Knowing when to slow down

For a lot of us knowing when to slow down and take some time for ourselves can be a challenge. I know for me being able to understand that I have just been doing too much and giving my time to everyone else can be such a challenge.

There are times when you are going to have to just slow down and understand that you have to be there for yourself and that is the most important thing. It might not be on a schedule that you want it to be on, but you still need to understand that you are going to have to slow down no matter what. It is better to see it coming up so that you can start the slow down before your body just says I have had enough, and you are slowing down if you like it or not.

For a lot of us there are things that we want to keep doing and you don’t want to accept anyone telling us it’s time to slow down even just a bit because we think we know better than anyone else, well including our body. There are times that people around us are going to see the warning signs that we are starting to deal with burnout before we know that we are dealing with it.

Being able to understand that we all need some time to just slow down and do some of the things that we enjoy doing, such as crafting, can make such a difference on how to handle the stresses and demands that life throw at us on a continual basis. In a lot of cases being able to set aside some time each week where we do something that we enjoy can help us from totally burning out and that is, so important.

For me, I make a point of a few days a week to find a little bit of time to do some crafting, so that I can make sure that I have taken some personal time. It doesn’t have to be hours but at least knowing that you have taken that bit of time away from the demands that we all deal with is important.

If you are someone that keeps going until you totally burnout, remember that just taking bits of time for yourself no matter what you do is important. I know people that will just curl up in front of the TV and binge watch something as their break. At least it is taking some time to do something that you enjoy doing and making sure that you are recharging your personal battery before it tells you it’s empty.

Managing all the demands on your time

For most people there are always a lot of demands on your time, either it’s work, personal life, or a combination of the two things which can get a little overwhelming sometimes and making sure that you know how to manage the demands can make a big difference. Sometimes it may feel like you don’t have a minute to think because someone is always asking for a bit of your time.

Now that a lot of people are working remotely at least some of the time for work that can also impact how people see your time because you aren’t in the office 5 days a week. I know for someone that works remotely all the time there have been times when family figures that we don’t work, and we could just drop everything and help with an issue. Well working remotely means that you still have deadlines and meetings that you must attend. Sure, there are times when you can shift your work schedule a little bit, but it cannot be all the time.

Having a mobile device also means that both work, family and friends figure you are available to response to their questions no matter what time it is. The one good thing about mobile devices is you an put them on silent when you need the time to focus on something and in the evenings, you can put them on “do not disturb” so you don’t get those messages in the middle of the night from someone that just had a great idea that they wanted to share.

Being able to set priorities and manage them can be a challenge because when you are working remotely people don’t understand or see what you are working on which can sometimes be hard. Something that I have found that works well for us is to put things on our calendar and that shows people that we are busy doing something. Sure, you cannot put everything on your calendar but putting blocks of time when you are busy can help quite a bit.

Knowing how to manage the demands on your time is very important to ensure that you can continue to get everything done that you want to do but not feel overwhelmed. For me I know that I have a planner that I put things in, so I know what I need to do, and I also make sure that important items are on the calendar so that they are not forgotten and that there is time set aside to get those items done.

How do you manage the demands on your time, and does it work for you?

When times get crazy

There are times when you can look at your schedule, and you think you are never going to get everything done. I know that I have those times, and what I have done is figured out a way to make it a little easier to manage the list of things that seems to be overwhelming.

I am one of those individuals that must have a planner available so that I can write done the things that I need to do, especially those things that have a deadline. Not only that, but I do manage my planner a little differently than a lot of people and that is because besides having the things that I need or want to do on a specific day, I also note down what I accomplished that day.

I started noting down the things that I accomplished in a day when I found I would look at the planner and think that I hadn’t got anything done. Now, when I look through my planner at the end of the week, I can see what got done and what didn’t get done. I do mark off each of the items as they are accomplished, if they were originally on the planner. I just black pen for the tasks to get done, and then I use blue to mark off the tasks and add the other things that I accomplished. This helps me see if I got everything done that was originally planned and also what else got completed or what prevented me from getting a planned task done.

Being able to manage the various tasks is very important for everyone, and having a method that works is good. There are also times when I will put a list of things to accomplish down on a different piece of paper if I don’t have my planner close by at that time and that is another way, I manage things when times get crazy for me.

Knowing what works best for you in assisting you in getting things done is what is important. You may not need to have things in a planner, or a list made, but making sure you know what needs to be done, and you get it all done, that is the main thing. So, when life starts to get crazy, step back for a few minutes and think about how you are going to remember everything that you need to accomplish.

 

Managing your time

For a lot of us, working from home has been something that we have done by choice, or it’s a new way of working since the Pandemic for some companies. Some companies do have a blend of work from home and work in the office, and it all depends on each individual company. When you work from home, there is one thing that you must manage, and it’s your time.

Managing your time so that you still get the day of work done, but you also stop working, is important. When you work from home, you must ensure that you have some good discipline because either your personal life or your work life can start taking over the other time. Being able to ensure that you can keep focused during the day and get the work done is important, and waking away at the end of the day is something else that you need to do.

Working from home does have some advantages, but there are also disadvantages to this. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages that I have found.

• People think that because you work from home, that you can help them out during the day. This isn’t how it works because there is stuff that you need to get done, and you can’t just do things for friends and family.
• No travel time to and from the office, this can be both an advantage and disadvantage because you don’t have time to de-stress after work before stepping into family time. It is a cost savings because you don’t have to pay transit fares or as much vehicle costs when you work from home.
• You don’t have as much people interaction because you aren’t in an office where there are other people to talk to. This again is both an advantage and disadvantage as the number of distractions are limited when working from home, but you can’t quickly bounce an idea off someone else.

