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The Time Finder with Paula Eder

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

Find Time to Fully Own Your Day-3 Tips to Get You Started!

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Paula, under Time and Energy, Time Choices.

Finding time to step proactively toward your time choices and “own your day” is one of the most empowering gifts that you can give yourself every single day (or more often, if you want)!

How often do you hear people say some version of the phrase, “My time is not my own”? This is a huge misconception – and one that leaves people feeling out-of-control and victimized when it doesn’t need to be that way. Not at all! Our time choices are ours to make, no matter what! And the reality is that, if we choose to let others dictate what we do with our time, THAT is a time choice we are making. Ultimately, it is in our hands.

So how do you find time to fully own your day? What does that mean?

I like to think of each new day as a blank slate, filled with possibility and promise. I may have tasks and responsibilities to fulfill in those 24-hours, but how I go about that is entirely my choice. Here are 3 tips for “owning” your day, right from the outset:

Know yourself. Are you a morning person? Do you do better at night? Don’t set yourself up by trying to start your day in a way that just isn’t “you.” There is no ideal here. The key is to fashion a routine that works for you and that helps you enter your day positively and proactively, no matter what is on your plate!
Have a plan. Planning is, perhaps, THE key to owning your time choices, not to mention getting traction on accomplishing your goals. I like to have a plan for each day that I usually start the night before and then refine when I’m ready to start my day. It can also be very helpful to use the two column method to track what you finish and what you don’t, each day.
Give yourself a moment. It is important to take at least a moment, first thing, to touch base and connect with yourself. Whatever works for you is the way to go. If you are a morning person and love to get out and exercise, a walk or run might be great for you. Or maybe you choose to write in your journal, meditate, work quietly in your garden.

The specific activities that you undertake aren’t so important. What is VERY important is that you are connecting with yourself. This starts your day on a positive and proactive note that empowers and energizes you for whatever else the coming hours bring!

How do you start your day? I’d love to hear!

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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Find Time for Clear, Strong, HeartBased Intentions in 2010

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Paula, under Time and Energy.

Finding time for New Year’s Resolutions is a fairly typical activity in early January of a New Year. Do you have a list for yourself?

How do you see it? Is it a list of “shoulds” or is it your roadmap for making your dreams a reality? Are your heart and your head in sync?

Making a new beginning is always a refreshing and grounding exercise. You can give yourself a big boost for 2010 by making sure that you’re heading into the new year with goals that are both realistic and HeartBased!

I read an excellent and helpful article by Fia Crandell last week that reframes resolutions as intentions, and offers 6 tips for making your intentions the big, powerful, and life-changing guides that they can be! Here is Fia’s article, reprinted in its entirety … it was just that good! (more…)

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Find Time for Dessert!

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Paula, under Self-Care Time, Time Boundaries.

Finding time for our goals and priorities, our daily tasks and responsibilities … these are things that we all are challenged by and work hard at in our busy lives. Our baskets of time are often filled-to-overflowing, and when it comes to things-to-do, we live in a world of great plenty!

Indeed, we could spend all of our time chipping away at necessary tasks and never complete them!

“So,” you ask, “what about the small pleasures that life offers? How do I find time for them in the midst of all those tasks?”

Well, what I’d suggest is that you use planning, and time boundaries, and discipline!

Plan treats and rewards for yourself throughout your day to validate your efforts and recharge your batteries. (The treats don’t need to be edible … they can include things like a walk, a warm bath, a span of time for just surfing the web or for meditating – whatever gives you pleasure and energizes you.)

Time Boundaries help you follow through on your plan. If free time on the web is your reward, try using a timer so that you don’t run over, or short change yourself. If exercise is your pleasure, be sure to set aside enough time for all that’s involved. Don’t forget stretching, cooling down, a shower – everything!

Discipline keeps you on track. When that timer goes off, stop surfing and get back to whatever is next on your list! If it’s really dessert that’s your treat and you planned for one helping, don’t take two, no matter how tempting it may be!

When you know that you can trust yourself to respect the boundaries that you set and follow through on your plan with discipline, then you can relax and thoroughly enjoy your “dessert” – whatever form it may take!

Do you validate and reward yourself for your follow-through? I encourage you to make this a staple of your time management repertoire … and I’d love to hear how it goes for you!

