Organize Your House For Order & Neatness

A great way cut down cleaning time by changing organizational patterns is to plan not to let things get dirty. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cleaning up. Thus, you can put rugs both inside and outside the entrance doors so that dirt and trash will get caught there before being dragged into the house. You can put foil on the bottom of the oven so that if anything spills, all you need to do is change the foil rather than clean the oven. You can use cook-in bags for things that might splatter. If you don’t have a cook-in bag, at least use a pot with very high sides.

One of the hardest problems for me to deal with was soap scum in the bathroom from the hand soap. It melts into the soap dish and foams over the side, hardening into semi-cement. I hate it. Luckily, just at the time I was ready to do something about it, soft soap became popular. That was my solution. The only problem is that it is quickly used up by my teenagers. So when it is time for a refill I fill the container with dishwashing liquid. Sometimes I put slivers of bar soap in it together with a few drops of perfume. It works fine, making a perfumed creamy soap. This way, too, I can get rid of those pieces of soap that are too little to use but which I am too frugal to throw away.

Another method to speed up cleaning is to spot chronic problem areas and look for a solution. I had a trash can for throwing away food in my kitchen. It had no top because I thought it would be too much of a problem to remove the top each time, and it would be too difficult to do with scraps in my hand. The can was not very satisfactory because it was unsightly and the food kept splattering onto the white wall behind it, requiring frequent wiping with bleach and soap.

When I finally awoke to the fact that this was a chronic problem which needed a solution, I was tuned in to solving it though I didn’t have any idea how I would do it. Soon afterward I was wandering through a discount store and saw a garbage can with a lid and a foot pedal that opened the lid. This kept the food scraps covered and when the top lifted back it protected the white wall from streaks and spots of garbage entering the can. I had seen these cans frequently but, until I had identified my specific cleaning problem, I had not really noticed them. If you identify a problem with a view to solving it, often the solution soon comes knocking at your door.

Another way to organize for order is to put things away. This is a very hard habit to get into, but it is a top priority. I learned a little about this on the day after Thanksgiving. The shopping center was really crowded. The shoe store salesmen were bustling around. Shoe boxes and shoes were everywhere, some piled by the customer and some where the customer had been before. When I asked him how he kept all these boxes and shoes straight, he gave me these tips which can also give you ideas for your home:

1. Don’t let too much time go by between straightening up. Keep things up.
2. Each salesman has his own area of the store for his responsibility so the manager has an idea who is falling down on the cleaning job when he sees what area is messy.
3. Every time a salesman goes in the back to get another shoe, he takes something with him whether it is his or not.
4. The fourth thing he did not tell me - I saw it. It was that he had his standard and he personally saw that the system worked.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Time Management Skills: Making a clear vision of your most productive self

Do you want to know how to make the most out of your time? Are you searching for a way to get where you want to be in life faster than the speed you are currently going? The key to succeeding in these areas involves understanding and implementing time management strategies that high achievers use every day of their lives to make more money, increase time spent with family, and achieve all around happiness in life.

Regardless of your daily schedule, whether you work for someone else or yourself, your goal is to compete against yourself to see how much you can get done that contains the most value every day. Think of it as a personal game that you are playing. Each day when you set your personal deadlines and making the most of your schedule, work to race against those set time goals. Work faster, beat the clock, and accomplish your tasks earlier than expected.

Keep the mental vision of yourself as a super product individual in your mind at all times. To help keep this mental picture alive in your head you can use a technique that works for thousands of successful men and women all over the globe. And that technique is to remember a time when you were the most productive in your life. Remember how effective you were at handling those tasks at that time. Consider how efficient you were. You were doing all of the right things and at the right time and at record speed. In addition to accomplishing more, remember how good you felt about yourself and the confidence that properly managing your time did for you.

Now take a look a few years from now and imagine yourself as being the most productive and successful people in your career field. What would your day be like? What would you look like? How much work would you accomplish each day? What hours would you be working? These questions are to be written on paper to help you create a vision for yourself. Doing so and taking a look at your vision every day on paper will do more for your time management needs than anything else.