So, managing your time can be a challenge when working from home but if you have the discipline, it can work well for you. It does give you the ability to get the work done without the other distractions that can office environment provides. For me, I have my planner always open on my desk and when I think of something that I need to do, I document it. Being able to manage my time can be a challenge some days, but being able to focus on the tasks at hand without all the other distractions is also nice.

Companies have found that some employees are getting more work done since they have been working from home. This is probably because of the fewer interruptions that happen each day. Some other companies have asked their employees to go back into the office on a full-time basis because they found people were not getting the required work done. Each company is going to be different with how they handle the working from home versus the office. So, if you are one of those individuals that enjoy the people interaction, you may enjoy having a blend of working at home some days and then working in the office other days.

Managing your time, no matter if you are in the office or at home and working, is something that we all need to do. For me, my planner helps me keep my focus, and it shows me at the end of the day what I was able to accomplish.

Dealing with the stress of life

Of course we all seem to have more stress in our life than we did before and sometimes it is harder to deal with than we would like.

The stresses in our lives can be the ones that we put on ourselves and/or the ones that other people seem to put on ourselves. There are days when just the simple little tasks seem to take forever to complete due to all the other things that are bouncing around in our heads. It can be very difficult when there seems to be too many demands on our time and it feels like there just isn't enough time to get everything accomplished. Of course what happens when we are feeling like that is someone else asks for a bit of our time and without thinking about how we are really feeling we quickly give up that bit of time and then get frustrated later.

There are times where you can get tons of work done and you are feeling like you can accomplish anything and then it hits. That one thing that is added to your already overflowing plate and then it hits you. Yes, you may be getting things accomplished but are they really the things that you should be working on then or are you just trying to avoid some of the other things on your plate. I know that I have done that and I feel great as I am getting things done and then I realize that the most urgent thing hasn't been touched and the deadline is getting closer and closer.

So yes, we are sometimes our own worse enemy because we are the ones that are giving away our rather limited time and adding that additional stress to our lives. I have found that when I start giving away too much of my limited free time it is time for me to sit back and look at what needs to be done and when.

All of us have some stress that is added by others due to the demands of work or home but in some cases we are the ones adding the additional stresses to our lives as we aren't looking at what needs to be done and when.

Making sure that you have some of your own mediation time (whatever you do to think things through) is very important. I have been missing that mediation time lately and I know, that if I could just sit back and look at everything I would realize that things don't look as bad as I thought they did, but just couldn't see it through all the haze I was dealing with in my head.

We all need to sometimes sit back and realize that so much of the stress in our lives is our own doing as we too easily give up some of our time. Next time when someone asks you for just a bit of your time, remember before you quickly answer, think about how many others have asked that same question and how much time do you really have left to give away.

Time management

I have been doing some research on various time management techniques. What I have seen is you are suppose to document everything that you do in a day. If I were to do that I would need at least another half of a day just to keep track of what I do.

I understand the tracking of what you do when you have specific tasks that you do. For someone that works with client's it is almost impossible to track every thing that can get accomplished during a day. Yes, we do track the time we spend working on the various tasks and projects for clients but that is it. If I were to track everything else that I add in during the day it would look really bad.

The other big thing with time management is they say plan your day the night before. I would like to be able to do that and can do it sometimes. There are days when I can't get things done because something important has landed and I am dealing with it instead of what I originally planned on working on.

I do some time management to ensure that I am getting things accomplished and meeting deadlines and such but I cannot schedule my day too much other than putting a general list of things that I would like to achieve down and hope that they will be achieved through the day.

A calendar is always handy to mark down the specific events, webinars and such that I plan on attending. Sometimes I put in events that I may attend if time permits but I also note that these can be dropped if necessary.

Knowing what time management works for you is the best. Not everyone can use the same process because it really does depend on the individual and the work that they do.

Demands of our time

Nowadays, there seems to be more demands of our time than ever before. Maybe the demands really haven’t changed other than we are more aware of them now because of constant communication methods.

Before we all carried mobile devices, we could basically only be reached at home, work or by chance meetings. Now we are basically reachable no matter where we are. Email, SMS, phone and other methods of communication means that we are constantly trying to meet the needs of others or at least communicating with them. How many times have you checked your email just before tucking in and then upon waking? If you are like most people, this is something that you do almost without thinking about it now.

We still have the same number of hours in a day, but now that communication is faster and can be done from anywhere. So many people think that it’s easier to send a quick message than to pick up the phone. Sometimes it’s actually easier to make that phone call instead of writing a message because the back and forth messages can end up taking longer than the actual phone conversation would have been and with a lot less confusion. Most adults nowadays do check work email from home or from their mobile device after work hours. In a lot of cases if you can deal with a message quickly it means that you aren’t going into many issues the next day. Yes, you are trying to start your day by doing what is on your to-do list instead of dealing with the messages that accumulated over the time from when you left work and when you returned.

I know that sometimes I feel that there are more demands on my time than before, but I think I am my worst enemy when it comes to that. I am the one that puts the demands on myself to try and make sure that I get everything done quickly instead of thinking that something will get done a bit later, and there isn’t any problem with that.

Remembering that we managed before the mobile devices sometimes is what it takes for us to step back and realize that demands are the same, but now we see them quicker.