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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Find Time for Finding Fresh Blog Content – 5 Tips on Cyber Monday

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to keep your blog running smoothly is worth the investment, as we learned last week. This Cyber Monday I’d like to explore some ways to assure that your content is always timely and interesting!

If you want visitors to return to your blog often, it’s well worth taking the time to offer information that’s fresh, useful, and targeted to your niche.

But how do you do that?

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

Check Digg for popular items in your area. I encourage you to register with Digg and explore this powerful tool for identifying what people are finding interesting on the web. I just now did a search for “Time-Management” and came up with some interesting links that could help shape a future post! Once you’ve done your search, you can sort it by Best Match, Most Dugg, or Newest First, depending on your need.

Take a look at Alltop, which may be best described as follows (taken from their site): You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web. We’ve subscribed to thousands of sources to provide “aggregation without aggravation.” To be clear, Alltop pages are starting points—they are not destinations per se. Ultimately, our goal is to enhance your online reading by displaying stories from sources that you’re already visiting plus helping you discover sources that you didn’t know existed. If you are stuck for content, try scanning Alltop for ideas and links! You can create an account and set up your own page, adding items by clicking the “+” sign next to them.

Set up and use your Google Account to filter your news. You can also use Google Alerts to set yourself up to receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of topic. You might try entering some of your keywords for starters – then you’ll receive, in your inbox, notice of items that contain those words.

The Twitter search feature is also a great tool for identifying trending topics in your niche! Just enter your keyword(s) and check out the tweets!

Finally, I also suggest subscribing to other blogs in your area of expertise (either via e-mail or, for greater efficiency, in a reader). Then scan those feeds for interesting ideas and content. This can be a great spark to get your creative juices flowing. Also, when you link to others’ blogs you are developing and maintaining important relationships on the web.

How do you keep your blogging fresh and intriguing? I’d love to hear what works for you!

Let’s explore time together …

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Find Time to Maintain Your Blog on Cyber Monday – 5 Tips to Get You Started!

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Paula, under Time and Technology.

Finding time to keep up with writing blog posts, as many bloggers know, can be a challenge. In an upcoming Cyber Monday post, I’ll be taking a look at some good sources of content (especially for when you’re stuck for blogging ideas).

Today, however, what I’d like to discuss is even more basic – finding time to keep your blog running smoothly. The Time Finder is a WordPress blog, but the basic concepts apply to any blogging platform.

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. Yet blog maintenance is a task that, like car maintenance, can often be something that we postpone or let fall by the wayside. Sometimes, the consequences of doing that are annoying and sometimes they can be downright dire.

I highly recommend that you set aside time, at least weekly, to devote to blog maintenance. If you work with a Virtual Assistant (VA), this is a task that you can clearly delegate to him or her. If you are technologically inclined, you might find that you enjoy performing some of these tasks yourself. They give you an opportunity to explore your blog in a whole different way!

Whoever ends up taking care of these tasks, here are a few basic maintenance items that I urge you to consider: (more…)

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Find Time by Maintaining Your Time Boundaries with a Timer

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Paula, under Time Boundaries.

Your efforts to find time are greatly enhanced when you know how much time you have planned for your activities AND you stick to your plan! If you don’t do that, one activity after another will overrun its allotted time, and you will fall further and further behind. What a recipe for stress and frustration!

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Not at all!

Try this:

Buy yourself a small timer and, when you can, use it to remind you when the time allotted for a planned task has run out. This is especially helpful for things like computer work, where it’s easy to get caught up in tasks and lose track of time.

I find using a timer to be a very big help when it comes to focus. It allows me to really immerse myself in whatever I am working on, and not worry about losing track of time. I know that the beeping of my timer will bring me right back to the moment when my time is up. Then I’ll move on to my next task.

When I use my timer to help me maintain my time boundaries I am more focused and productive, without a doubt. Sticking to my planned boundaries also enhances my self-trust. I (and the others in my world) know that when I set a boundary I am going to follow through on it. This gives a boost to my self-discipline, self-esteem, AND the cooperation that I receive from others when I communicate a boundary.

There are just so many ways to benefit from using this small, practical tool!

Stay tuned for more, TOMORROW, from Finding Time, LLC about boundaries and the ways that using them can improve things in your world.

In the meantime, I encourage you to give timers a try! Please drop me a line and let me know how it goes for you … I’d love to hear!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! You are invited to sign up and download 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!

Let’s explore time together …

Paula's Signature

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