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Hello, I’m Elaine Kung. Blessings from California, United States. We continue learning about Work-Life Balance, number ten. Today, we continue with effective time management through the six ‘S’. We're gonna learn more on how to seek to do the right things in the right way, so that were effective and also efficient.
Remember, time is such a gift from God, and also it's God’s grace for us, even though we may not deserve it. We are blessed with time, what a gift. And Ephesians 5:15-17 reminds us, “be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is”. So, that we want to make sure we make good use of every opportunity, including the decision when and what we should do, right? Sometimes our response may be now because it's urgent and important, or maybe in the future, or one day, or later, or maybe never, or maybe next week. Sometimes we are, sure, sometimes we may not be sure. So, we need to think about the timing.
And to be honest, the most important word in time management, what is it? It's ‘no’. We need to learn how to say no and set boundary on things that do not align to our priority, on things that we don't need to fill and put into our jar of life. Remember, we use this example analogy, our life is like a jar and what do you put in it? There are things that are not aligned to our priority. Don't put them in our jar, and we say no, and set boundary. So again, from Stephen Covey’s, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, we already covered before, begin with the ending mind, know what the goals are. We also talked about being proactive so that we are investing time on quadrant two, important and when it’s not urgent, so that we're proactive.
Now, we're gonna talk about number three, put first things first. If it's important, and it's first thing, let's put it as the priority and we call them big rocks, right? In your life container. Your big rocks are those important and invaluable things. And you put those first so that you have enough space in your life jar, for the big rocks.
And then for the things that you may not enjoy doing, we call them frogs. We don't enjoy eating frogs, so there's a book name, eat that frog. So, let's learn some not so pleasant things and yet they're important. Put them into my schedule and do those first. So, when I’m alert, allocate a time so that they align to my goal, and I don't procrastinate on them.
Our big rocks are our first thing and our priority for us based on planning. Every day we have a to-do list. Early in the morning, we can plan out what you do today. And then every week, could be last few hours on Friday, plan for next week because your memory is fresh for what happened this week. And now, I remember after the weekend, when I come back on Monday, then I would do those. And then at the end of each month, I can also plan what to do next month. And then we have long term lists. So, these are very good ideas to help plan, first thing first.
Another tool I want to give you is how to aim for the BEST time management principles. B.E.S.T., best effort and conscious planning, based on what you know is important to you. For example, Monday through Friday, daytime is when you give your best effort to do a good job at work, so that you're not distracted to do something else. Don't do vacation planning during Monday through Friday, during your daytime, like you do those in the weekend or at night.
And then your best effort in the evening, is to give your whole heart to focus attention to your family at night. Spend time with your family for dinner, so that it’s quality family time. Also set up one on one time with your spouse, with each one of your children. So that’s all best effort conscious planning on what's important to you for what day of the week and what hour of the day. And then the weekend, on Friday night it’s fellowship. That's when I make the best effort to enjoy the fellowship and best effort for family time on Saturday. And go take a day trip, or together as a family cleaning up the house. It's a privilege to serve one another. And it's one task with multiple blessings, multiple benefits that we build relationship and its best effort and focus on it.
And then Sunday is when we worship, when we serve or teach Sunday school. So, focus on the best effort, based on the rhythm and the routine you have, don't get distracted. When you’re on the weekday, don't keep thinking just about the weekend. So, you really enjoy the moment and live in the moment.
‘E’, Empathy. So how you spend your time. So, if you have limited time of 10 minutes, stay with your child, one on one, how you spend that 10-minute quality time with them? You want to have good empathy to communicate and cooperate with each other. Same thing at work. I have 30 minutes of one-on-one time with my subordinates. How can I exercise empathy in my communication and relationship building? So, in the same amount of time you may spend, if you are smart with empathy, then your 30 minutes can generate good positive relationship. With the same 30 minute, if you don't have empathy and you've been very cold, not relating on how they feel, then your 30 minutes is wasted and even perhaps negative result.
