Change Your Life For The Better By Rapidly Completing Unfinished Tasks

Completing unfinished tasks is a great way to change your life for the better. Unfinished tasks are huge silent stressors that steal hours of your precious time. They are energy and productivity thieves, but you can eliminate them.

From a button missing on your suit coat to the mess in your garage, every unfinished task is robbing you blind. Just like someone embezzling funds, these thieves don't steel in big obvious ways. They tug at your attention only for a few moments at a time. Not a big deal. Right? Wrong. Their cumulative effect is staggering. You may have as many as fifty unfinished tasks nagging at you.

Some of these may only take a few moments of your attention. For example, a missing button is a moment of aggravation when you realize you still haven't sewn it on and then perhaps a few more minutes while you look for another outfit. A messy garage might mean a half an hour of frustration as you look for a misplaced tool. Not to mention the guilt you feel every time you walk through it and see the mess sitting there.

Just imagine if each of those fifty unfinished tasks took on the average only 30 seconds of your attention a day. Do you have any idea how much time you would needless lose a year? Try 9,125 minutes. That's approximately 152 hours, or almost four full forty hour work weeks.

What would your business look like if you had 4 extra weeks of creative attention, rather than distraction and stress? What would your relationships with you family and friends be like with an extra four weeks of attention?

So how do you stop these thieves? You do so with four simple steps.

Step 1--Write down ALL of the unfinished task you can think of. Think about work and home and write down every disorganized drawer you have wanted to get to, project you keep thinking you will complete, appointment you have intended to set up, etc. Write down tasks as small as sewing a button on to as big as an incomplete home renovation. Anything that isn't finished, write it down.

Just writing these tasks down will begin reducing the mental and emotional deficit they have been causing you. Congratulations!

Step 2--Next to each unfinished task write down the first action step you must take to get moving. These action steps can be very small. For example, if you keep meaning to get your car into the shop because of some annoying rattle, then write down "call and setup appointment." Or, if you want to store keepsakes in the attic, then write down "pick-up packing boxes on the way home from work."

You benefit from writing down the first step in two ways. First, procrastination is often times due to feeling overwhelmed, so focusing on the first step helps you overcome procrastination. Second, people who write down goals are tremendously more successful at accomplishing those goals than people who don't.

Step 3--Complete the five easiest tasks first. Why? You have been stuck on this stuff forever. Half of the battle is just starting. Knocking out several easy tasks will help you over the mental hurdle that has been holding you back. Each success will add momentum.

Step 4--Check off each completed task and immediately schedule the next action step you will take to complete another task. The biggest mistake people make after writing their list is shoving it to the side and never looking at it again. Avoid this mistake by using the completion of one task as a trigger for the next task. The key is scheduling. Do not ever allow yourself the costly luxury of not having your next action scheduled. This is the defining difference between stressed-out people with furrowed brows and peaceful people with completed lists.

You cannot imagine how much you will change your life for the better just by eliminating unfinished tasks until you do it. So don't hesitate. Start making you life better right now by creating your list of unfinished tasks and plow through it using these four simple tests.

Allyson Lewis is a renowned author, motivational speaker and time management expert who has trained thousands of people to achieve greater productivity and create a more meaningful life by prioritizing, organizing and simplifying. If you seriously want to change your life for the better, Allyson has numerous free tools to get you started today. You can get immediate access to free worksheets, webinars, checklists and more with the click of a few buttons by visiting her website http://www.the7minutelife.com/. At her website you can also find out about her revolutionary time management system, The 7 Minute Life TM System or her groundbreaking unique daily planning tool, The 7 Minute Life Daily TM Planner.

How to Become Better at Multi-Tasking

One of the Main Things

I get asked by people is how to become better at multi-tasking. This is actually one of the simpler time management techniques to put into action and in this article I'm going to outline the steps needed for you...yes, even you...to become a champion multi-tasker.

First of All, What Is Multi-tasking?

It's simply doing more than one thing at a time. Now, I'd never been good at that until I got a little older and realized what I was doing wrong. When I was younger and tried to multi-task I tried to do two or more things that shouldn't have been paired together. They were two things that both needed my full attention...for instance, trying to read and watch kids. Now, You may be able to do that, but I couldn't...especially not at the beach.

When I Finally Realized What I Was Doing Wrong

And what I needed to do in order to do it right I made some changes and, as a result, I've been a very successful multi-tasker ever since...and you can too.

As a result, I get much more done, my stress level has decreased, and my day runs smoother. So are you ready to learn how to become better at multi-tasking? Here are the steps:

First,

Write down all you need to do that day...everything.

