Photo Credit: ‘Out of Time’ by WildRiver Review

Being half a century in age, I have given the subject of time management a lot of thought. I am endlessly fascinated, entertained, and humbled by it. As an entrepreneur, I have often speculated– “If only I could bottle time and market it, I would be richer than Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola put together!” I would be Deborah Nelson, the original time-bottler, a Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Martha Stuart, all rolled into one. I would be the wealthiest person ever to walk the earth-even more wealthy than Solomon who was granted wisdom and wealth by God. But who can bottle time? It is a rebellious demon wretch. Nothing less than a life long quest could put that Genie into a bottle, and it would take none one less than God Himself to do it.

Time Ticks Me Off!

Time causes problems. When you need something in a hurry, there’s an instant shortage. Tempers flair. Road Rage is born, car wrecks happen, sirens scream, dangerously challenging the bounds of time even further. Time seems uncooperative. Whether you are waiting for a teenager to come home from a party, a late arrival to show up, or simply caught in a daily traffic jam, time ticking off, ticks us off!

But my purpose is not to complain even though time seems to get the brunt of all our complaints. “I didn’t have enough time,” “Our marriage is on the rocks because we don’t have time for each other.” Teacher, I didn’t finish my homework, because I ran out of time.” “My checks bounced because I didn’t get the deposit to the bank on time.” Time gets all of our excuses doesn’t it? Time really ticks us off.

You Are What You Eat?

We have all heard the expression, “You are what you eat,” but I would argue–You are what you spend your time on. “A Nick in Time saves nine.” “Time Heals All Wounds.” “Time waits for no one.” “Time Will Tell.” “Time is Money.” All these are powerful expressions about Time. How we use our time says a lot about who we are doesn’t it? If we want to make a difference in our entrepreneurial and personal life, we need to be honest and admit, “We are what we Time.”

You may wonder, how is Deborah Nelson qualified to give these tips? Surely the experts, Covey, Franklin, and Mr. Day Timer have already done it with their expert time management systems. However, I have wrestled with time as a 24/7 single parent, an entrepreneur, a writer, a homeowner supporting a daughter in a private art college, and as a woman living in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Having had less time and far more challenges than the average person, I have experimented and implemented all the Time Management methods of the day, finding them to be inadequate for my particular life challenges.

Graduating from Time Management to Time Prosperity

I love the expression; “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I finally had to admit that I was not a good time manager. I was doing the same thing over and over again and not getting different results. For Example, I was chasing time, and time was running out on me. I was twenty minutes late to everything, and after trying linear time management for many frustrating years; I was still 10 minutes late to everything. Not good enough.

I had to do something different. I was trying to manage, chase, and conquer time. I had made an enemy of it and I was losing. It was a process, but now I have learned to become a leader of, friend, and partner; and discovered Time Prosperity! Here are 3 Time Prosperity Tips for your to begin this journey. I hope even one of them will transform your relationship with Time. It a whole new way of thinking about it.

Time Prosperity Tip #1:

You can make time your enemy or you can become friends with your it. Think about it, honestly, is Time Your Enemy or Your friend?

Time Prosperity Tip #2:

You can chase time, making it run away from you, or you can walk with time side by side. Are you chasing time away, or are you walking with time?

Time Prosperity Tip #3:

Time is our most powerful and precious resource-more powerful than money, love, health, and space. How do you perceive time? Is it a Thief, or is it a Gift?

Time in a bottle? I haven’t done that yet. But making friends with time is a great start. My quest now is to tell everyone who will listen how to graduate from time management to time prosperity…Because, “You are What You Time!”

Deborah S Nelson is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of Author Your Dreams Publishing

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Image courtesy of: Julia Kim Smith/Shamim Momin, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria

‘Tempus fugit – time flies. Life is short. I can’t believe another year’s gone by…’

People say all sorts of things about time, usually about how little of it they have. Many of us genuinely lead busy lives and do find it hard to fit everything in – work, family, hobbies, exercise. But leading a happy and fulfilled life and achieving all our goals does require the skill of handling our time well. Time is a resource and must be managed.

Keep a record of what you are doing with your time.

Keeping a proper record of what you’re doing is a really important first step in managing your time and hence being more productive. When I tried this for myself, it turned out that there were vast swathes of my time that weren’t being used productively at all. Although I always regarded myself as having no time and being far too busy to do any more than I was already doing, in fact there was plenty of time spent on pretty meaningless things such as watching TV, surfing the Internet (not in a productive way), or just lying around.

What I found was that, in fact, I had plenty of time to spare. It’s all a matter of priorities – if you really want to do something, there is time. You just need to find it. Keeping a record of where your time is going will help you to do this. You could be amazed by just how much time you do have!

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”
- Harvey MacKay

Use your time more creatively

Do you spend a lot of time traveling? What do you do with that one hour daily commute to work? How about when you’re sitting in an airport departure lounge, or when you’re waiting for a train, or sitting in Starbucks waiting for a friend?

Times like this can be used more constructively. I generally carry a bag around with me and the bag will contain a book or two, usually something with a self improvement theme.

Haven’t got time to do affirmations? I thought I had this problem until I realized that I had at least one shower every day and usually two, so instead of just daydreaming randomly through this time, I started to spend it saying my affirmations.

