Monday, January 18, 2016

Goals for the year

My letter to the girls on 1/18/16

Hello girls:

Last Saturday in our Relief Society monthly meeting we discussed Time management as the topic. The woman teaching the class used to be a professor at Thunderbird. The things we discussed were great reminders that when you begin to improve your use of time the results will amaze you. The improvements in attitudes toward work and home will become far more positive and effective because you will be in CONTROL.

I will share my notes since we can always improve our time management; Remember time is money! “ The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because when you give your time you are given a portion of your life that you will never get back.”

We discussed many time wasters generated by us such as TV social media, disorganization, procrastination etc.

And time wasters generated by other people or events: Traffic, Illness, etc.

Goals are to be SMART
Set specific goals
Measurable goals
Achievable goals
Realistic goals
Time bound goals

1 importance and urgency
2 keeping a diary and setting a schedule
3 making a “to do” list
4 Utilizing priorities


We did this exercise:

1.    Identify your role: Mother, wife, grandmother, friend, sister, daughter, business owner, employee, missionary, Sunday School Teacher, etc.

2.    Select goals: Next establish two or three goals of these roles.

3.    Schedule: Now, looking at a weekly planner, how do you find time to work at each of these goals? Having looked at the time needed to fulfill goals, what time is left and available?

4.    Adapt daily: Using a priority method (ABC)
A is for “Must do” B is for should Do and C is for Could do. Your A B and C’s are flexible. Priorities change with time. Today’s B’s might become tomorrow’s A’s

Another exercise was to figure out our goals for 2016
Personal development (What I want personally)
Family (What I want to achieve in my family)
Spiritual (What I want to develop spiritually)

We discussed 4 elements of planning and prioritizing from Steven R. Covey:
1 Activities on crises mode (Urgent and important)
2 Activities done ahead of time (Important but not urgent)
3 Activities that interrupt our focus (Urgent but not important)
4. Activities that waste time (Not urgent and not important)

Having made your priorities, work to the order. When unexpected demands turn up, assess their priority and deal with them accordingly, inserting them appropriately on your list or matrix. Never use something unexpected as an excuse for distraction.

At the end of the day review what has been accomplished and carry forward any items on your list, or replace any on your matrix, that have not been dealt with. Integrate these with tomorrow’s new items and reprioritize.

Every day we are faced with a set of choices. To a large extent, the effectiveness of what we do relies directly on the choices we make.

Since we cannot manufacture time we must continually decide what to do and what not to do.

We concluded how putting first things first is the key to better managing your time.

Free Resources:
1 TED Talks-- www.ted.com
2 Mindbloom-- An App for smartphone to improve your quality of life.
3 Udemy-- Courses (many free) on time management and personal development
4 Luminosity-- App for Concentration and improving memory
5 Vision Board Deluxe—App to visualize your goals into actions

Love,
Vero





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