26 Dec 2012 by

The power of the annual review – have you done yours yet?

The week between Christmas and New Year is, hands down, my favourite time of the year.

I absolutely love it!

That’s because it’s the time I prepare my diary for the next year but, most of all, it’s because I do my year-end review and goal-setting for the next year. By the way, I’ll post pictures of my gorgeous, hot pink diary for 2013.

A colleague of mine paid me the biggest compliment recently (she doesn’t even know it!) when she told me that of everyone she knows, I’m the only one she’s ever met who is this intentional about my goals.

It’s because I firmly believe that if you drift through life, there will be tons of things left undone simply because of lack of intention.

I don’t want that to be me.

Phuk

 

Anyway, back to the process…

Some of the year-end thinking can be done as you go about your life (in the shower, while driving, etc.) but there comes a point when you actually need to sit down with a pen and notebook, or with your laptop, and make the time to get things down in writing.

There’s tremendous power in creating a sacred space for your thoughts, dreams, intentions and goals.

It’s also the perfect time to start the new year with a clean slate – isn’t that so appealing?

I’ve booked out two hours tomorrow for exactly this purpose. That should be enough time since I’ve already set 2013 goals but if it’s not enough time (these things sometimes take a lot longer than you plan), I’ll take another two hours on Friday.

11-01 753

Some of the things I’ll be thinking and writing about are:

• my biggest accomplishments this year (my book is one of them)
• things I definitely don’t want to repeat
• the things I need to let go of – commitments, relationships, emotions
• my word/ theme for next year
• what my definition of success for 2013 will look like
• and finally, fine-tuning the actual goals

What about you? Have you created your sacred space yet for your 2013 goal-setting?

Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focused action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full. Visit http://www.purposefultimemanagement.com for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.

Filed Under: Goals, Intentional living, Time management Tagged With: , , , ,
1 Apr 2011 by 11 Comments

What are your organising goals for April?

 

So, it’s 1 April but this is not an April Fool’s joke 🙂
I want to know what your organising and time goals are for the month.

 

I’ll go first. Mine are

1) enjoy a lovely holiday – we’re going away for 4 days this month – so quite a bit of packing to do


2) get this blog redesigned – it’s about time, isn’t it?
3) declutter and organise the kids’ clothes as we go into the colder weather
4) get chest of drawers and other dresser painted (I’m going olive green for the one and turquoise for the other)

 

Last month I didn’t get the filing done but I did declutter their toys.

Sometimes you just have to ask youself, “what’s driving me more crazy right this minute?” 🙂

 

So, what are your organising goals this month?

 

PS I’m also going to blog every day this month. So I need some ideas – what questions would you like me to answer? Ask in the comments and I’ll pepper my answers throughout the month. And don’t forget to send me your inspiring space, or the link if you see some gorgeous spaces while you’re blog-hopping.

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
15 Mar 2011 by 2 Comments

Is it urgent or important?



Let’s talk about the difference between URGENT and IMPORTANT.

Urgent refers to a time deadline.

Important means it is high value.

Every day things come across our path that are of low or high importance, and low and high urgency.

Grab a piece of paper and draw a big square. Now draw a line down and another across. You should now have 4 smaller squares.

Along the top, write High Value and Low Value. And along the left-hand side, write Deadline and No Deadline.

Basically, you want to always focus your time in the blocks on the left.

The top block is high value AND high urgency, which means it must get done NOW and it is VERY important. I like to think of client work in this block. Clients are why most of us are in business and there are usually deadlines attached. If you’ve ever bought a product of mine, you’ll know that you’re redirected to a page telling you I have a 24-hour turnaround time. Private 1:1 clients know that I’ve committed to ALWAYS respond within 24 – 48 hours.

The block below that is HIGH value but LOW urgency and it is here that you need to focus if you’re ever going to move towards your goals. Why?

Nobody is standing over my head saying “you need to work on an email teleseminar” but I know that if I want to reach my goal of running x number of live teleseminars this year, I need to MAKE TIME to do that.

And it’s the same for you.

Whether your goal is to improve your fitness levels, get your home organised or have 3 hours of free time every week, you’re going to have to put some work into that quadrant.

That’s if you want to reach your goals.

I don’t even like to bother with the other two quadrants but I know that’s going to drive some of you crazy so let me just give you some email examples –

Low value tasks with a deadline are things like “send this email to 10 people within the next hour”. They have absolutely no value and the deadline is usually imposed by other people. Most interruptions also fall into this block.

