Six Sigma Blogs

Sometime when we plan to do things, they all happen as planned and this is great but here are other times when we want to do things we find that we are caught up by time and get stressed up, one thing that is true is that time cannot wait because you have not succeeded in attaining the progress you wanted to make but if you have something to show on the time used.

It is not only you that you try to perform things to no avail, a also try to do work but sometimes I find that am mot in the mood or cannot be able to attain my goal.

But this has not tied me down since I discovered the ways and means unto which I can be able to attain more from the little time I have available for my consumption. I have learnt to use the following three tips which I have found them beneficial for me on how I utilize my time.

You must first learn to prioritize activities before doing them, matters that are of urgent importance are better dealt with fast then followed with matters of less importance. When you learn to do things according to their priorities you will be able to reduce the issue of procrastination since doing things that are of less importance first totally amount to procrastination.

Try to time yourself when doing specific activities, you can set the amount of time that you are going to do a specific activity and use a timer time yourself. Make sure you avoid unnecessary interference as you perform these activities and you will find that you are able to do most of the activities within the stipulated time and with a lot of perfection.

Try to dedicate your time. Effort and mind to a specific activity and see how you are going to wonders with the little time you have at your disposal.

Lastly if you try an activity and it is not working, don’t waste your time trying to redo the activity, instead you can do another activity during this time so that you do not waste a lot of time which means you become more and more productive even when things are not working.

Using these guidelines, you can be able to get a lot of work done within the shortest time possible with little or no stress about time.

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Are you in touch with your intellectual wellness? In the first place, what is intellectual wellness? It is the ability to detect how one would think and feel to an event or information. If you care about your general welfare, you should be more sensitive in choosing the right things to concentrate on.

There are many mediums that provided the latest knowledge - there are books, of course. Then there are newspapers, magazines, internet sites, TV shows, news programs, movies, and even music. So what type of content are you focusing on? What type of communication do you receive through your snail mail, texts, and email?

In this age of technological advancement where so much information is so accessible, one should be careful about what they focus on. So much information can also be the cause of undue stress. Bad news that we allow into our consciousness might overwhelm us with negative thoughts if we allow these to do so.

If we listen to the news that deals with crimes and end of the world scenarios, we would easily get worries and stressed out. This is harmful to us. So, if we keep on listening to this stressful information, your situation deteriorates.

On the other end, if we choose not to read nor listen to these types of programs, but choose to focus on the positive values, life would have a more positive outlook.

If you remain a cynic, why don’t you take time to examine yourself for a week?

If you decide to experiment, try not to change your environment and your attitude intentionally when you go on your regular daily course. Keep tab of your reactions every time you choose either to read, to listen or to watch the things you normally would do. If you feel negative, then put a check on the feeling disturb side, but if you feel positive, put a check on the feeling good side. There should be at least a balance to both sides.

Understand that you do have a choice as to what you let in your mind. You do have the choice of making life a lot less stressful. You have the choice of leading a better, healthier, and more positive life.

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Time management is very important in this busy world. Some people think that it just come naturally. However, some say that it is an acquired skill. Whichever is true, you have to consider the following tips and you will learn to manage everything:

One effective tip is to create a daily schedule. You have to list down all the things that you need to do everyday. It will help you guide and remind you in your daily activities. Through this , you can save time of thinking what is the next thing to do and likewise, prevents you from forgetting a very important meeting or an appointment..

You have to consider also the alertness of your mind when you create your daily schedule. If you are more active in the morning, you schedule all the difficult tasks in the morning. At least you have the full energy to focus those activities.

To avoid becoming stressed, schedule some down-time with friends and family. Time management is all about balance, not about being a workaholic.

You may schedule for an evening date with your special someone, spouse or a lover if you are single, or a lunch with a friend. Or a drop by visit to your parents after work in the afternoon. In this manner, your professional life and personal life is balanced. Life could be so boring if you don’t know how to balance it.

