Six Sigma Blogs

Andy Dufresne, a character from the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, says, “Either get busy living or get busy dying.”

Today, let’s dissect this one little quote so that you can get an understanding of its magnitude and see how it can change the course of your future! We’re sure you can think of a dozen quotes that communicate the viewpoint of this concept as well, but we like this one.

“I can’t. I’m busy.” Are these familiar to you? Do you use them as an excuse not to get started on a new opportunity? The first question that you should ask yourself is, “What am I busy doing?” Do you know the difference between being active and being productive? A-HA! Had you thought of that before? It’s absolutely clear that this question is the single most critical one in our journey. Sure, you’ve been “busy” in your life or career but now you can look back and decide if you’ve been busy or productive. If you’ve been “busy,” you have a chance now to become productive instead.

Most people give these terms, “busy” and “productive,” a similar meaning - to them, it translates as, “getting things done.” However, there is a difference and it’s found in what we are getting done. Being “productive” means getting things done that NEED to be done in order to move forward. Being “busy” is simply getting things done with no regard to priority or importance.

Life contains polar opposites. Without them, we wouldn’t know what anything was. Things expand or shrink, moves forwards or backwards, in or out. If you aren’t moving your life forward; expanding, growing, progressing, then you’re dying.

The difference between “busy” and “productive” lays the groundwork of understanding the quote above. Either you are moving your life forward or you’re not … either you are busy living or busy dying!

Have you kept yourself busy with relatively unimportant work so as not to have to get dirty with the seemingly enormous tasks that would have the most impact on your life? Learn to differentiate between actions that keep you “busy” and those that make you “productive.” Don’t justify your decision by saying, “These things have to be done too”, or “I will just get this stuff out of the way first.”

Often it is the things we don’t do that ultimately have the largest impact on our businesses, careers or families. You will delay the achievements of the things you claim to be important to you by not getting your productive tasks completed first. If you took an honest look, would you say this has been true for you?

There came a point when we chose to make a different decision. We decided that each action required the question, “Does doing this keep us busy or productive?” We learned through this process that we were making conscious decisions. We were thoughtful about what we were putting our time into, and let us tell you, it’s had a HUGE impact on our lives. Who knew it could be so simple?

What do you want to do? Write a book? Submit an invention? Pursue a new career? You know what it is that would have an impact on your life and move it forward. If you don’t know, take a moment to consider the answer.

Have you thought about it over and over? What held you back? Why did you choose inaction over action? Were you too busy? Too scared of the unknown? Today is a new day. What is your decision today? Take a look at what you want; what are you going to do now? It’s just that simple. Make a decision.

When you decide to do, then everything becomes focused on the outcome. There is no busy work or excuses that you’ll allow to stand in your way. There’s no time to waste. When it’s a commitment to your life, nothing stands in the way of following through. Be empowered. You are productive and best of all, you are moving forward with your LIFE! You are busy living!

YOU NEVER GET TODAY AGAIN! Anything short of spending productive time on your life is time being wasted. You will never get it back. “Busy work” is “busy dying.” You have a choice and you can’t do both.

The only time to LIVE is right NOW! There is only one time that exists and that is NOW! This very instant you have a choice to “be productive” and live or to “be busy” and lose this time in your life forever.

Were you aware that it’s a choice? It is! It is yours and yours alone to make, but rest assured you can choose whatever it is you want. As our friend Mary Morrissey always says, “It is your life, make it a great one.”

Get your free tools to create abundance in your life and begin to live an abundant life today!

Our society demands our time be spent in our work; as such many may feel as if they do not have enough time most of the time for their personal life. However, that is only true when they do not learn how to become more productive and efficient in handling their job.

One way you can be more productive and efficient is simply learning how to be more organize, by being more organize you will find yourself becoming more efficient and productive, as such having more time for you and your family.

Striking a healthy balance in your life and work is essential in keeping you and your family happy, thus it is definitely worth it to take the time to organize to become more productive at work.

This article will give a few pointers as to how to achieve this.

-Priority - Instead of doing a lot of things at the same time, which can slow down your progress or even cause you to make mistakes, why not learn how to give priority to the most pressing work? This way you get to focus even more and finish the job faster without running the risks of mistakes.

-Don’t Procrastinate - Eventually, you’ll be facing a pile of boring and mundane job that you do not want to do! Therefore stop procrastinate about doing it and actually sit down and start doing it, since there is no escaping from it either way, you might as well get it out of the way, so that you do not bring the burden home.

-Learn how to delegate - If you are in the position where delegations of responsibilities are possible, then you should do so instead of trying to finish everything on your own. In today’s world, instilling a sense of teamwork and trust is important as collectively you can achieve even greater heights with your colleagues.

-Saying no - Most people would dread to say this word when facing a job request even though they might already be swamped with a huge work load. The primary reason is because they are afraid that others would not like them, however accepting jobs that you might not be able to complete on time or make mistakes while doing so can even have a more devastating effects than saying no. Thus you need to start saying no to request you know you cannot accomplish, explain to your boss about your situation and they might even appreciate your honesty!

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Time management is somewhat of an ambiguous term. It can mean “task management” or “life management”. But why is time management important? There are several reasons, along with a few benefits and advantages too. This article is going to help walk you through a few reasons behind the importance of time management.

Time isn’t forever. Your time is precious, it cannot be replenished. Therefore time management is a good option. This way you can make the most out of the time that you have, we all get the same 24 hours a day.

What you do with your time equals who you are. Basically this means that you as a person are the sum of the things you do with your time. Someone who plays a lot of sport is often called a sporty person for example. Managing your time well is key to being the person you want to be.