Don’t let routines rule your life. If you usually go the gym after work but you need to work late one day, you could go early in the morning or at lunchtime, or even late at night. Maybe you could go to a different gym that’s nearer your work. My own job is very busy and unpredictable, but I still manage to get the gym three times a week (almost) without fail.

Enjoy what you are doing

In other words, live in the moment. Don’t rush from one thing to another. Just take your time and do whatever you’re doing as well as you can before moving on to the next thing. Multitasking is a myth – you’re doing things in rapid succession, but you’re flicking your attention quickly from one thing to another and, in the process, doing everything less well. I have learned through experience that multitasking is a sure fire way to become exhausted and be less productive.

Give yourself a break

You need down time. You can’t be doing ‘productive’ activities all the time. So it’s really important that you take some time to get away from all that productivity. But make sure this is really good, quality time. Watching TV is not a good way to relax – it’s too stimulating and, depending on what you’re watching, it can make you feel terrible! Randomly browsing the Internet is also not a good idea, and nor is spending time on Facebook, MSN, ICQ or playing computer games.

Try to find something that’s genuinely relaxing – having lunch with a friend, listening to a relaxing CD or some affirmations. It’s also important to get enough sleep.

Getting proper down time for yourself will actually make you more productive. I read a really interesting story recently about someone who conducted a productivity study of workers carrying large, heavy materials. The managers were getting the laborers to work flat out all day with only the minimum number of breaks allowed. Obviously, they thought that rest time was wasted time. The consultant brought in for the study decided to carry out a trial – half of the workers would carry on as usual, and the other half would take longer and more frequent rests. The managers were skeptical, but the second group ended up shifting four times more material than the first group, despite spending more time resting.

The moral of the story is obvious – we need to rest or else we will tire out and become unproductive.

Time can be your friend rather than your enemy. But you have to make it so. As with everything in life, the key is in being proactive.

Mark Harrison writes for a number of self development sites, including his own, EffortlessAbundance. Check out his latest book, Thirty Days to Change Your Life.

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Image Courtesy of Vintage Roadside’s @ Flickr

Did the word “free” in the title grab your attention?

We live in the internet age, where we’re growing more and more accustomed to getting things for free. Whether it’s information from blogs and online newspapers, services like email and Twitter, or images, videos and music tracks, it’s all free and it’s there for the taking.

The problem is, “free” could be costing you a lot more than you think.

“Free” Short-Circuits Your Brain

In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely discusses the power of “free” – and how it seems to short-circuit our logical thinking:

In one trial of one study we offered students a Lindt Truffle for 26 cents and a Hershey’s Kiss for 1 cent and observed the buying behavior: 40 percent went with the truffle and 40 percent with the Kiss. When we dropped the price of both chocolates by just 1 cent, we observed that suddenly 90 percent of participants opted for the free Kiss, even though the relative price between the two was the same. We concluded that FREE! is indeed a very powerful force.

(The Nuances of the FREE! Experiment, Predictably Irrational)

The word free often makes us ignore other options, even if these would represent extremely good value.

How often have you gone for something free… when spending just a dollar or two might’ve saved you a lot of time and effort? How did that free thing work out for you?

“Free” Costs You Time

It’s easy to assume that anything free is a no-brainer: you can’t lose by having something that’s free, right? Actually, you can. You could end up spending a lot of time and energy on something which would’ve been a lot simpler if you’d paid a few dollars.

I remember spending, literally, a whole day struggling to accomplish a task that would’ve taken seconds if I’d been willing to bite the bullet sooner and pay for software instead of using a “free” version.

How much is your time worth to you? If you work for yourself, there’s a very direct relationship between how much time you spend working and how much money you make. Sometimes, the “free” options actually works out a lot more expensive.

“Free” Draws You In and Gets You to Buy

Marketers have been using free to get people to buy for decades. In the age of the internet, this is becoming even more prevalent. Perhaps you can get a free DVD in return for your mailing address, or a free report in exchange for your email address. You can read blog after blog without spending a dime. At some point, though, you’re likely to be sold something.

In some cases, that’s not a bad thing at all. The “free” sample or product or service gave you a taste, and you loved it so much that you know purchasing will be a great decision. Sometimes, though, you can find yourself getting pressured into spending on things you don’t really want. Maybe you start using a “free” service and then have to upgrade to a premium one in order to get the features that you need – if you’d shopped around in the first place, you might have got something better.

You don’t need to avoid everything that’s free … just be aware that marketers know what they’re doing. They aren’t giving away valuable information or products just for the sake of it: they’re trying to convert you from a prospect into a customer.

When “Free” is Good

I’m certainly not suggesting that we all turn our backs on free products. Sometimes, a freebie is high-quality – it could even be better than something which you pay for.

I’d suggest that free options are a good idea when:

• You’re just dabbling your toes into a new area (whether business or hobby), and want to get a feel for whether you enjoy it
• You’re deliberating between different options and want to try out several
• The person or organisation offering the free item has a great reputation
• You’ve got the willpower (and organisation strength!) to cancel your trial before the free period runs out
• You have plenty of time on your hands but not much money

In most cases, though, give some serious thought to whether the lure of free is really going to represent good value for you. Would it be better to spend a few dollars … and save a few hours of your life?

It’d be great to hear about some of your own experiences, whether good or bad, with getting things for free. The comments are open!

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