Try to think from the most important task to the least one to do that day. Do first the necessary ones and if possible, delegate to others the less important. If you have no more time, just eliminate or take away in your list those things that are not essential.

Don’t procrastinate. Once you’ve planned a schedule for the day, stick to it as much as possible. When it’s time to shift to the next task, do so. Don’t linger on perfecting a previous task. Perfection might sound like a good idea when in fact, perfection and procrastination are enemies of time management.

A good rule of thumb to follow in time management is Pareto’s Principle. This states that 80 percent of accomplishments should be derived from 20 percent of efforts. You can apply this to your schedule by focusing on tasks that offer the most productivity.

The tips above are simple yet effective. Hopefully these can help you lead a more balanced and less stressful life.

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categories: self help,motivational,happiness,goal setting,advice,reference,family,teens,kids,parenting,women,men’s issues,psychology,depression

It seems like the older we get, the more we look back and regret all the time we wasted. We start to see how precious time is, and we want do good things with the time we have. There are a few things most of us have in common to save time, and this article will talk about how to make them work for you.

Hands down, the biggest time consumer is watching TV. Most of what we watch is just stuff that fills our senses with noise, and there are so many better things to do than flip through channels. Add up the time you waste watching TV and you will see how much of it can be used doing things that are productive and rewarding.

Another thing I like to do is to record my favorite shows and watch them when I want. This way I don’t have to be home at a certain time to see them. Not to mention how great it is to be able to skip the commercials. Once I discovered how much skipping a few minutes here and there added up, I had much more time and my productivity increased.

The second greatest time waster is when I have to sit and wait somewhere. Being stuck at the DMV is not fun for anyone, and waiting at the doctor’s office can be very boring. I learned that by bringing my homework with me, or doing work on my laptop made the time go faster, and I had extra time later to do what I want.

Another trick is to stop using the car radio for information and entertainment. So much programming is filled with useless junk that you don’t enjoy your time as much. Download a podcast or your favorite music and listen to that instead. Cars are great places to listen to audio books as well, saving time down the road as well.

Having the radio on is distracting and annoying sometimes, but it is not as dangerous as using a cell phonw while driving. Keep your hands on the wheel and the phone off. Spend that time doing something safer and more productive.

These are just some simple examples of ways to save time. Look at your own circumstances and think of ways to save time in the course of your own day. You will be amazed at how much more time you will have.

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categories: self help,management,goal setting,motivational,happiness,family,parenting,teens,women,men’s issues,advice,reference,personal finance,finance

Working from home has its own “up side” and “down side,” just like everything else. Other people may assume that you are jobless while others will think that you are self-employed and that your time is your own.

However, that’s not always true. Many times, you might have several bosses or have deadlines to meet, just like anyone with a “real job”. How do you get that point across to friends and family, though?

A critical way of showing this is to ensure you work to a tight and regular timeframe so that people take your work seriously. If you keep regular hours and stick to them, most people will come to respect that.

Putting up a reminder to your family members such as a sign on your door will give them the idea that you are doing some serious work and should not be interrupted.

Naturally, one of the benefits of working from your house is that you can keep flexible hours. Thus, it can be good to take a break or mix your schedule up sometimes. But this should be the exception not the rule.

One way to avoid that is to make occasional trade offs. For example, if your spouse wants to go to lunch with you, fabulous! Just make sure that they understand that that means that you’ll be working an extra hour or two that evening.

You may find that persuading others of your situation is more difficult than some people. Presenting them with your work schedule will help to convince them of your real job. Patience and steady effort will do the trick.

Explain to them in the most basic way that you can spend time with them, but it isn’t going to be on a regular basis and that you have to catch up on your work after that. Be firm in letting them understand that most of the time, your work will have to be given priority over other matters.

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categories: home business,home,family,business,careers,self improvement,motivational,communication,time management,men’s issues,women,reference,networking

A common human trait is to procrastinate. We all do it, admit it, it is one of those things that everyone is guilt off every now and then.