Once you have created a clear mental picture of the our future self, continue to visualize your ideal self as if you already had the time management traits that you desire to have today. Strive to act as if you had the urgency of the “you-of-tomorrow” in everything that you are working for today. Remember that the person that you see in your vision can and will be the person that exists today, so long as you keep that vision regardless of the circumstances. “So starting today, set the same goals, work with the same vigor, and feel as though you were making the most of your time as you are with your future-self and as you did in the past.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Give Your Dreams & Goals Priority Time

Clearing out your time schedule is a vital priority for living your dream. “Do you know how busy I am? I couldn’t possibly take on one more activity!” This is an exclamation we often hear from active, involved individuals. Even when we’re not spending our time exactly as we would prefer, we commonly feel that the demands pressed upon us preclude our having much of any choice in the matter. But if our dream is a last priority in our daily plan, it will also be the least likely outcome of our day, and our life.

If you go to a doctor or diet clinic for help in losing weight, you may be asked to keep a diary of your food intake. Only when you know what you are actually eating can you know what changes need to be made. The same is true of managing your time. It’s important to begin keeping a record of how your time is spent. Once you have conducted a realistic assessment of the time available to you and the requirements made for your time, your options will be more apparent.

Begin by keeping a list of your activities during each of the seven days of one week. Write each activity in a column down the left side of a page, and write the days of the week across the top. Tally up the amount of time spent in each activity per day. Leave space for totals for the week on the right side. Your page might look something like the “Time Spent on Activities for a Week” chart.

When you have filled out this chart for one week, study it carefully. Are you surprised at what it reveals? What do you observe about the way you spend your time? What changes can you make to manage your time optimally? Make a list.

In observing small children at play, I have noticed almost without exception their innate tendency to dump out the whole toy box before beginning to interact with the toys. They knock all the blocks down before beginning to build something new. Every piece of the Tinker Toy set must be pulled apart before a new construction is begun. Children inherently know the importance of starting anew, from the empty box or the blank table, when they want to create something new, all their own.

Your time is your creative medium of expression, just like the child’s box of toys. When you want to create a new set of priorities that highlights your dream, start like the small child with the blank table before you. Take a clean sheet of paper and write your Dream Statement across the top in large letters. Draw a chart where you can show activity time segments for an ideal day. Decide which activities you want to accomplish each day. Begin by allocating set periods of time to work on your dream - periods that are unlikely to be interrupted by other demands. Many people find that rising earlier in the morning serves this purpose. Once you have set aside times for pursuing your dream, list your other activities in time segments, to represent the way you intend to spend your day. Combine optimal productivity with spaces for relaxation and rejuvenation.

Popularity: 22% [?]

How To Become Successful By Working Less

You have been told the hard and simple truth: if you aren’t getting much out of life emotionally and financially, then you must look at what you bring into life. Clearly, to get more out of this world, you must make some changes in your life.

Now for the pleasant truth; success has little to do with hard work. The natural order of the world doesn’t dictate that you have to work hard to earn a good living and get more out of life. On the contrary, working fewer hours than most people, and at a more leisurely pace, may in fact help you to get a lot more out of life - financially and emotionally.

Most people over-dramatize the value of hard work for acquiring wealth and happiness. The late Joe Karbo, author of The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, coined the saying, “Most people are too busy earning a living to make any money.” What Karbo meant was that most people are too preoccupied with their demanding and unfulfilling jobs, as well as with frivolous after-hour activities, to devote some creative effort toward generating alternative, less demanding means of income.

In truth, the most difficult way to make a good living is to work hard for it. Hard work is no match for relaxed, creative action. Unlike people who preach the virtues of hard work, the relaxed achiever knows that important, imaginative projects lead to a lot more impressive financial results and personal satisfaction than does working long and hard. By choosing this route, you become a peak performer. You don’t have to work hard to make a decent living; you have to work smart, however.

