by Marcia Ramsland
Simplify Your Time is organized into thirty practical, bite-sized chapters that give you, in the words of the author, “everything you need to learn the nuances of simplifying your time.” Plus you’ll find 100 time-saving tips scattered through the book.
Each chapter offers a simple tip that you can put into practice immediately. You don’t have to read the whole book at once – just take a chapter a day and at the end of four weeks you’ll have learned how to “save time, spend time, capture time, and multiply your time to simplify your life.”
Think about it: wouldn’t you love to “Power Through Your Paperwork”, “Create Weekly Time-Saving Routines”, “Simply Find More Personal Time”, and “Do Less to Accomplish More”? With author (and professional organizer) Marcia Ramsland as your personal Time Coach you can do all that and more. Trade time-wasters for time-savers and get organized with Simplify Your Time today.
Excerpt
DAY 1
Today Is the Time of Your Life
Being rich is having money;
being wealthy is having time.
—Margaret Bonnano
“Hi, honey. All 168 boxes are packed and ready to go.” I held the phone in one hand and a well worn to-do list in the other as I sank into a chair. I was relieved to tell my husband that all of our belongings and I would soon join him. David was already in California while I was closing things out at our home in upstate New York after our decision to move across the country for his new job. Our three teens would join us later that week.
As we talked, I suddenly noticed a gaping hole with only the prongs standing upright on my engagement ring. I gasped and almost dropped the phone. “Oh no! My diamond is missing! David, you won’t believe it. It’s gone!” At that moment, a million thoughts raced through my mind. Where did I lose it? The movers had just spent two days packing boxes which were ready to be picked up and delivered. I could just picture our three teenagers unpacking the boxes at the other end and me distraught with agony, scolding them, “Be careful. My diamond could be in there.”
I knew I didn’t want to add any more tension than we already felt. So I took a deep breath and spoke to David in a calm voice. “OK. What do I do now? Was it insured?” “No,” David said, “but don’t worry; just come. Everything is great here in California.”
“What?! It’s not insured?” I didn’t know whether to scream or cry. This was no ordinary gem. My husband had picked out the diamond especially for me when he was a college student traveling through Europe with his family.
Was That My Only Diamond?
That night I went to dinner with friends and their two sons, and I told them my dilemma. “We’ll go back and find it,” offered one of the boys. Their parents were eager to come too. However, there was one obstacle—no lights in the house. “No problem, we’ll bring flashlights,” they volunteered.
After dinner, the five of us went back to our empty home. In the darkness, we focused our flashlights on every step we took. “Where were you today?” my friend asked.
I remembered going up the attic steps, so we decided to start there. Carefully, we unfolded the stairs from the ceiling and creaked up one step at a time. Then down the stairs. Next we explored the bedroom . . . the family room . . . the kitchen . . . the living room. As we walked carefully through the last room, I began to lose hope of ever seeing my diamond again.
I paused to regain my thoughts and asked of no one in particular, “Now what would this diamond look like?” I glanced down at the carpet tweeds. “It would look like this,” I said as I spied something shiny like a piece of plastic wrap. When I picked it up, it held its shape. It was my diamond!
There it was—just sitting at the foot of the attic folding stairs.
All five of us had been up and down that stairway looking for it, yet we missed it. Thankfully, I now had a second chance to appreciate my treasure.
Time Management Lessons from My Diamond Hunt
I learned some lessons from that emotion-packed diamond hunt that relate to our topic of simplifying time:
LESSON #1: WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW WAS COSTLY.
As a starry-eyed fiancée, I must have missed the instructions to regularly check the prongs holding the diamond. Regular maintenance would have saved me from a crisis at a critical moment in life.
In time management, there are some basic rules, tools, and skills you need to keep your life running smoothly too. Don’t wait for a crisis to realize you missed some important steps. You’ll learn them in this book.
LESSON #2: I TOOK IT FOR GRANTED.
I was wearing my diamond every day but not really seeing it. I liked knowing it was there, but I didn’t realize I needed to take better care of it.
Something similar can happen with time. We use time every day, but we don’t realize it can get away from us if we don’t manage it well.
LESSON #3: WHEN I KNEW WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR, I FOUND IT.
I thought I knew what my diamond would look like, but I missed it several times. Until I focused on the gem’s qualities of size, shape, and color, it remained lost to me.
To simplify your time, you need a clear picture of what you want to find, such as an hour a day to rest or read, an evening a week to meet with friends, or a weekend a month to focus on a hobby or to take a trip. Without attention to your personal goals, you’ll never “find” the time to do these things.
It takes insight and new perspective to see what we have missed. In this book, I will give you both.
Your Time Is Simple; Your Life Is Not
If practice makes perfect, then we should be awesome time managers! After all, we have been using time every day of our lives. So why aren’t we experts at using our time? Because life happens to us. Because we get fuzzy and unfocused. Because we get tired of the “have-tos” and prefer the “want-tos” but get trapped in the “never-getaround-tos.” And before we realize it, we run out of time.
