This year, as you’re watching others escape for much needed vacations at the beach or you’re cooped up in a late day meeting, start thinking about how these seven tips will help you control the amount of time that you spend in the office, and enable you to embrace the personal side of your life.
Breaking out of the habit of working long hours and weekends in an effort to be viewed as a valued partner or service provider can be tough. Breaking the cycle requires commitment. It means setting goals and boundaries for yourself in this area and then making small changes over time. But, you can get there! By next summer, you too might be able to break away from your meetings with enough time to take a swim before dinner!
The good news is that spending five minutes at the beginning of each day answering these questions will combat the overwhelmed feeling. It’s that simple. If you can commit to that, I guarantee that you will go even further this year than you’d hoped!
Can making a commitment to better organizing your documents truly impact your bottom line? Does installing software to keep track of your contacts really matter that much? Does having a smooth billing process and clearing off your desk at the end of the day really make a difference? Statistics show that they do!
The truth of the matter is that it’s those critical thinking tasks and attention to detail that truly make us truly indispensible in business and life not the number of strike-throughs on our task lists. Without focus, we never drive past the tasks to arrive at the critical thinking part of our work. Learn ways to start single-tasking to stay more focused and achieve more in business and in life.
While these five tips will get you started on your path to creating a Zen-like atmosphere in your office, remember that it’s OK to make changes and to keep playing around with the décor and processes as you develop an office space that soothes and inspires. After all, the more at peace your mind and body are, the more productive and efficient you will be in your job!
The irony here is that as I was getting lost on the web, the book that I want to share with you is called Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction by Leo Babauta.
We’ve entered a new year and business owners worldwide have fresh goals for 2012 as they work to grow their businesses to the next level. Of course, the catch is that simply setting goals won’t get you there. You must tackle them systematically in order to achieve success!
Any time of year is perfect for thinking about how to work more effectively, but as the New Year rolls around and today’s goals are at the forefront of your mind, it makes sense to pause and evaluate how you spend your time, if your time is being used most effectively, and to make changes where it is not so that you can achieve these new goals more rapidly.
What documents do we need to keep? When can we discard records? Where and how is the best way to store documents? Why do we need to keep all of this stuff?