Sadly, it is not only the culprit for delayed projects, but stress and frustration too. This haunting infection can even cause harm to others if it occurs in a team environment - stalling production.

Often the reason you are delaying is because you face an especially hard job. You then become lost in all the small peripheral things you have on and end up telling yourself the big job is too hard, impossible even, and you cannot do it. The conclusion of this type of thought pattern is exacerbated stress and inability to do any constructive work.

The best way to break this cycle of delay and procrastination is to make yourself a list every day. By doing this, you can work out what needs to be done, how important each job is, and whether it has to be done on that particular day.

Once something is completed, you cross it off the list. This small little process can actually motivate you in quite a big way. You will feel excited and enthused every time you cross another item off your list.

Or, if the task before you is mammoth, you could devote a twenty minute spell to at least begin it. The trick here is starting one of the most horrible bits. After you have begun, it could be that the rest of the job doesn’t seem quite as bad.

One other method of dealing with procrastination is to break large projects up into smaller tasks. This helps keep the entire project from being too overwhelming, and gives you a place to start making visible progress.

Maybe you do some of those “must dos” in the morning, as once you have done this you will find yourself humming along for the rest of the day. Once you’ve done those small tasks you will feel better about the day ahead.

This author has been blogging with respect to self-improvement for the last two years. In addition, this writer likes providing knowledge regarding separate subjects, including shipping tubes along with cardboard shipping boxes.

categories: Self-Improvement,Motivational,Time Management,Business,Career,Work,Women,Techniques,Advice,Pscyhology,Home,Education,Teens,Children

Time is obviously the universal ruler of the world. Humans are enslaved by the idea of time, as we use frequent sayings such as “we don’t have enough time.” These ideas have long been in existence, and this dreadful curse of time has prevented many of us from achieving our goals and aspirations. It is important that we stop and focus on these goals though, and apply the time needed to make them a reality.

Sure it is not easy for most people to make this spare time, but if you just decide right now to give yourself thirty minutes per day to work on your goal, this will be the first major step in getting there.

Thirty minutes is not much, it could be achieved by watching one less thing on TV every night. Most of the real go getters in life have cut TV out altogether from their lives, as they have realized how it stops you from achieving your dreams.

Not all people want to give up television. Deleting just thirty minutes each day of this enjoyable activity is all you need to do to drastically change your lifestyle.

Another way of regaining thirty minutes is to stop using the snooze alarm on your alarm clock each morning. Getting up just thirty minutes earlier can be a great way of getting a jump on the day. Plus, if you get up before the rest of your family does, you will have some quiet time to yourself to spend on your personal pursuits.

Outsourcing some of your tasks by either hiring a housekeeper, assistant or getting your spouse or kids to help you with things is intelligent as well. You are just as important as everyone else and you need to learn to give yourself a break to pursue your interests. Never feel guilty about doing this, it is your right to have a life.

Finding ways to save time on household chores is also a good way of saving time. Try cooking in batches that you can use to create quick dinners in the evening during the week. When shopping, always use a list so that you can get what you need faster and more efficiently.

Another excellent idea is to do all of the housework in one period of time. You can save quite a bit of time doing every chore one after another for an hour instead of over the entire day.

This author has been publishing commentary on personal issues for the past seven years. Additionally, this author is fond of contributing information on separate things, including a return address stamp along with a stamp holder.

categories: Time Management,Self-Improvement,Home,Career,Women,Motivational,Family,Parenting,Social Issues,Teens,Advice,Organizing,Health,Happiness

This is a true story that will really make you think about the amount of quality time that we spend with our kids.

Instead of the hug he was expecting at the end of a long day, his son asked him a question; “How much do you earn every hour dad?”

The man was a bit shocked by the question, but nonetheless he told him that he was paid $20 for an hour’s worth of work.

He was about to ask his son why he had asked this when his son asked him very seriously “ok dad, can I have $10 please?”

