Good time management involves not only focusing on tasks, but also scheduling breaks. Taking breaks to refresh your energy and concentration is an effective way to increase your chances of completing your task.

However, your “fifteen-minute break” may stretch far beyond its allotted time, and you may become distracted by another activity, never returning to your original task. “I’ll sit down to review my finances, need a break, stand up, walk away, and next thing I know, I am doing laundry!” says Phyllis.

Try taking green breaks instead. A green break is a way of refreshing the brain that is brief but effective. It can be done as often as needed but won’t take you far from your task.

To take a green break:

1. Stand up facing something green. (A tree, a lawn, a leafy plant on a deck, or even a poster of a green pasture will do.)
2. Focus on the greenery.
3. Breathe in slowly. Feel your chest rise.
4. Exhale slowly. Let the air escape fully.
5. Breathe in again, this time bringing your arms up over your head, then lower them as you breathe out.
6. Now, drink a glass of water.
7. Finally, rock slowly from side to side.
8. Begin working again

The color green, especially in nature, is calming. Rocking and raising your arms is relaxing, the water replenishes you, and the increased oxygen from deep breathing will make you more alert. A green break refreshes you, allowing you to benefit from a break without becoming distracted by other things.

Use the following guidelines to reduce the amount of papers you gather.

Gathering Guideline Questions

1.  Am I still interested in knowing/doing/having this? (Elliot was once keenly interested in martini bars, but this interest has waned since he married.)

2.  Do I know/understand this already? (Elliot is now a pro at using social media. He no longer needs a magazine article for beginners.)

3.  Is a better/fresher version of this likely to come into my life soon? (Elliot is tempted to keep an article on hot mutual funds, but did you know that financial information becomes obsolete eight minutes after it comes off the press?!)
 

4.  If I will use/read/do/share this, will I do it before it goes out of date? (Elliot plans to buy an SUV in a year or two, but the information he has will be out of date by then. It will make more sense for him to gather SUV information when he’s close to the purchase date.)

5.  Can I deal with any regret I might have if I throw it away? (Elliot knows that even if he makes a mistake and throws something away that he should not have discarded, he might regret it, but he’ll get over it.)

If you find these guidelines to be helpful, you may want to laminate a printed list of guidelines and post it in a visible spot in your office, where you open mail, or other places where you tend to gather papers and recycle them.

When you negotiate, you buy yourself valuable time to complete your work. You need not call it a “negotiation,” but whenever you set up a compromise, you are negotiating. The following are eight principles for negotiation:

1. Always begin with a position that you expect compromise.
2. Never start where you hope to end – then there’s no room for negotiation.
3. Make the assumption that the other party expects to compromise too.
4. Expect to meet somewhere between your starting point and theirs, although not always in the middle.
5. Look for ways to meet their needs without overly compromising yours.
6. Try to avoid expressing anger or antagonizing the other party.
7. Let them know that you appreciate their situation, and communicate your position in a way that will elicit understanding.
8.  Look for ways to reframe the situation from win-lose to win-win.

Naturally, negotiations depend on the power and authority hierarchy of your business. In some cases, you won’t be able to negotiate with your boss.

New habits take time. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not successful at first. Following are ten steps for successful habit building.

1. Tie a new habit to an old one.  Most of us have some ingrained habits.  It’s easiest to develop a new one if it’s tied to an old one. For example, place your vitamins next to your tooth brush to better remember to take your vitamins each morning.
2. Make the habit as easy as possible. For example, pick a convenient, visible place to put your keys, a place that makes sense- such as by the door you leave the house from.
3. Make the habit hard to ignore. Put bells on it, put it in a place where you’ll trip over it, make it impossible to leave the house without it (tie the car keys to it).
4. Put reminders everywhere. When you are first starting out, put sticky notes where you are sure to see them that remind you to act on your new habit.
5. Visualize yourself doing the new behavior. For example, if this is a morning habit, imagine yourself going through your morning routine, including your new habit at the appropriate point in the routine.
6. Practice “instant corrections.” If you forget to practice the new habit, go and do it the instant you remember it, if at all possible, even if it’s not convenient.
7. Get back on the horse and ride. Habits take time; forgetting is not failure. It is part of developing a habit.
8. Problem-solve if it’s not working. Maybe you need a different reminder.   Perhaps you need to tie it to a different habit. Perhaps it would fit better into a different time of day.
9. Practice the habit for at least thirty days in a row. Make a calendar in the kitchen and check off the days.
10. Reward yourself.  Celebrate when you reach your thirty day goal.

