Archive for the ‘gtd’ Category

How to DeClutter Your Home

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

I’m sure you’ve all experienced the shocking ‘pop-in’ drop by from loved ones! Then you already know how horrid it will feel to look around your house and see that there is no easy way for you to possibly declutter your home in the time it takes to open the front door.

Whenever you stick to these simple steps, you will probably make the most trafficked and most popular public parts of your house — your kitchen, the living room plus the bathroom — appear visibly cleaner as well as clutter free with minimal time.

Very first 5 minutes — Gather up all the unclean dishes inside the house and place them immediately within the dishwashing machine. Nothing screams “clutter stuffed home” more than having filthy plates all over the house and stacked up inside the kitchen sink. Virtually all dishwashers and dish detergents in today’s houses accomplish such an extremely good job at scrubbing dishes that you do not actually need to pre-wash them in the sink any more.

Right now you need to take a couple of seconds to rapidly wipe down the kitchen counter tops, wipe down the stovetop and give the fridge a quick swipe or two as well.

At this time, ones kitchen area should be looking much better and you are now ready to move on to the living room or family area, whichever is the closest to your doorway.

2nd 5 minutes — Get the mail, books, papers, unsolicited mail and sort them to clear away the items you do not want to hold onto. For those who have already read yesterday’s flyers from cover to cover, what’s the reason for hanging onto them? So why hang on to ANY junk mail? Unsolicited mail is exactly that — Crap that has to quite possibly go in the garbage or into your recycling immediately when you figure out what it is.

Stack magazines tactfully on the coffee table and also end tables and give the coffee tables a painless rub down using a very soft natural cotton cloth.

At this point you must also conduct a quick check to make certain that there is nothing sitting on the floor — when there is, pick it up then move it to wherever you’re certain it must go. Pick-up your children’s playthings bring them inside their recreation room or his or her bedroom. Put laptops, remotes, game remotes and various other digital technology inside a cabinet, on the rack or otherwise tucked away from view.

Considering that the 2 principal places visitors gather are decluttered, now it is time for you to start working on your restroom.

3rd 5 minutes — The initial step to decluttering the washrooms will be to pick up just about everything from the countertops. This consists of hairdryers, deodorant, hair gel, tooth paste, tissue papper, etcetera. Put the products you’ll need inside of a bathroom drawer or cabinet where they belong or else the restroom will look like a tornado swept through it — it doesn’t matter how clean the rest of the washroom will be.

Following that, have any grimey clothing as well as bath towels and set them in a clothes hamper or bring them straight to the laundry room. They don’t have to be put through the washer now, in fact, how many friends go through your laundry area?

The next thing to eliminating your soiled linen is to change these with appealing, clean replacement towels and apparel. Keep a separate ‘nice’ collection of linen, bathroom towels and wash clothes with this specific purpose clean and ready to go inside the linen cabinet or in the bathroom cabinet.

Dedicate a second or two doing a swift wipe down of the restroom sink and vanity, completing with the toilet, adequate enough to make everything look nice and clean.

The very best aspect of your plan is that when you have your habit down, these steps could be cut down to under Fifteen minutes.

Learn how to declutter your house in record breaking speed. Then visit Dylan DeCarlo’s site: http://www.decarlodeclutter.com

How To Truly Focus on Getting Things Done

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

Please note that the number one attribute that a person that wants to succeed at life is going to have to develop is that of focus. You need to remove all the distractions from your life if you want to do things that are going to matter in the long term. This is the only way to win at life.

I am telling you right now that the only way you are going to be able to focus on the work that you need to get done is if you just sit down and remove all the crap from your life. Everything that is distracting your from succeeding must be removed from your life. I mean everything.

Hard work of course is a prerequisite to achieving things that matter. If you are not prepared to work really hard on the things that you want to do then you may as well give up now. There is no way in this world that you are ever going to be able to see success without working hard.

Once you are organized and know what it is that you need to be doing everyday then you have to start taking action. Because without action you are never going to get results. It doesn’t matter how much you wish you will never get any results if you just sit there. So go take action.

You also need to get better at setting long term goals for yourself. If you don’t have a vision of the future you are never going to get to where it is that you want to get too. So the bigger the goal the harder you are going to work to get to it. It really is as simple as that.

You need to appreciate that success in anything is going to only happen over a long period of time. Yes it will take time but if you keep at it you are going to get to a point where you are going to succeed beyond your wildest dreams. This is a fact of life and you need to appreciate it!

Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks about what it is that you want to achieve. The reality of the matter is that you will die and so wasting time and energy on what other people think about your dreams is just time wasted. This is just not something you should ever do.

You will see this across the most successful people out there, past and present. They are only successful because they worked non stop to get to where it is they wanted. It really is as simple as that and you need to appreciate this fact if you also want to join the ranks of the successful.

Also be working on the skill set of being persistent. Without persistence you are going to give up at the first sign of trouble. This is just not something that is going to propel you toward success. Appreciate the fact that if you want to get out there and win you must be persistent.

And of course this also means that you need to develop the attitude where you will never give up. You can’t give up no matter how hard it becomes because the reality is that the hard you work the easier it will get. So get out there and never give up on your dreams.

So there you have it all the information you are ever going to need to become the success that you want to become. Yes if you follow all the information that I’ve given you then you are going to be successful in all areas of your life no matter what happens in the long term!

I believe it’s really important that a person goes out and learns about german shepherd training and how to lose thigh fat because it will help them to open up their mind.

How Using Productivity Tools Makes You Less Productive

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

I adore gadgets.

I’ve nabbed pretty much every sort of smartphone straight from the Treo thru Windows smartphones to my glossy new iPhone 4.

And I adore tools too. I must have bought every available to-do app on the market.

So with all these productivity tech and tool purchases you’d have thought I’d become ultra productive, right?

Well, in that I can now fill my down time with activities, yes.

If i’m on the train or in a cab I am able to read my email. Using my online CRM I am able to read my client and prospect details anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If i’m in the no man’s land I can still keep in contact with my Twitter chums.

But the truth is that none of these activities are particularly urgent for my business. They’re not unimportant. But they’re not critical.

Essentially, the tools have made me more profitable at the mundane. They’ve allowed me to do admin when I wouldn’t previously have been doing anything.

Or would I?

If I think back at what I really used to do when I was sitting on a train, or in a cab it turns out I wasn’t doing nothing.

If I was on a train then usually I’d be reading. Learning useful stuff. Or considering a client or project perhaps planning or taking notes.

And in fact this is important stuff. Actually making the effort to think about my work and my clients or to improve my knowledge and talents.

Way more important than answering mails, tweeting or doing admin.

The indisputable fact that I am always online with my iPhone means that I now spend some more time reacting to events ( email, tweets, even phone calls ) than I do actively thinking and planning. My capability to obtain access to this steady electronic stimulation has squeezed out the quiet time where I used to actually do some of my best thinking.

And it is getting worse.

Being constantly online has conditioned me now to test my email when I am a little bored to see if something fascinating has come in.

And generally it has.

Not something significant. Potentially not nearly as crucial as the document or the plan or the concept I was supposed to be working on when I got a bit stuck. But fascinating.

And if there’s nothing fascinating on e-mail I am sure there’ll be on Twitter. Or I could always check my site statistics for the 20 th time today.

Lord help me, I’ve even just checked e-mail right now while I was in the middle of writing this blog post.

And who knows how bad I’d be if I had a Blackberry with that horrible red light that tells you when you get a new email. I don’t know I’d ever be strong enough to resist checking what had come in.

Honestly, we’ve got more productive at the things that aren’t particularly critical and less productive at the thoughtful difficult work that actually is.

We’re obsessed by real time. I had to giggle lately when otherwise-sensible social media guru David Meerman-Scott lauded the new development in Tweetdeck that meant you got instant updates rather than every 30 seconds. ‘Cos being Twenty-nine seconds behind the times is going to kill ‘ya

Now here’s the thing : I am not saying all of these productivity tools and technology are a bad thing. Even if they were, it’s too late the genie’s out of the bottle.

But what we need to do me especially is learn to become their master, not their slave.

To utilise them when it actually is productive not to oust otherwise productive activities because checking e-mail is intellectually simpler and more exciting.

So next time you find yourself checking email more than 2 times a day or whipping out your Blackberry in a cab to check Twitter. Think to yourself if this truly is the optimum use of your time.

So what about you? Have you managed to tame your tools and use them truly productively?

Ian Brodie is a Marketing Coach and Speaker who helps consultants, coaches and other professionals attract and win more clients. To discover the secrets of how to attract and win more clients your business. Get free access to his Client Breakthrough Report and Video Training and learn how to Get More Clients in Less Time.