When you need more time, where do you go to get it? There are no ATMs or banks for time deposits or withdrawals. But there is something you can do: redistribute your commitments and spend time where you want to. You have 24 hours a day, 168 hours per week, and 8,736 hours per year. They contain all the time you need to achieve the hopes and dreams you were created for―one day at a time.
Simplify Your Time—How?
To simplify your time, you need to look at the key strategies used by successful time managers, people much like you. These strategies comprise four main categories, and I’ve chosen one focus per week. Under each category, we’ll look at one key skill each day that you can immediately put into practice to simplify your time.
Each week, you’ll save enough time to enjoy some extra downtime—whether for work, family, or fun. By the end of our thirty-day journey, you’ll be ready to plan future goals and sail right through them. Here’s the agenda ahead:
WEEK 1: PRACTICAL TIME-SAVING HABITS.
From making your bed to handling your paperwork, good habits done quickly will save you lots of time and help your day run smoothly.
WEEK 2: PRACTICAL TIME-SAVING TOOLS.
With the right tools, you’ll be able to organize, simplify, maintain your time, and minimize stress as you respond to myriad daily challenges.
WEEK 3: PRACTICAL TIME-SAVING SKILLS.
Once you have implemented time-saving habits and time tools, you’ll want to learn the skills to “break the rules” and solve problems that arise.
WEEK 4: PRACTICAL TIME-SAVING STRATEGIES.
Once your everyday life is working, you’ll have time to look ahead and plan for future seasons, as well as create a plan for what to do when life brings challenges you didn’t expect. With thirty days of time-saving tips and systems, plus 100 time-saving tips tucked into the thirty chapters, you can begin having the time of your life. You will be more conscious of how you spend your time, who you spend it with, how you squander some of it, and how you wish to reorder it. In other words, you’ll be in charge of your time instead of your time being in charge of you.
What Does It Mean to Simplify Your Time?
Simplifying your time involves managing yourself in regard to your available time to accomplish your goals at a reasonable pace. Once you start applying the principles in this book, you’ll be able to simplify your time to stop running and start living.
With more time as your sought-after treasure, you can
- divide it;
- multiply it;
- supersize it;
- minimize it;
- evaluate it;
- delegate it;
- reassign it;
As we begin our journey to simplify your time, we are going on a hunt—for your “time” diamond. Time is the basis of all that you do and want to do. Let’s find the time problems and time solutions that will simplify your life—starting today!
Excerpted from Simplify Your Time: Stop Running and Start Living! By Marcia Ramsland. © 2006 Marcia Ramsland. Published by W Publishing Group, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
Interview
WOF: Marcia, how did you get to be so organized?
MARCIA: I tell the story in Simplify Your Life; I was a professional and came from the working world at home with three children under the age of 6. One Sunday I was standing in my kitchen and exclaimed, “Somebody’s got to get organized!” I looked at my children and said, “I guess that would be me.” That was 21 years ago. I started to read everything on organization and found that it was written for men who sat at a desk all day. At that point I started to write my own material to get my own life in order. I’ve been teaching it ever since.
WOF: What does a professional organizer do, exactly?
MARCIA: Professional organizers meet with clients either in their home or office to create order and systems that make life easy. I’m a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers; there are about 2,000 of us around country doing this. It began in the mid-80s but it has snowballed and skyrocketed since. You can hire a professional organizer for anywhere from 3 hours to a full day. They’ll take look at your things and put together a system to make it work for you.
WOF: Have the ‘organizing shows’ on television had an affect on
what you do?
MARCIA: That’s helped people become aware of what’s normal and what they can get improved. It’s a need-based industry. I find that people are really not disorganized; their lives just escalate so that what worked before doesn’t work now.
WOF: How do you become a professional organizer?
MARCIA: There are three parts to the business: 1/3 is organizing, 1/3 is running a business, and 1/3 is marketing yourself. The best way to market is to take before and after pictures of the organizing you’ve done for different family members and friends, enlarge them, and put them in a portfolio and on the Web. And attend national conferences. Right now there is not a degree but in April there will be a certification available.
WOF: What do you find is the most common reason people call you for help? Why ARE we all so disorganized?
MARCIA: Too much to do and too little time. It’s said that we have 200 inputs a day and our brain can only hold 7 at a time. We’re reeling from email, phone calls, decisions, work load ― everything bombards us from different areas all at once. You just feel like your life is not your own. The Internet and email have really contributed; we feel like we have to answer email almost immediately and it puts a lot of pressure on people to get anything else finished. Turning on the computer first thing in the morning and turning it off last thing at night is getting us distracted; it makes it hard to focus on anything else.
The best time to make a change is when you’re in crisis or feel you have a crisis and want to change your life.
WOF: Really? That seems like it would be a bad time to try to change!
MARCIA: In a crisis people sort out their priorities real fast – sometimes that’s the best time because you suddenly know what’s important. Those papers you didn’t file ― suddenly you need those papers. You need a paper system, an email system . . . I’m all about setting up systems to balance your daily life and live your day with ease.
Here’s a motto for you: Keep what is working, change what is frustrating. That way you don’t become a perfectionist but instead work on things that are not working well for you.
