Time Challenge - Old for the New

After what it seems like months, I’m back to writing daily here on my blog.

To my partners in the Time Challenge, I would like to apologize for my absence and almost two weeks of silence. The Challenge continues, because like I said in January, it will last until I completely change, and I haven’t completely changed yet. So, let’s continue moving forward!

To the followers of this blog, please forgive me for not posting the movie reviews you voted for. Will dedicate this week to do just that.

If you were following the series about Twilight, know that it has not ended. There are actually 5 more chapters to go and I will post the third one this Thursday.

Time Challenge Step # 5 - The 10-minute tactic

This week’s step is very simple and yet very practical.

If you’ve been following the steps of this challenge, then you have already begun to see lots of results. Your life is supposed to a little more organized, but still you might notice that some of the things you need to do are always left undone.

Do you know those little things you need to do, but because they are not as important as your everyday frogs, you never get to do it? Like organizing your documents/papers, organizing your closet, replying to a friend’s email, organizing your bathroom cabinets or organizing your husband’s sock drawer lol?

The problem with little tasks is that at first you think ‘this is not so important right now, so I’ll leave it for later, tomorrow, next week’, and when you see, the little task has become a big one or even a frog but with everything else going on in your life, you just can’t separate an hour or a few hours to work on it.

And here’s where Step # 5 comes in. We will start creating ‘chunks of time’ from this week on.

Starting   today, you will separate 10 minutes everyday to do some kind of little task. All you need to do is choose a time during the day and work on it for 10 minutes only.

The secret is doing that everyday. E V E R Y D A Y.

By the end of the week, you will have worked on your little task for 1 hour and 10 minutes without having to separate 1 hour during your busy week to have it done! There will be progress on the task you are working on (who knows, maybe you will even have finished it) and the great thing is that it doesn’t feel like a task at all!

Choose one task, separate 10 minutes of your busy day and get to work. Once you finish the one you will start today, choose something else and something else after that  :)

Let me know how it goes by leaving your comment here.

P.S.: I’ve already left a comment saying what little task I’ll be working on. What about you? Come on… II really want to know!

Time Challenge Step # 4 - Learn to Prioritize

The last few weeks have showed me what challenging myself really means. Some of my plans didn’t work as well as I would have liked them too, others went down the drain completely. For a while it seemed that my frogs were the ones controlling my time lol.

A lot has happened, especially in the last few days, that brought the idea that perhaps this Time Challenge doesn't and will never work.

But this is my heart talking, because if I use my head (and I did), I will see that I have accomplished in the month of January things that I haven’t be able to do for months, some for years, and others that I have never been able to accomplish.

So, even though the last couple of days didn’t go so well, I must say that the results I had were incredible and I should be satisfied... but I am not. 

Last week I wrote a passage that says there is a time for everything and everything has its time. I believe that 100% and that’s why I am here. That’s why I have determined that February will be even better than January and so it will!

Now one thing that you need to understand is that although there is a time for everything, you will never have time to do everything. That’s right. You will never have time to do everything, because if that were possible, everyone would already have achieved everything they want in life, everything will be done. But the truth is, there’s always something to be done, even if you go through your whole list if to-dos today, there’s always something to be done still.

But that doesn’t matter… as long as you do what’s really important.

If you come to the end of the day and you have done all your most important tasks, will it really matter than you haven’t done everything on your list?

You need to determine what your most important tasks for each day are.

So let’s do some exercise here, shall we?


Write on a notebook everything you need to do today.
Highlight your frog or frogs for today.
Now see which of your tasks are really important.
Write 1, 2, 3, 4… in front of each one, according to their order of importance.
Write your list again, following the order of the numbers. 

By doing this exercise, you might see that there are some tasks that can be left for tomorrow or that your frog was actually towards the end of the list, when it should be first or even that some tasks are not really that important and don’t need to be done at all.

We will do that everyday this week, starting today.  Make a list tonight of all the things you need to do tomorrow following the steps I just gave you.

This exercise will help us prioritize so we can spend our time in what's really important. And that will make all the difference this month.

I’m moving forward, what about you?

P.S.: Partners who haven’t received my email yet, don’t worry. You WILL be receiving it this week ;)

Time Challenge - It's time to revise!

It's time to revise everything we learned in the month of January. Bu now you should:

1. Have a very important reason as to why you want to manage your time well.

2. Have written down all your projects and choose which ones you are going to be working on right now and which ones you will leave for later.