Poet W H. Auden wisely expressed his views on work: “In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it.” The second of Auden’s three ingredients is the one that most people in the modern world overlook and violate. Most people in Western societies today put way too much time into their work lives and not enough into their personal lives.

With all the modern technology at our disposal, none of us need slave away to the extent that people did twenty or fifty years ago. Greater opportunity to seek a balanced and wholesome lifestyle exists now more than ever in the history of humankind; unfortunately, most people are too uncreative or too afraid of freedom to benefit, however. Today’s prosperous times should be able to support millions of people seeking their true selves through creative pursuits and self-expression while working only a few hours a day.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Time Management Skills: Making a clear vision of your most productive self

Do you want to know how to make the most out of your time? Are you searching for a way to get where you want to be in life faster than the speed you are currently going? The key to succeeding in these areas involves understanding and implementing time management strategies that high achievers use every day of their lives to make more money, increase time spent with family, and achieve all around happiness in life.

Regardless of your daily schedule, whether you work for someone else or yourself, your goal is to compete against yourself to see how much you can get done that contains the most value every day. Think of it as a personal game that you are playing. Each day when you set your personal deadlines and making the most of your schedule, work to race against those set time goals. Work faster, beat the clock, and accomplish your tasks earlier than expected.

Keep the mental vision of yourself as a super product individual in your mind at all times. To help keep this mental picture alive in your head you can use a technique that works for thousands of successful men and women all over the globe. And that technique is to remember a time when you were the most productive in your life. Remember how effective you were at handling those tasks at that time. Consider how efficient you were. You were doing all of the right things and at the right time and at record speed. In addition to accomplishing more, remember how good you felt about yourself and the confidence that properly managing your time did for you.

Now take a look a few years from now and imagine yourself as being the most productive and successful people in your career field. What would your day be like? What would you look like? How much work would you accomplish each day? What hours would you be working? These questions are to be written on paper to help you create a vision for yourself. Doing so and taking a look at your vision every day on paper will do more for your time management needs than anything else.

Once you have created a clear mental picture of the our future self, continue to visualize your ideal self as if you already had the time management traits that you desire to have today. Strive to act as if you had the urgency of the “you-of-tomorrow” in everything that you are working for today. Remember that the person that you see in your vision can and will be the person that exists today, so long as you keep that vision regardless of the circumstances. “So starting today, set the same goals, work with the same vigor, and feel as though you were making the most of your time as you are with your future-self and as you did in the past.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Time Management: Turn off your television!

Did you know that the average person wastes up to 70% of their free time by watching television? Are you one of those people? Chances are that if your goal is to make better use of your time for more important items in your life, then you may need to kick the television habit to the curb!

Below are 6 ways in which you can make better time management by controlling your TV habits:

1. Ignore the TV and choose to work on hobbies such as gardening, puzzles, reading, stamp collecting, etc.
2. Only permit yourself to watch two hours of programming on Saturday and Sunday for an entire month. You will be amazed at how much more focused you will be.
3. Instead of watching sports games on TV, why not attend them instead? Not only does this get you away from the television but it also can create more quality time between you and your friends and family.
4. Understand that you do not need to watch TV for your news and information. You have been programmed to do so since birth and with today’s online news reports you do not need to get drawn back into watching television just to see what is happening out there.
5. Make it a point to go an entire week at a time without ever turning on your television. So this at least once per month, or more if possible.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Creating A Laundry System For Faster, Cleaner, & Cheaper Results

A well-thought-out laundry system will keep your clothes ready to wear and take less time. Here are some tips for getting control of your dirty clothes:

1. Treat stains as soon as you notice them. Learn something about the chemistry of stain removal. It will save you lots of money and time.

2. Learn how to use your washing and drying appliances. Read the manuals and follow directions. Select the right cleaning products for your appliance and water type (you might want to have your water tested and may need to purchase a water softener if it’s especially hard).

3. Take clothes out of the dryer immediately and fold or hang them. You may hardly ever have to iron if you observe this simple rule. If you forget to take your clothes out of the dryer, throw in a damp towel and re-dry five to ten minutes to remove wrinkles.