Pick up dry cleaning

Lunch with sisters

Pick up stuff to bake cupcakes

Bake cupcakes

Fix dinner

Pick up kid from school

Practice choir songs

Laundry

Kid's soccer practice

Read research for class

Help kid study for spelling test

Second,

Figure out which of these you could pair together. Successful pairings would be high focus tasks with lower focus tasks. The rest can fit in wherever and whenever. So, here's how I'd pair them based on my typical day:

I'd pick up dry cleaning before lunch (it's close to where I'd be having lunch). Then meet sisters. Sisters need to do some shopping so we all do ours together.

Then, I'd pick up my child so they could help with baking cupcakes (quality time together).

The cupcakes would be in the oven while dinner is cooking (I'm already in the kitchen).

I'd also have laundry washing while I'm cooking and my child doing their homework in the kitchen with me so I can help them study for their test.

All day in the vehicle I'd be practicing my choir songs while I'm driving.

I'd put clothes in the dryer on my way out to soccer practice.

While my child is at soccer practice I'd be in the car reading my research paper (they should be practicing...not wondering what I'm doing).

When I got home from soccer practice, I'd run the clothes just 10 more minutes to dewrinkle (they've been sitting there for an hour or so) and then go ahead and put them up...after all, I've been sitting and could use standing up for a while.

If You'll Notice

These are all things which can naturally be done together...singing in the vehicle, sisters shopping together, kid baking with us and then doing homework while we're cooking, etc.

If you'll take the time to think of multi-tasking in this way you'll get so much more done in less time and with less stress.

Are you ready to begin managing your time better? Download my free ebook about Time Management for some wonderful ideas. Also visit me at There Must Be A Better Way

Tips to Manage Your Time Better and Be More Successful

It happens to me all the time. I start the day with my list of things to complete, and before I know it hours have passed, and I'm lucky if I've crossed one item off my list. Frustrating! Clear sign that I may be a slave to time, closing out the day with a longer list for the next day and feelings of overwhelm starting to creep in. But how does this happen?

Let's see if we can break it down.

First step, your list. Do you have one? Check. Did you put all the important tasks on the list? Check. Now, did you prioritize the list based on most necessary to complete? What? Missed that one? Not to worry, many people do. Many times we may use our list as a tool to remember what needs to be done, and then get caught up in whatever is in front of us right now. The list is relegated to more of a 'If There's Time To Do' list. Let's find a way to use the list as the way to be productive, and successful every day. There are loads of books and courses devoted to the topic of time management, but a couple of things can help get you on the right path.

The first one that is crucial to success is to prioritize your list. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say you listed items such as: Send thank you to new client, Check out new cell phones, Set up payment plan with doctor, and Get an oil change. When you look at these items, you may want to prioritize by which item will be easiest, or take the least amount of your time, or even which you would enjoy more. We all do it. It's natural to put off the thing on our list that we just don't want to do. And doing anything else, even if it isn't on the list. We welcome distractions as a 'reason' we didn't get that task completed. This is not helping us be successful IF that task we skipped is the most important one to getting us closer to a goal we have.

Instead, when you write your list, take a look at each item and ask yourself, is this task urgent, important to a goal, and need to be done as soon as possible? If you say yes to these questions, then you know this task should be a priority. You could label it a '1' or an 'A', or whatever works for you to know to do it first. Items that are less urgent can be labeled '2' or 'B', and items that you would just like to do at some point would be '3' or 'C'. Now your list has meaning, and you can concentrate on what will get you closer to completing a goal. You will definitely feel better at the end of the day if you use your energy to do the #1 tasks.

The second tip that will help you be more successful at managing your time is to limit the distractions. This could involve turning off your TV, checking email or Facebook at only scheduled times of the day, or when a distraction surfaces that does not need to be handled immediately just add it to the list with the appropriate label (2 or 3). This is harder than it sounds in our information overloaded society. There could be withdrawal symptoms from tweeting or messaging. Think about it; how important (on a scale of 1-3) is it that you know what everyone says all the time? If you give yourself even an hour of distraction-free time to complete an item from your list, you will enjoy catching up that much more. And you may even be inspired to do more.

This is a great unexpected benefit of feeling productive. You become more productive. All it takes is two simple steps to use your list in a different way. Once you get that down, the sky is the limit.

To your success!

Tyra LaRocca
Life Coach
Outside the Box Life Coach

Get outside your box and expand your life to fit your dreams!

I'd love your feedback or article suggestions at Tyra@outsidetheboxlifecoach.com
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