Making Your To-Do List Work For You
Often to-do lists end up becoming “one of these days I hope to get around to this” lists. When this happens, the list become useless and worse, it makes you feel guilty and it can hold you back from taking action. You know there’s no way you’ll ever get through your list so why even bother. It’s ok to have a “one of these days” list but the list you look at regularly needs to include things that you are really going to act on.
Here are 10 questions to ask yourself BEFORE you put something new on your to-do list and if you’ve already got a to-do list that’s a mile long you can use these questions to help you lighten your load. Read more
Do you Constantly Race Against the Clock?
I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that we live in a world with endless possibilities and opportunities. The bad news is that all of these possibilities and opportunities can get overwhelming and you may find yourself not accomplishing anything.
Often as I speak with my clients or (to be completely transparent here) even as I look at my own desk, I get the sensation of drowning in a pool of options and to-do’s.
Different people have different reactions to all of the options. Some people end up freezing and doing nothing, while other people may jump from one thing to another in an effort to get everything done. The end result is the same…at the end of the day you wonder where the day has gone and marvel at how little you’ve accomplished and how much more there is to do.
Since there are so many things that my clients and I either want to do or feel that we “should” do, we sometimes create one of those “brain dump” lists in an effort to get everything out of our brains and into one spot. I wish I could simply wave a wand and accomplish everything on my “brain dump” list but I can’t because the reality is that we only have 24-hours a day.
Maybe it would be different if the list was stagnant but it isn’t. Somehow the universal law of to-do lists seems to be to always add more than you can possibly cross off. If you try to do everything all you’ll manage to do is engage in a race against the clock that you will never win and you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and in the end, unproductive.
When I see this happening either for myself or my clients it means it’s time to Read more
3 New Coaching Spots Now Open…Video
I sent out an email last week about some openings in my coaching program. As I spoke with people about the program I kept getting the same questions so here’s a short video that answers them.
It’s just 3 minute long…enjoy!
To apply for the CarrieThru Coaching Program geared specifically for entrepreneurs send an email to Carrie @ CarrieThru.com. Let me know what’s going on in your business to day and where you want it to be. Make sure to include your phone number and email address so that we can talk and make sure this program is a good fit for you.
Your Weekend To-Do List
It’s Saturday morning and I woke up really early. My brain was really busy thinking about my “weekend to-do list”. It’s a mile long and frankly I couldn’t figure out what to do or how to do it.
Then I figured it out and decided to shoot a short video telling you about my weekend plans.
Go ahead and watch it…it’s only 4 minutes long. If I look a bit tired it’s because I am…that’s what happens when you’re trying to get too many things done.
I hope you enjoy the video…I’m off to enjoy my weekend!
Oh yeah…here’s the link I referred to in the video: www.CarrieThru.com/jumpstart
Jump Start to Getting Organized: Take Control of Your Time, Tasks and Things begins Wednesday June 16th…
Click here to learn more & join me
Calm the Overwhelm by Saying “No”
I received an email recently that summed it up best…
“I’m overwhelmed, over stimulated, interested in everything … recently got a promotion…have more responsibility that I don’t feel prepared to handle…feel like quitting and hiding from everyone. I’m spinning my wheels and not accomplishing anything…I’m burnt out to the point of avoiding everything, and not caring what happens and really creating a point of no return for myself.”
Overwhelm is everywhere. There are so many things that you think you should do, have to do, or want to do. How do you find your way through the maze of these ideas in order to accomplish anything?
For many people, especially entrepreneurs like myself, the overwhelm often comes in the form of ideas. It might be projects or programs that you want to create or take part in, ideas to follow up on, events to attend, people to connect with and even clients to work with.
New ideas are tantalizing. To me they symbolize “bright, shiny object syndrome” better than anything else. You find yourself reaching out and grabbing them. Unfortunately, the reality is that when you reach out and grab too many they end up sitting in piles on your desk, or muddled in your mind. The ideas aren’t bright and shiny anymore, in fact they get old and tarnished. Read more
5 Strategies to Stay Focused and On Track
Call it procrastination, distraction, lack of focus, being unproductive or whatever you want, bottom line is that there are things that you simply need to focus on and get done. Sometimes it’s quick and easy other times it seems near impossible. You know it has to be done but…How?
Staying focused and getting things done is a topic that comes up frequently as I work with my clients and even as I approach my own tasks.
Here are five strategies that my clients and I all use to help us get things done! Read more
Managing Your Email … Part 2
I realized that dealing with email is a two step process. The first step, which I wrote about earlier, is managing what actually comes in. The second step is handling or “doing” your email.
Step2: Five Strategies to manage the time you spend “doing” email. Read more
Managing Your Time By Adding Structure
Watch and listen as Carrie tackles the issue of how to deal with your time when there are no external deadlines
3-Real Life Strategies to Get Things Done
Diane felt overwhelmed every time she looked at her to-do list.
Diane knew that her to-do list was supposed to keep her on track, help her figure out what she wanted to do and keep her from feeling overwhelmed, but this wasn’t happening. Instead, every time she looked at her list she felt more overwhelmed then ever and even more convinced that she’d never get any of it done.
Diane worked really hard all day long. She’d knuckle down and spend her day busy and running from one thing to another. As the day wore on she’d anticipate finally crossing something off her list but, try as she might, she never could.
To figure out what was going on, during one of Diane’s coaching sessions we spent some time digging into the specific things that she had on her list.
Here’s just a sampling of what she listed:
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Final decisions on investments – act!
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Damned police report!
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Get oil changed!
Diane and I addressed each of these items in turn. As we discussed them we learned a lot and figured out why they weren’t getting done. Then based on the lessons we uncovered we formulated three strategies that she’ll be able to apply to all of her tasks. Here is what we found out. Read more
How to Get Motivated and Stay on Track
Watch and listen as Carrie addresses the issue…Getting motivated to do a task isn’t always easy and then once you finally do get yourself going how do you keep on task and stay at it?
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