Low value tasks with no deadline are emails with jokes, funny pictures and the like. My suggestion is to get these out of your inbox permanently as they disrupt your focus and waste your time!

For the next two weeks, your challenge is to focus on the top two quadrants and only do tasks that fit there.

  • Bonus – really step it up by making sure that you definitely get AT LEAST one task in the “goals” quadrant done every day.
Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: , , , ,
7 Dec 2010 by Leave a Comment

Marcia’s Easy-Peasy Goal-Setting System


Would it surprise you that I’ve already started working on my goals for 2011?

I’m not ashamed to say I’m a passionate goal-getter.

I’m the type of person who’s happier taking charge of my life than letting life happen to me.

So I set and achieve goals. I would never have managed to travel as much as I have if I hadn’t consciously set those things as goals.

This is me at Victoria Station in London – I love this pic Dion took of me. What does it say to you?

Here’s how I do my goal-setting, very, very briefly:

1.       I think back over the year that’s been and write down what went well and what didn’t. This could take up to an hour or longer, depending on how the year went.

2.      I then look forward and think about what I want for the year ahead. I really spend time getting clear on my vision, fleshing it out fully. This is also when I think about my ONE word for the year.

3.      Then I take my goals form (in the Time Management Purpose Pack) and in each of the areas of my life, like Family, Health, Spiritual, Business, I write down 1 – 3 broad goals.

4.      I then check each of those goals and make sure they align with my One Word or theme and more importantly, that I’m excited by them and that they feel authentic with who I am. E.g. One of my values is Balance so if I have too many goals, I start to feel out of control and therefore, inauthentic with who I am. So if this happens, I go back to the drawing board to simplify some more.

5.      I also make sure that they are within my control. E.g. with my business, I can only control my actions. Yes, I do set the intention to have x clients bringing in y mo.ney but the things I can control is how much marketing to do, in which ways, how often, etc. I can’t actually control the clients’ behaviour and whether they choose to coach with me or not. Does this make sense?

6.      I then choose 3 – 5 goalsvto work on for the first 90 days, schedule the work and get to it.

7.      I like to add one or two quick wins to get started so that when I achieve those goals, I’m motivated to persevere with the harder ones.

I’ve had the privilege (because I do count it a privilege to work with the wonderful people who coach with me) to work with some women recently and we’ve already been touching on their goals for next year.

I wanted to do something spec.ial for all of you so I’m giving you a 33% disc.ount cou.pon off a 30-minute goal-setting session for the next 72 hours only. Use the disc.ount code GOALS in the shopping cart.

All that means is this – you have to book and pay for your Success Strategy Session by Sat 11th 12pm EST/ 7pm South African time but the session can be scheduled all the way up to 31 January 2011.

That said, if there’s areally good reason why you can’t have your session by 31 Jan, tell me – we’ll work something out 🙂

Are you a goal setter? Have you started for next year? Tell me I’m not the only one!

Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: , ,
22 Oct 2010 by 5 Comments

Baby steps

I fell down the stairs at work last year when I was 16 weeks pregnant and since then, I’ve been taking the lift/ elevator.

That was 19 months ago.

Somehow I got in the habit of taking the lift and didn’t think anything of it.

During the last week of September, I suddenly realised there were only 3 months before the end of 2010.

Upping my exercise schedule is near impossible because of lack of babysitters so Dion and I have to take turns to go to gym at night while the babies are sleeping.

Because of this I thought “baby steps! what can I do to take advantage of every few minutes here and there?”

I decided that I’d have to exercise whenever a chance presented itself. Hopefully all the extra walking will evenutally count for an extra gym session over the course of a week.

So I’ve started climbing the stairs at work.

At least three flights up and three flights down every day.

Add to that running up and down stairs when I go to meetings and it’s all adding up, very slowly, but still, adding up.

The first couple of days were terrible. My knees protested as did my leg muscles.

Now, a month in, I’m almost to the top before I start feeling the strain.

I also want to add that I told EVERYONE how I’ve made a commitment to myself that I will only take the stairs. People are really supportive and some have even joined me in taking the stairs instead of taking the lift.

It reminds me how I tell clients to start with one small habit daily and build on that. It almost seems insignificant but it isn’t.

It’s like organising your entire home 15 minutes at a time.

It’s not about how much progress you’re making but about creating momentum.

This weekend, my question for you is this:

where can you start doing baby steps in your life? how can you start creating momentum in your life?

If you’re brave enough, I dare you to share in the comments. This could just be the accountability you need 🙂

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Filed Under: Time management Tagged With: ,
WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com