WOF: How important is it, really, to be organized in our lives?
What’s the payoff?
MARCIA: The faster the pace of your life, the more you need organization. It allows you to go faster and move through life more rapidly. It helps you accomplish so much more than you would have disorganized.
I remember having my twin aunts come to visit and I said, “You’ve both worked in offices for 30 years, what can I do to help this?” (I had mail and papers stacked up on my kitchen counter.) They said ‘you need to get rid of this, stack this, toss this…’ I worked for three months to get it organized. I thought, No one told me that it’s easier to live organized than disorganized.People think “Oh, I’m trying to look good for other people, it doesn’t benefit me.” It DOES benefit you.
WOF: What’s the hardest part of getting organized?
MARCIA: Focusing on one aspect. Let’s say I’m stressed at work: I’m thinking, I’m spending too much time on little things, I have too much paperwork, I don’t ever get to the larger projects. What do I do? Focus on one aspect and you’ll multiply the time you save. You can’t fix everything at once. If you just take time, for example, to set up a binder to fix disorganized staff meetings, you’ll feel calm and like ‘whew, I’ve found this part”.
Another important one is to set time boundaries. In the book on Day 4 I talk about setting computer boundaries. I even have a computer Sabbath for 24 hours every weekend. I think everyone should turn off their computer one day a week and I think it should sleep 8 hours every night. It’s a little thing but it gives you boundaries so you’re not getting inundated.
Every victory counts toward your overall goal of successfully getting organized. If you take two minutes to clean your desk before you leave for lunch and before you leave for the day, cheer!
WOF: One of your corporate clients is the US Navy? Can you tell us what you do/did for them? (If you tell us, will you have to kill us?)
MARCIA: I was in a Bible study and one lady was in the Navy. She said, “Can you come speak to the Women’s Federal Program.” Sure, I’ll try anything once. I was amazed ― they were women just like us; they needed to balance family, home, work. In the last 10 months I’ve even flown to Japan and Korea and spoken to military wives. You’d think they’d be organized since they move so much but you can carry clutter with you anywhere in the world.
WOF: You don’t have to tell us everything on your Five-Year Calendar, but what do you have planned in the near future?
MARCIA: My husband and I are moving to Dallas April 1. In March I’m taking my first trip to Israel. . .
WOF: Are you going to organize the Middle East?
MARCIA: No, I’m just taking a tour. My new book, Simplify Your Space, comes out in September 2007. And my Simplify Your Life Conferences begin in the fall across the country.
WOF: What are your top 3 tips for the hopelessly disorganized? Give us something to start on while we’re waiting for your book to arrive in the mail.
MARCIA: Here’s one for the hopelessly disorganized: make your bed and make your day. It takes 90 seconds to make your bed and it makes your room 60% clean. A minute and a half gets you 16 hours of order.
Two: The 2-minute pickup: before you leave, turn around and put everything away as fast as you can. That way you always come back to clean surfaces.
Three: keep the front 2/3 of every countertop empty. This gives you a clear line of sight when you walk into the kitchen. In the office keep the front 2/3 of your desk empty. It will help you accomplish more in less time.
Time Tips: Learn to live your half hour well. On the hour and half hour ask yourself, What one thing am I going to accomplish well in the next half hour? I’ll live a great life if I live my half hours well.
Write three personal goals at the top of your monthly calendar. They can be anything ― buy a new outfit, clean out old tax files, sign up for the gym, organize a file folder for receipts ― if you do 3 things a month you’ll accomplish 36 goals a year. That will make your life easier. You’ll sail through life ― it’s just wonderful.
WOF: We see that one of your strategies is to “strive for five” contacts with friends weekly. Did a certain unnamed cell phone company get that “5” idea from you?
MARCIA: No, but it’s very similar! I visited my daughter at Wheaton College and a professor there had the education majors meeting with at-risk high school students every week. They spent an hour with them doing their home work and talking. The professor told me that studies have shown if at-risk teens (or woman) have five adults regularly in their life they are more likely to succeed. I think it is so important because women have become so isolated with their jobs and family – they have nobody to open up to. Maybe the phone company also read that study! I encourage women to write down the five closest friends that they are in contact with every week and treat those people well. Stay in touch with them ― they are your network that keeps you afloat.
WOF: How do you write a book for people who don’t have time to read a book?
MARCIA: I had to write really short chapters so a person could read one short chapter every day and get everything they need to know to get more time in their life. I designed each chapter to begin with a story, a quote, and a time management principle that you could apply so your life would feel less stressed immediately. Also, there are 101 time-saving tips scattered throughout the book. If you can’t read a chapter you can at least read the tips!
I have 30 days of timesavers that will change your life. I get letters all the time from women who say, Wow, I didn’t know this! I‘m finding more time, I’m getting this done, it feels wonderful.
To sign up for Marcia’s monthly e-newsletter, containing short tips to help you gain control of your time (and “not let it slip out to the next highest bidder”), visit her Web site at organizingpro.com.
For more information about professional organizers, see the National Association of Professional Organizers at napo.net.