1. Learn to think proactively rather than reactively. Plan your day and follow your plan. Don’t let your day run you by reacting moment-to-moment to events, moods, or impulses.
2. Don’t over-schedule your day. Learn to overestimate how long things will take.
3. Leave time for the unexpected.
4. Keep your calendar/planner with you at all times – to refer to, to add to, and to revise as you need to throughout your day.
5. When you make a commitment to do something, don’t just add the task to a huge, undifferentiated “to do” list. Assign an actual time on an actual day to complete that task.
6. To combat a tendency to lose track of time, set a timer/beeper/reminder to go off five minutes before you need to leave for a scheduled event. Many calendar/planning programs (including Skoach) have built-in reminders.
7. Develop a habit of saying, “I’d like to, but let me check my schedule,” rather than saying “yes” to a request without considering your previous commitments.
8. Avoid last-minute impulses unless they are true emergencies. Squeezing in “one last thing” before leaving leads to chronic lateness, giving others the unintended message that they are unimportant to you.
9. Plan to be early. Take a book or something to work on while you wait for an event to begin.
10. Begin phone calls by setting a time limit. “I need to leave for a meeting in ten minutes but wanted to catch you before I left.”

Time-management strategies -- stay on time and organized.

Toni can feel the knot in her neck as she sits in traffic. She is running late for work (again), and she’s heading to a project meeting, for which she is unprepared. Lately, she’s been losing patience with the kids more easily, and she seems to have no time to just enjoy being with them. Feeling rushed, like Toni? Here are time-management strategies to slow down and get better organized.
Cure yourself of “one-more-thing-itis.”

One reason some of us feel rushed is that we habitually try to cram in “one more thing,” the additional task that so often derails plans.

One-more-thing-itis is a form of distractibility — the phone rings, you answer it, you notice that the table needs to be cleared, or a plant needs to be watered, and, once again, you run late.

Strategy:  Think through the steps you’ll take before you leave the house. Gather belongings and double-check directions, if needed, the night before. Avoid getting sidetracked as you head to the door by reminding yourself, out loud and repeatedly, “I’m leaving now; I’m going to the car.”

Plan ahead to arrive early.

Aim to arrive 15 minutes before your appointment time. If the prospect of facing empty time if you do arrive early horrifies you, keep a magazine, book, or stack of bills that need to be paid in a bag near the door, and grab it on the way out.

Calculate your departure time by adding 10 minutes to each half hour of travel time. With the extra time, you’ll feel much less rushed, should you run into traffic or another unforeseen delay.

Strategy: Set two alarms (a clock, a cell phone, or a computer), one that will go off five minutes before departure time and a second that will sound when it’s time to leave. When the first alarm goes off, stop what you are doing. Try to be out the door before the second alarm goes off.

Build routine tasks into your weekly schedule.

When do you feel most stressed — in the morning, before work or school, or before dinner, when the kids need picking up and dinner needs preparing?

Instead of filling the gas tank or stopping to grab the ingredients for dinner on the fly, map out—and stick to—a weekly schedule that accounts for each of these tasks. Lock in times for doing necessary weekly chores, such as grocery shopping and laundry, to prevent running out of milk or clean clothes.

Strategy:  Shift to-do items into less stressful times. For example, if mornings are more rushed, fill the gas tank on the way home.

Don’t say “yes” out of habit — or guilt.

Many of us over-commit out of a desire to please our family, friends, or co-workers.

Strategy:  Get in the habit of saying, “I’d like to, but let me check my schedule,” instead of giving an automatic “yes.” In the end, you’ll please others more by being able to get things done on time, rather than always being late and rushed.

Set realistic goals.

Can you really make a stew and pick up the kids in half an hour? Deliver yourself from trying to be supermom (or dad).

Strategy:  It’s OK to plan a quick-fix meal (or to have take-out!) on busier nights. Don’t feel you have to cram in three errands when you have time for only two.

Enlist the help of a time tutor.

Ask a friend or family member, someone who has witnessed how you spend your time, to help you identify the patterns that create time crunches in your life.

Strategy:  Do only what you can, and delegate or delete what you can’t. You’ll be happier (and more productive) when you are not living in a constant rush.