4. Dampen a washcloth with liquid fabric softener and toss in the dryer. It’s cheaper than disposable fabric-softener sheets and works just as well.

5. If you go to a laundromat, set up a caddy with all the products you need, including a stain treatment kit.

6. Sort ironing by the temperature required. Dampen as you go. Have on hand the following products for fighting stains and learn how to use them: acetone (not nail polish remover), ammonia, bleach (for both white and for colors), club soda, color remover, dry-cleaning, solvent, enzyme pre-soak, glycerine, hydrogen peroxide, oxalic acid solution, paint remover, petroleum jelly, sodium thiosulfate or sodium hyposulfite (get at a photo store), and white vinegar.

Here are four more tips to further speed along the weekly wash:

1. Have a basic mending kit handy. If you do your laundry at a laundromat, be sure you take it with you to do small mending jobs while you wait.

2. Kids mean more repairs and more laundry. Look for shortcuts. Use fusible bonding fabric, iron-on patches, a button puncher, and else anything that’ll save time and effort.

3. If the laundry has really piled up, you can go to the laundromat and get it all done at once (even if you have laundry facilities at home). If you’ve got 10 loads to do, you can fill up 10 washers and dryers and do all 10 loads in the time it takes to do one. Go at off-peak hours so you don’t have to wait for a free appliance. You’ll go home with everything washed and folded and only a few things to iron or mend when you get home.

4. Limit items that take special care such as old linens and handmade items and make sure you really enjoy the extra work it takes to keep them.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Time management as a lifestyle

Do you have the desire to get more work done, faster, more efficient, and with less overall strain on your energy? Every man and women who has the desire to be high achievers in life have the very same goals as you do and it all starts with time management. There is one thing that you must know about what it takes to effectively manage your time, however, and that is that you will not succeed in making your life perfect in one shot. It does not work that way. Rather, time management is a lifestyle, a daily practice, a frame of mind.

There are hundreds of techniques that you can implement to get the ball rolling in your life when it comes to time management. One such technique is to develop and concentrate on the habits that will make you successful in the areas of working smarter, faster, and more efficient. Ask yourself this question: What are the habits and behavior patterns that you consider will help you get the most out of your day and increase your productivity?

Your goal is to concentrate your thoughts on creating the habits of focus, dedication, concentration, discipline, and positive results. These factors will become your personal motivators which will help you strive for high performance. And one best kept secret of time management is to learn to use the art of doing one task at at time, the very best that you can.

There is no greater threat to time management and loosing focus than handling too much at one time. Your projects and tasks end up being only partially complete and without the quality they deserve. Concentrate on doing only one single task at at time, all day long, until it is done. Practice this habit on a daily basis until it becomes etched within your personal work ethic.

What activities are best for you to practice to guarantee that you are working and performing your very best? Your answers should be written down as a checklist and reviewed on a regular basis. Make sure that you are always working on your most valuable task at any given moment and making the most of your time, each and every day.

There is no better take of action that will help you with mastering time management than forming daily habits of planning, setting up your priorities, and working on the greatest-value tasks first within your day. Developing these habits can only be achieved by practicing them repetitively until they are part of your lifestyle. Remember, time management is not something that you tend to when you feel the need, it is indeed a lifestyle that can take your entire career and personal life to new heights.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Control Your Time Better By Eliminating Interruptions

What is an interruption? An interruption is anything that diverts your attention from an activity you have chosen to do to an activity that someone else has purposely or inadvertently chosen for you. Interruptions are normally random and without any consideration for the importance of, or impact on, your time and your personal priorities. Interruptions chew up time and energy.

There are two major categories of interruptions you face daily at home or at the office: telephones and people in person. The telephone rings, and you automatically stop what you are doing to answer it. The doorbell rings, and the same thing happens regardless of the importance of the task at hand. Someone is forcing you to switch gears instantly even though it is not your choice. “I’m not interrupting, am I?” is the typical remark. “Of course not,” you answer politely without an ounce of integrity. Whether people interrupt you in person or on the telephone, they always seem to have something on their minds that just can’t wait.

