Improve My Business

Today we’re sharing some time management advice from Ali Brown. Please comment on how you make time for the things you love in your life!

“Making Time for the Things You Love”
by Ali Brown

Keeping up with business and social engagements sometimes means sacrificing our personal hobbies and relaxation time. But making time for ourselves, even on a busy day, can and will help us feel better and function better. Although it’s admirable to spend time taking care of work, friends, family, and pets, it’s even more important to spend time taking care of ourselves.

Here’s how to carve out time for yourself and the things you love.

*Learn to say no. As women, we’re often guilted into taking on extra work or attending meetings or events that don’t interest us because we’re too nice to say no. However, you need to practice saying no so that you can clear some time to yourself and say yes to the things that you want to do. There’s no shame in skipping a committee meeting every now and then so you can get a massage. Or RSVPing no to a networking event if you really need a quiet evening of rest and relaxation.

*Don’t forget family time. Family time can be converted into relaxation and bonding time together simply by selecting an activity the whole family can enjoy. Relationships can get a new lease on life too, if both partners decide to pursue a hobby or chosen form of relaxation together.

*Incorporate your interests into your vacation. Don’t be afraid to take time off! You’ve earned it, plus it’s a chance to follow through on hobbies and interests that might not fit into your regular routine. It doesn’t matter if the vacation is with family or friends; it’s about selecting opportunities that work for everyone - say, diving for you, lying on the beach for Jane, and bar hopping for John.

*Identify what makes you happy. Over time, our lives change - we pursue different careers, get married, have kids. Often we lose sight of what used to make us glow. Spend time remembering those magical moments and then commit a few hours each week to rekindling them. Ensure that you have a specific project in mind, because that eases up on the time it takes to get the project going. Saying “I want to write” is too ambiguous. Saying “I want to write a memoir about traveling to Japan” will give you more direction and focus.

It doesn’t matter how much time you’re able to spend each time on your personal project. The important thing is that you commit to doing it regularly and frequently so that it becomes a habit. Realize that once you’ve found the things you love to do, whether that’s swing dancing, cooking Indian curries, or making pottery, you need to hold onto them and never give them up.

You may have to change your daily schedule or work and social commitments to fit in this extra time. But doing so will be beneficial in the long run, because the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment you get from pursuing your passions will make you a happier and more productive person.

© 2009 Ali International, LLC

Self-made multimillionaire entrepreneur Ali Brown is devoted to creating financial freedom for women globally through the power of entrepreneurship. To learn how to create wealth and live an extraordinary life now, register for her free weekly articles at www.AliBrown.com

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE? See Ali’s Blog.

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In this Tech Talk article from the Worcester Business Journal, the author talks about the need to hire folks who understand process improvement, to help bring lasting change to organizations.   Read about it here.

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As summer plans get underway, what improvement techniques can you consider?  What will make a difference to your company (or you)?

1)  Shopping for the best lodging rate - this can be done by using an aggregator site that compares hotels for you; or you can go to a favorite brand and shop them.  However, look at ALL rates when booking - often the ‘best rate’ doesn’t take into account pay-in-advance pricing, corporate discounts, or discounts for groups such as AAA or AARP.

2)  Flexible pays off - if your travel plans are flexible, and you are flying, many airlines now allow you to see up to 3 days before and after, and compare rates.  This is great if you can control your destiny (can pick your own travel dates).

3)  Ask the hotel to service your room less - many hotels tell you that they care for the environment, yet still change out towels daily although they state that if they are “hung up” they will not.  Spend an extra minute to provide feedback to the housekeeping management staff that you’d like them to honor that (if you don’t mind using the same towel for a few days in a row - since all I do is towel off a clean-from-the-shower body, I never mind…).  Ditto for changing sheets daily.  I don’t do that at home; why do I need it on the road?

4)  Do you really need to lug the laptop?  When traveling remotely, clients will often provide a workstation (complete with computer) for me; so a USB flash drive is really all I need to be productive.  Hotel business centers often have 2-3 workstations available for evening work, and even have a great printer in most cases.  So consider whether the “less is more” mantra can be applied to your carry-on, and leave the laptop (unplugged) at home.

Technorati Tags: preparation, Streamlining, travel

I subscribe to The Green Life and find lots of great tips there for being more environmentally friendly, both in my work and at home.  Many of their tips are things I wasn’t aware of, or at least didn’t think about.  Take screensavers — originally they were put in place to stop burning out the bulbs in or CRT, but with the new screens, we don’t need to worry about that any more. So, you can change your screensaver to [blank] when not in use.  Sure, some of us have great screen shows that play when we’re not using our computers; but how ’bout switching to ‘blank’ at night or on weekends, to save some juice?

My kids are in the habit of removing their phone chargers and laptop chargers from the wall when not actively in use - that should save us some do-re-mi (money) but also prevent our local utility from generating wasted electricity.  Rule of thumb:  if it is bigger than a 3 prong plug, it’s probably consuming electricity.  Our scanner, which has a big ‘box’ attached to the plug, is also unplugged when not in use (we only scan approximately 1x/week) as well as our chargers.

Ambient temperature — do you wear sweaters to work in the summer?  (Lots of folks do - or keep one in the office).  If this is true, talk to your facilities folks to see if the building can be raised 1 degree this summer (or lowered 1 degree in winter).  We at McDCG work at ‘extremes’ of temperature in an effort to be more environmentally friendly — it helps that we’re a shorts/t-shirt/flip flops company when not meeting clients.  But, we do have fans going in lieu of lower A/C temps (moving air tends to make you feel cooler), and space heaters in the winter (which are more efficient than heating huge amounts of unused areas.  Maybe the staff will weigh in that we’ve gone TOO far… we’ll see).

Computer donation — when upgrading your computers at work, separate the working from the non-working, and consider donating the working ones to a local school, non-profit, etc. that can use them.  They will be grateful, you’ll get a tax write-off, and the landfill or e-waste recycler will avoid having to handle these components (just yet).

The Green Life has lots of tips - sent to your inbox on a daily basis.  Give it a look-see and see what you can glean from it.

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http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4365716

If only our own processes worked as seamlessly as this duo’s — moving back and forth without missing a beat (for the most part) - how can we get our teams to enjoy themselves while working together?

If this was implemented here at McDCG, there would never be a queue for the printer, all client queries would be handled seamlessly, our invoices would be sent with zero errors on the correct day, and there would be no errors internally.  [Not to brag, but we're pretty close to some of these already -- which makes it more fun to identify the areas where we CAN improve!]

If this philosophy was implemented where you work, what would it look like?

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