Happiness. When you are living a balanced life due to managing your time well - you will feel less stressed. People with effective time management skills experience less stress.

Live a balanced life. You life will be divided evenly between work, home and leisure activities. As you work more efficiently you will get your work done very fast in comparison to someone with no time management skills. Spend more quality time with your family and enjoy life.

Control over your life. Time management means that you control how you spend your life. Put simply - this means that you control your life. You could ask your boss to work remotely - then complete your work in half the hours. If you are working a 40 hour week, you just brought yourself 20 hours of time back!

Really the question shouldn’t be “what is the importance of time management?” But rather, when are you going to start to learn to manage your time better?

Find out more about the why is time management important. Also Michelle has a website with great personal time management tips, overcoming procrastination, time management quotes and how to learn to manage time.

Time management tips are little tidbits that help you to manage your time better. It’s true, we can never control how much time we have. But we organize what we can accomplish as it goes by.

These time management tips are the building blocks to successfully managing your time. If you start using them you are guaranteed to see some improvement in your time management.

1. Make a to-do list. What use is a to-do list? A to-do list will help you to prioritize your tasks into a manageable list, and allows you the satisfaction of crossing them off when completed. Make sure you write the list with the most important things at the top down to tasks that are low priority. The main thing is though, make sure you follow your list! Otherwise you may as well not have it!

2. Having a routine is your secret weapon to successful time management. A strong routine will keep you focused, balanced and on track. And it means your list will stay organized too!

3. Importance vs Urgency. Importance leads to achieving of goals. Whereas urgency is more about another person putting the pressure on to get you to do something they want. This can lead to a person feeling uncomfortable and stressed. Make sure you always prioritize your important tasks over urgent ones (those that someone else is pressuring for but don’t really benefit you). Target tasks that contribute towards your day goal.

4. Identify your time wasters. Doesn’t matter if it is playing online games, chatting on the phone, facebook, worrying, daydreaming, internet time - all these things make you less productive.

5. Track your time. You may want to keep a time management journal to record how you spend you time. This is better than guessing or estimating as often you will be wrong. By doing this you can work out what time of day you are most alert and productive. Schedule your work to be at these times.

I remember my old teacher saying that there is no such thing as “Time Management”, he said that’s because we are given only 24 hours each day. We can’t change that. What’s more realistic or appropriate to say is “Task Management”. I’ve never forgotten about that ever since.

I hope you enjoyed these time management tips. The message I am sharing is - by managing your time better you cannot lose! You will be more productive while getting to do the things that you enjoy!

Learn more about the importance of time management. Rachel got her information together from a assortment of resources including these time management tips.

You know what, it could very hard and also very easy for you to bring your ex boyfriend back. It all depends on whether you are prepared or not, whether you have a effective plan or not. If you two broke up not a very long time ago, it is crucial for you to find out whether your ex boyfriend still wants you back or not.

How exactly should you find out what he is thinking? Is it okay to contact him or not? If so ,when and how? There is rather a proven way recommend by lots of relationship experts to deal with this kind of situation. That is the no contact rule.But we are not gonna waste our time to define what no contact rule actually is here. You primary objective is to find out whether he’s still interested in you or not.

Guess what, it is not very difficult for you to find out the truth. If he still calls you one time after another and ask you how have you been without any specific reasons. You bet that he still misses you and wants you back in this case.It is possible that he always tries to spend more time with you on the phone and he is not willing to end the conversion. This is a great sign that he still cares about you a lot. He’s probably thinking about how to relate it to you that he still wants you back.

If he send you a lot of text, that’ s another good sign. That also means he still misses you a lot and just wants to get close to you. So you might be get back with him if he decide to tell you that.

Another huge great sign is when he asks to take you out for a movie or dinner. You get to spend some personal time with him and you can feel if he is still interested in you or not when you talk to him in person. Actually that’s even better. Surely ,some tips will work for you and some will not. So it is very important for you to take action and to find the best one for you.

Want to find out more about How Do I Get My Ex Girlfriend Back, then visit Gracie Edwards’s relationship blog on how to Get My Ex Wife Back.

We’re all trying to get more out of life, but there’s often a disconnect between the actions we take and the goals we’re aiming for. The reason for this is that we treat ourselves like workers instead of treating ourselves like the boss. When you’re an employee you basically do what you’re told without asking many questions simply because that’s your job. You may goof around and you may take your time because, generally, you have little personal interest in the job before you.

By acting more like a manager you give yourself a deeper stake in the outcome of your behavior and you feel as though you’re working for yourself instead of someone else. To act more like a boss you simply have to treat yourself like a factory instead of a person. You get to call the shots and you get to say what goes.

Managing Your Money: We all have some control over how we spend our money, but we also have control over how we generate money. Sure, you know you have control over how you spend your money, but you also have control over how you make your money. You’ll start out as the worker bee but after time you’ll end up as the uncomplicated boss that everyone loves.

Managing Your Wellness: You control not only what you eat, but the actions you take. By taking charge and treating your body like a factory you can begin managing it as a manager might control an assembly line. The more good food you eat and the more you exercise, the more efficient and powerful your body is. If you’re having a difficult time being motivated, try to imagine yourself a little cartoon manager who literally controls how your body moves and acts.

Manage Your Time: We all want more time and we all complain about not having enough. The key to time management is a little bit of planning mixed with a little bit of flexibility Again, just doing things for the sake of doing them is not good enough. You need to treat your schedule as a manager would: prioritize the things that have to get done and the things that need to get done. Once your gain control over your time everything else will fall into place.

Becoming a manager of your finances, your wellness and your time will pay you back a million fold as you improve your management skills. Stop being a worker and give yourself a promotion - right to the manager’s office!