yourself a self-nurturing break in the course of your day? I invite you to share a comment here – I’d love to hear how it goes!

Let’s explore time together …

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