This really upset the guy as he thought that maybe his son had been taking an interest in his work, when in fact he had only been after a handout. Money was tight and he couldn’t just give it away!

He told his son this and expressed his disappointment at how his son had asked him for money. Things were already tight financially, and asking for such a thing would only make things more difficult.

The boy was bitterly disappointed by the way his father had reacted and he walked away quietly and sadly.

When his son hugged him good night he was regretting the way he had spoken to him. He smiled at his boy and handed him a $10 bill.

With a whoop of delight the child put his hand under his pillows and when he withdrew it he had $10 in dollar bills in his hand. His father was furious and wanted to know why he had wanted the money off him when he already had $10.

His son held out the money to him and said “There’s $20 dad, I’ve just bought an hour with you…….”

What do you think your children would pay for an hour of your time?

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categories: time management,parenting,family,self improvement,psychology,motivational,kids,teens,women,men’s issues,society,advice,babies,hobbies

There are 24 hours in a single day, of which the average person spends eight hours at work and eight hours sleeping…

That makes 40 hours per week of free time that you can do with as you wish during the work week plus an additional 32 hours of awake time on the weekend.

The average person actually spends twice as much time away from work than at it. So what should you do with all of your spare time? Over 72 hours a week in all!

First, you should realize that most successful people do not work forty hours a week. So you may start by applying at least eight of those 72 hours toward your work or furthering of your career.

If you have your own business, it will be easy to spend an extra eight hours of work productively. If you work for someone else you can take your work home and show the boss you put in the extra effort that other employees do not.

Better still, you may want to use this extra time to start a business of your own…something that fits in with your hobbies and can be fun as well as profitable, like car detailing, or karate instruction.

You could start a mail order business, or maybe a part-time consulting practice to sell your knowledge.

The possibilities are endless; and if you spend enough of your extra time developing them, you may well find you create another career for yourself. This is how many successful companies originated.

At least one hour a day should be spent in furthering your knowledge of your business or industry through reading, courses, and seminars. This takes another seven hours from your free time but still leaves you with just over fifty-seven free hours.

An absolute minimum of ten to fifteen minutes should be spent on planning for the next business day. Reviewing your plans for the day should be the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do when you leave work at the end of the day.

You still have over fifty five hours of free time to spend as you please, but rather than continue eating into your free time, let’s take a look at how you can better use your work time.

Work Time

Many people complain of a lack of time to do all the required daily business tasks. The best way to resolve this is to plan your days in advance, in blocks of time, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute.

By writing down how you plan to spend your time, you will instantly become far more productive. More productivity means more money and more success.

You must use your time wisely. Time is the only thing you have to sell to your company or business. How much of the time you spend at work is really spent working? The truth of the matter is very little of it is spent working effectively.

Instead you are probably spending the day as most people with poor time management skills do: putting out fires that other people started, writing memos, shuffling papers around, and sending your fifth email about the same subject because you werent clear enough the first four times.

Here is a simple eye-opener that will let you see just how much work you are really accomplishing. Show up at work tomorrow with a stopwatch and write down how you spend all of your time in five-minute intervals. Keep the sheet and stopwatch in front of you at all times.

As you start each new task, write down on the paper what that task is and start the stop watch. As you change tasks — phone calls, interruptions from co-workers, etc.– write down what the new activity is and how long you spend on it.

At the day’s end, write these 4 key headings on a separate piece of paper.

1) Meaningful work

2) Wasted time (this includes interruptions, unimportant phone calls, etc.)

3) Dealing with problems.

4) Low priority/low return work.

List underneath each of your headings the tasks you have dealt with that day. Then add up the total time spent in each category.

Now you will have a shocking picture of just how few of the hours you spend at work are spent on high-priority, money-making, business growing, or goal-oriented tasks.

Instead, what you will probably find is that looking for information, interruptions, and wasted time are the winners in the battle for your precious time.

Create a Time-Efficient Office Space

This means to have all your tools and resources in working order and at your disposal. More of your time is lost through disorganized paper management and searching for misplaced documents and reports than through any other cause.