3. Be eating at least one frog every day.

4. Do what you have to do even you don't fell like it.

If you have signed up to be my partner in this Challenge, you will be receiving extra help this week, so check your inbox often ;)

For now I will leave you a message that has everything to do with the fourth step in our challenge. Read, think about it and be ready for next week!

There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth: 

   A right time for birth and another for death, 
   A right time to plant and another to reap, 
   A right time to kill and another to heal, 
   A right time to destroy and another to construct, 
   A right time to cry and another to laugh, 
   A right time to lament and another to cheer, 
   A right time to make love and another to abstain, 
   A right time to embrace and another to part, 
   A right time to search and another to count your losses, 
   A right time to hold on and another to let go, 
   A right time to rip out and another to mend, 
   A right time to shut up and another to speak up, 
   A right time to love and another to hate, 
   A right time to wage war and another to make peace.

Time Challenge - The key

If you have been applying yourself to this challenge of making time to do all you have/need/want to do, it's important that you understand a few things:

Changing your behavior is not like changing clothes. It takes time. It will take time. Don’t dismay.

You need to be committed 100% and make this a priority in your life.

You will not always feel like doing what you need to do.

Some days you will wake up in the morning all energized for the day ahead. You will have all your frogs written down and you will not only be ready to eat them, you will WANT to eat them. Your alarm will go off in the morning and your immediate response will be I'M READY!  

But sometimes you don't even feel like getting up from the bed and throughout the day you just feel too tired to do anything difficult.

Sometimes you want to work hard, sometimes you just want to watch TV.

There are days that everything goes according to plan and there are some that everything turns into a total DISASTER.

Some days you feel like this is working and sometimes it just feels like a waste of time.

And here's the secret to succeed in spite of the bad days:

You must ignore what you feel.

If you rely on the way you feel, you will always be going back to square one.

So, whether you feel like it or not, you MUST press forward, you must continue with your tasks, you must carry on with eating your frogs. This is not a step but the key to succeeding in this Challenge. 

If you’ve tried to do something important before and failed, if you signed up for this challenge on December 26th and are not doing very well or have already given up, just look back and you will see that the reason was exactly this: You didn't feel like doing everything written here or you didn't feel like it was working, or you didn't feel like trying anymore or you didn't feel like you could.

You don't feel like going on? Go on anyway!

Don't feel like making that list of things you need to do tomorrow? Do it now!

Feel like doing everything else on your list but eating that giant, ugly, fat frog? Take the first bite!

Most often than not, YOU WILL NOT FEEL LIKE doing what you need to do, but you MUST DO IT ANYWAY.

If you can overcome your own feelings, then you can overcome everything else in your life. If you can't...

Time Challenge Step # 3 - The Frog Diet

A few years ago I read this very nice book about time management and it taught me one of the most important lessons on how to organize my time.

It taught me to eat frogs.

Yes, if I wanted to get a lot done throughout my week, I should eat at least one frog every morning.

Here's what the book says:

'It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.'

How true is that? 

Your frog is the most important task you have to do today, the one that you will most likely leave for 'later' (and you and I know very well that later means never, or some day when you cannot postpone it any longer because everything got out of control). This is usually the most boring task, the one you DON'T want to do, that one you feel tired just by thinking about it, but also the one that will have the greatest positive impact on your day and life and will bring the most results.

We usually tend to do the opposite. We choose the easier and enjoyable (or at least less boring) tasks first and after they are completed, we are simply too tired to do the long, boring, tiresome and more important one. No wonder we are always leaving it for the 'next day' (which also means 'never').

If from all the hard things you need to do today, you choose the hardest and stay with it until it's completed, you will go on with your day with a sense of accomplishment and relief since your most important/difficult task is already done.

'If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first'. 

Here's another thing, many times we are surrounded by frogs, especially if we've been postponing eating them for a long time, so if you have two or more very hard tasks to do today, choose the hardest one and do it first.

Last but not least:

'If you have to eat a live frog, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long.'

Which means you have to do your most important/boring/hard task first thing in the morning so you can get it over with.

We all have frogs to eat today and everyday and the longer we take to eat them, the fatter, bigger and uglier they get. So, here's what we will be working on everyday this week:

1. Make a list of everything you have to do tomorrow  

 2. See what your most important task is, the one that if completed will have the most positive impact on your life today - usually the one you tend to postpone

3. Do it before you do any other tasks. Do it first thing in the morning and don't start anything else until you have finished it

  

I've already been using this method and it really works. So, let's agree on something, shall we?

