Think you need another hour in the day? No you don't. Part 1.

You merely need to know where all your time goes. Are you constantly saying “I just don’t know where this day went!?!?”

I am going to date myself here, but I worked for an insurance company about 27 years ago. I walked into my cubicle and there on my desk, on all of our desks, was 2 pieces of paper laid out in 5 minutes lines.

Oh my gosh, great, now they want to micromanage us I thought! And I knew better, this was actually a company that encouraged getting up and walking around on the hour, taking lunch and socializing.

They were also a company of team building and getting better and this was why the paper was there. They asked us to write everything down. Everything. For 3 days. Ugh! They made it clear, they weren’t going to look at the papers—this was SELF evaluation. The “if you want to be honest with yourself” type of growth.

So I did it and I learned a lot. I can’t focus. I squirrel - A LOT. I need lists and time blocking. This was 1994 and I needed a top of the line, leather, FRANKLIN PLANNER and all my problems would be solved.

Kind of. It wasn’t what I used, it was making myself be consistent. I went from paper to technology (Palm Pilot/Blackberry/Iphone) and now back to paper. I let spur of the moment appointments and things I felt I needed to jump on, derail my day and sometimes my week. I had to learn to say “no” or ignore the email or text message that dinged to let me know it wanted to be read. But those weren’t on the list and I couldn’t reach over and crossed them off, so I had to get myself back on the course I knew I had to follow to get anything completely finished.

Bottom line, I don’t lose track of my days unless I want to. I make lists and I time block. If I get a call at 9am and this is my client follow up time, I don’t take the call. I have become efficient and balanced. I block personal time and business time so at the end of the week, I have had a steady stream small successes. It’s mental. It’s hard, but it works when I don’t over complicate things and follow the process. See Part 2 for the process….