Make a habit of keeping all your work areas and desks free of all paper except what is needed for the task at hand. When you are finished with the work at hand, immediately remove it, mail it, file it, trash it, or do whatever action is applicable, but do not leave it on your desk.

Start Each Day With a Clear Plan

If you truly want to get the most out of every day, it is essential that you begin each with a clear plan. I usually plan the next day’s events the night before. Take a day planner and write down all those tasks you want to complete the next day.

Write each task down and number them in the order of importance. Start with the most important task and stick with it until you have finished it or reached the point you wished to reach for that day. It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to line out each task as it is accomplished.

After an overall list of tasks for the day, I plan the day’s specific activities in 15-30 minute intervals using a daily planner. Plan all of your phone calls and meetings. Proper daily planning has allowed me to write 20 books on marketing and also manage a golf marketing company and a resort management company.

Be sure to always set a time limit on meetings, especially with people who are don’t pay for your time. Stick as closely as possible to your time-lines.

If you schedule 15 minutes to talk to an advertising rep, then let them know that is all the time you can spend with them. They will make their points faster, thus allowing you to save time.

As you near the end of your allotted time for a given task, give a two minute warning. Try to bring your business to a close quickly and efficiently.

Be Sure To Write Things Down

Keep a pen and paper by your phone. I can hardly believe the number of companies I call only to be asked to hold while the employee finds a pen and paper.

A pen and paper are the world’s most vital business tools, and you should NEVER be without them. I keep my appointment book open on my desktop at all times and keep notes as I speak to people. I note why they called my business and how I’m supposed to follow up with them with the information they request.

In that way, I have a record of the time, date, and purpose of their call so I can refer back to it if necessary at a future date if I need it. I also always write a person’s phone number under their name. In that way, I never have to search further than my appointment book for names and addresses.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Treat each minute as the valuable and precious resource it is. Every single person in this world starts out each day with the same amount of time in which to accomplish tasks and objectives. The only part that differs from person to person is how that time is used.

Successful people try to squeeze every second of opportunity out from the day, while those at the lower levels simply waste it away.

If you want to make $100,000 dollars a year, you must make $40 dollars an hour. That is exactly .66 per minute! If you spend 20 minutes on the phone talking to your buddy down the street about Monday night’s baseball game, you have just wasted $13.20 of your very valuable time.

If you take an hour long lunch instead of a 30 minute lunch, you have just lost $19.80 of your important time. Once lost, time can never be regained.

The next time you find yourself involved in a situation that waste your time, ask yourself the following question. Do you think I would pay my friend down the street $13.20 in cold hard cash out of my wallet, right now, to listen to me talk about last night’s game?

The answer, of course, is no. Yet, that is what you are doing. Wasting $13.20 of your cash, which should be dedicated to reaching your goals and serving your clients or business.

If you are working on a project and are interrupted by a call that takes ten minutes, it often takes you another ten minutes to get back to what you were doing. Instead of being interrupted twenty times a day, schedule 30 minutes a day for returning phone calls that are not important.

These are calls from college buddies, telemarketers, salesmen,or other people who are not actual customers. Your time at work is far too valuable to allow constant interruptions. By setting a specific time, it also eliminates annoying games of phone tag and keeps you focused.

If you wanted to earn $60,000 a year you would need to make $5,000 per month. This works out to be $1,153 per week, based on a 48-hour, six-day week, which we will say is typical for most successful people.

This breaks down further to be $192 per day or $24 per hour. You now have a powerful tool to help you reach your goals. You know exactly what you must make each and every hour that you are working in order to reach your desired income level.

Now let’s see which of your daily tasks really produce that desired figure of $24 per hour?

Advertising your business or yourself to others.

Increasing your inventory of skills.

Researching marketing information and using it for your business.

These are some of the tasks that really could help you produce $24 per hour. Good advertising makes the phone ring. Selling, whether it’s a direct sale of your products or getting someone to give you an interview for a better job, definitely pays off.