Everyday this week we will come here at the end of the day and leave our comments on how our day went. We will say how many frogs we managed to eat, what is working and what is not working ok?

Writing this post is one of my frogs for today :) So, this one is eaten... on to the next one!

P.S.: If you’d like to join us in the next phase of the Time Challenge, just click here.

The reason is very important

If you are anything like me, then you are not very good at following too many directions at the same time. 

For example, if you teach me anything new by giving me lots of instructions, I will have a hard time learning whatever it is that you are trying to teach me. I function much better taking a few things at a time. So based on this small deficiency of mine, I will give you small steps every week on learning how to manage your time well.

As you can see on my previous post on this subject, I'm far from being an expert at this, but I aim to get there someday, hence the Time Challenge.

I have tried to be organized many times before, but never really succeeded because of a lot of factors, but there's one thing I have recently noticed that I never had before. If I am to succeed at this I need to understand that knowing the reason why I want to change this about myself is absolutely crucial to make it happen. The problem is that many times we have the wrong reasons:

Here are some reasons that although good, were never really enough to make me change:

1. If you are not organized with your time, then you are not normal, not really efficient in what to do and therefore you start building a bad reputation for yourself 

2. You want to have some peace. You just want to be done with all your tasks so you don't have to worry about them anymore

3. You have too many things to do and you feel overwhelmed

4. It is the right thing to do

5. You don't want people after you, demanding that you do this or that. Again, the peace thing.

If any or all of these things are incentive enough for you to want to change, good. Use them! It's important that you know why and what you are changing for. However, if you have thought about the above, you tried to change it but didn't succeed, then maybe your reason is wrong.

I have asked myself 'why is that although I improve in this area of my life, I never seem to be able to really change?' The answer was 'You are not really focusing on your real reason'. Once I understood that, I had the motivation I needed to try again, to try harder, to do better and make all the necessary sacrifices to achieve my goal.

I will not tell everyone here what my reason is, it's very simple actually but very, very important to me. That small detail I'm only telling my partners, who signed up for this challenge with me.

But here's the first step towards time management success:

Find out why you want to change. If your reason is not good enough or strong enough, then you have to find a better reason, an end result that will make your sacrifices worthwhile. 

If you have no reason, then you don't really need to change, do you?

One of my major Flaws...

If you don't know me personally, you might have an idea about the way I am based on what you see in my blog:

* I like movies lol

* I like to talk to others about movies

* I like to read

* I smile a lot

* I think sincerity is a very important trait to have

* I'm part of the YPG

* I like to be in contact with my 'followers' here on the blog 

And other things you might have noticed.

However there's something about me that I have never talked about with you but that can also be noticed here on my blog.

This is one of the things I hate the most about me. Are you ready for this?

One of my major flaws is THE INABILITY TO DO MANY THINGS AT THE SAME TIME. In other words, to manage my time well.

I have read a few books on the subject, I have learned from people who truly know how to do this, and believe me, I HAVE TRIED many, many times. But then last week I realized that it's not that I don't know how to manage my time well so much as it is that I'm not disciplined enough. So, I have made a decision!

I'm going to be putting in practice everything that I've learned about time management, I will challenge myself to CHANGE once and for all and I'll be posting here (every Monday) about my progress and what I learn along the way.

So, since I know for a fact that I'm not the only human being with that problem, I'd like to challenge someone else.

I'm looking for a partner, someone who struggles a lot with time management and who undoubtedly suffers with the consequences of it. The reason I'm doing this is because it's easier to change something about ourselves when we have to be accountable to someone, plus the fact that the other person becomes an extra motivation.

If you are interested in joining me in this challenge, please send me a message here. I'll be sending you personal messages and tips and that way we will be able to monitor each other's progress. Please bear in mind that in order for you to be my partner in this, you need to be a follower of my blog lol. So please, go to the right-hand side of this blog where it says 'Friends' and click on 'Follow'.

My 'Time Challenge' starts today and continues until... I change :)

P.S.: Have you been trying to change something about yourself but is not able to? Go public! Tell someone, ask for help. When all else fails... go public.


P.S. 2: To register to become my partner, please follow this link: Registration Form.