The time wasted because of an interruption is longer than the time span of the actual interruption. For instance, you are concentrating on writing a report, business plan, or important letter when your concentration is broken by the ringing of your phone. Not only do you lose the time you actually talk on the phone, but it will normally take you several additional minutes to regain your focus and get back up to speed with what you were doing. Switching gears takes time.

The telephone has become the greatest source of interruptions. In fact, it is an electronic instrument designed to interrupt. For some reason you and I were taught to believe that when the telephone rings, all else must be dropped in a race to answer it before it stops ringing. That habit is like having someone follow you around yelling “Freeze” twenty times a day and expecting you to stop in your tracks for three to ten minutes each time. The danger is that old phone habits unnecessarily eat up hours of your valuable time - time that cannot be replaced. Your level of effectiveness in life is determined both by the number of hours you have available to work on specific objectives and by how effectively you use those hours. The more hours that are wasted, the less effective you become.

Answering the phone just because it rings means turning over your time and attention to someone else at a moment’s notice. Obviously, achieving your goals and dreams becomes far more difficult when you are constantly working someone else’s agenda and at someone else’s pace. The fact that a ringing telephone is given priority shows how illogical people have become about the use of the phone.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Accomplish More By Organizing Your Daily Commute To Work & Making It Count!

What does your morning commute into work look like? How about the trip home? Not a pretty picture, huh? Isn’t it time you revamped how you get from here to there? Don’t use the morning commute for breakfast. Make a point of getting up early enough and doing whatever it takes to have a quiet, well-balanced breakfast before you make the trip to the office. Eating on the run is bad for your digestion, doesn’t set you up for a good day, and besides, you can mess up your clothes or spill coffee all over your car. More stuff to do!

If you drive, make the drive time count. Use it for “self-talk” about your goals for the day. Listen to a tape that’ll help increase your management skills or teach you something. Play an audio book. Carry a small tape recorder with you and record thoughts and ideas to follow up on later.

If all your brain cells aren’t activated first thing in the morning, at least listen to some music that will set you up for a great day. Does your car look like your desk used to look? Are there fast-food wrappers, overdue library books, and papers all over the place? That’s no way to start out your day. Schedule part of this weekend to clean it. Vacuum the inside and wipe down the surfaces that collect dust. Wash it or get it washed if it needs it. Make sure the windows are clean and the wipers work properly. Take the old buggy in for an oil change if you’ve been putting that off.

Put together a commuter survival kit in a sturdy container with a lid. It could include a box of tissues, a simple tool kit, a first aid kit, a flashlight (keep the batteries in a separate plastic bag…they’ll last longer), some flares, and maybe a cellular phone. In cold climates, make sure you have all the necessary implements to handle snow and ice removal, plus extra clothing and a folding pair of rubber boots in case you get stranded. Always carry water. Add another point in the Peace of Mind column.

How about carpooling? If this is a solution that can work for you, use the days you don’t drive to catch up on your reading or as planning time. This works as long as everyone in the car pool has the same goal, otherwise you may end up losing the time socializing. Don’t allow a car pool to make you too tied to a routine, however. You may fall into the trap of allowing it to limit your ability to stick to your organization plan. It may be necessary to beg off of the car pool now and then so you can come in early or stay late. You control your schedule, not the car pool. Use it to help you find more time, but don’t let it rule your time.

If you use public transportation to get to work, get in the habit of using your commuting time to support you in your goals. On the morning commute you may want to listen to a motivational or instructional tape or an audio book. Use travel time for daily planning or to catch up on your reading. If that’s not enough to keep you busy, there’s personal correspondence, catalog shopping, keeping a journal, paying bills, filling out medical insurance claims, or doing a favorite craft if it’s portable enough. Make a list of your personal favorites for your planner/organizer.

Popularity: 14% [?]

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