Marketing can keep other companies involved in the life of your company and brings new blood in the form of contacts and prospects. Increasing your skills makes you more valuable to yourself and others, and this will pay off quickly.

Then, of course, there are the tasks that do not produce $24 per hour.

Paying bills.

Ordering inventory.

Typing letters.

Adding to a database.

I am not suggesting that any of these things are not important to the overall success of your business. Rather, I’m suggesting that you can find someone else to do these kinds of tasks for just a few dollars an hour, allowing you to focus on the important high-return tasks.

The Word No ” The Most Powerful Word in Time Management

The simple act of saying, “NO,” will save you more time, energy, and effort than you can ever imagine. In an overexerted effort to try to please everyone, we often find ourselves taking on more and more responsibility, activities and stress.

At some point, you simply have to say, “NO, I am sorry but I can’t.” Try it; it’s not that hard, and the people asking get over your refusal very quickly. In fact, they are already calling someone else.

Put aside X amount of time in your weekly plan to help your church, school, community, or friends. Once that time is used up, it is gone, and there is no more.

Remember the words of Napoleon who said, “You can ask me for anything you like… except my time.

Andrew Wood is the world’s leading expert on golf related marketing. He is the author of over 20 marketing books including his new book Cunningly Clever Marketing. He speaks worldwide on sales and marketing topics and is in high demand as a copywriter and marketing consultant. He is also the CEO and Owner of multiple golf marketing companies including Legendary Golf Management Company.

We all work very hard trying to achieve our goals. Lots of effort goes into creating the goals, and then even more effort goes into trying to bring these to fruition. But if you just work tirelessly with no break then you are very likely to suffer from burn-out, which is the successful persons worst nightmare. But relaxation should not be something you should feel guilty about.

Some people view relaxation as a reason to feel very cautious. They worry that being relaxing, and unplugging from the daily hard work we all endure means that they are lazy, unmotivated, and unproductive. They become tense at the very mention of the word relaxation. These people believe intense and unrelenting hard work is the only way to get to our goals. However relaxation is very important part of our quest to become more successful.

For the sporting fans you may watch MMA or mixed martial arts. These fighters have an incredible level of intensity due to the nature of their sport. They are carefully trained and an important part of this training is not to do too much. They can lose power, and timing if they try too hard. Desire can sometimes cause us to be unrelenting in our pursuit of our goals.

Whether we are sports or business people, relaxing holds importance to us all. By slowing down and allowing ourselves recovery time we can maximise what effort we can give the next day. We will not suffer from a slow down as a result of overwork. The effort we need to succeed demands a combination of rest and hard work. Working too hard for too long does not help you.

The optimul method of relaxation is not to simply sit quietly. People who are stressed out can sit quietly their minds awash with what is stressing them out. On the outside they seem relaxed, but they are suffering turmoil inside and are not relaxed in any way. Some people are so stressed out all the time that they have been that way for years. Some people do not even notice it because it is almost a part of them.

I find the best way to relax is to indulge in my favourite hobby, Pool. I find this therapeutic because this is something I do well, something I enjoy and something that makes me move my effort into something that I do purely for myself, under no pressure from anyone. I also use relaxation tapes to help intensify my relaxation to levels I could not have otherwise.

If you are not used to relaxing, then using a relaxation CD will probably work well for you. You can choose when you use the material, therefore you are in control and can give your all to putting that time to good use. The benefits will surprise you, and it will likely become an important part of your life as you enjoy the benefits. Hopefully you should see yourself become calmer, and better at carrying out your daily tasks.

Ensure that you always prepare the correct conditions for using a relaxation product. Certainly you should never use a relaxation CD whilst driving or in any area where you could subject yourself to danger. I only use them in the house where I can lie down and know I am safe. As you begin to put maximum effort into relaxing in the right conditions, you will see the benefits.

You will be far more productive if you stop worrying, relax and let the positive effects transfer into real self development.