So having empathy is to name how the person feels. Wow, this must be so difficult, you must be disappointed, not getting that or what are you hoping to get. So, think of how they feel, even though you may not agree with them, and yet you still can name that feeling, feel how they feel. In English, there are three ‘-pathy’s. Apathy, I don't care how you feel, we don't want to do that, not good. Sympathy, I feel sorry for how you feel. That's not good enough either. We want empathy, I feel how you feel. So that way, with the limited time you spend with the coworkers, you are smart and effective in communication and cooperation and build a good relationship. Empathy.
‘S’, stick to priority with focus, right? Stick to your routine, stick to your goal, and align the priority toward your goal, and be focused on it and not get distracted. So, we already learned many different techniques on how to get focused, turn off your phone, put away your electronic devices, close the door, block out time in your calendar, so that you have focused time and not get distracted. ‘T’, time of relaxation and well-being. So important to get recharged, renewed, and refreshed, so we relax. We'll come back to relaxing in the future. We have a more in-depth discussion on how we relax. And that give ourselves a better self, really much better well-being.
So now that we have the BEST, how do we aim for the BEST? Here's another tool to help us to do A.I.M. in managing our time. ‘A’ is accountability. Remember, we learn the L.A.P. list, allocate and prioritize. So, you list out your activity on how your time is spent and be accountable, and then know the difference between what's urgent and important and be sure not to do what's not important. And then put into practice, make it very realistic in doing this list, allocate and prioritize. So, be accountable on these good tools.
Then ‘I’ is to actually implement them., to actually do it, have an action plan, set the goals, priorities, so you can increase your efficiency, your productivity, and your effectiveness. And manage our life with this YES tool, Y.E.S. and we’ll go into that next. That's managing Yourself, how to Execute well in your time, and how to have good Self-care.
And finally, motivation, when we can aim for the best, we’re motivated, we’re driven, and what gives us the motivation? And remember, success is an iceberg, where you have a tip of the iceberg, you see all that’s on top of the water level, very glamorous, glorious success. And yet, underneath the water level is the big iceberg, all the hard work, the failures and you learn the mistakes and you fell forward, discipline of time management, and your perseverance. So those are part of our motivation. Remember, the three partners in our life, right? Yesterday, we want to learn from and build on what we learned, instead of regretting. And today, instead of complaining, we want to manage our tasks proactively. And then tomorrow, we want to be proactive in planning so that we don't have to worry, wondering what's gonna happen, so we'll lead a life without regrets. And that's our motivation because we want to be fulfilling, have an integrated life. And it's a balanced life. And then every day it's a full life, and every day it's a gift. And that really help us to hit the target, the bullseye, and AIM for the BEST practice that we learned.
So, what's the YES tool? And we'll discuss more next time also. YES is You, ultimately we need to manage ourselves the best. Make sure we have good self-discipline and self-control. Know what's needed, we must do. Know what's wanted or desirable. So, we may not always do them, so we've distinguished them. And then be very committed to clear goals, the SMART goals, and the priority. So that's how we manage ourselves, not just managing the time, is really managing ourselves. Because the time is always there, 24 hours, it’s how we execute. And that leads us to ‘E’, execute the time. Remember, the quadrant 2 is where we want to spend most of our time, important but not urgent. That's when we revived and refreshed. And we want to spend 65 to 80% of our time. That's quadrant two. And finally, self-care, ‘S’ is for self-care. And that's the bookmark. And we'll go into in detail next time, how to take good care of ourselves. So, I can take care of others, people, and things.
And finally, to improve our efficiency, here are some good leadership tips so that we can get things done with focus and avoid perfectionism, avoid procrastination, and also make sure that we update the way we work and always take action, walk the talk, and set realistic expectation, and also set time limits. So here are, some more tips to really improve our efficiency. In the morning, I start the day reading the bible and a quiet time. Eat healthy, I'll show you pictures next time, with a big smoothie every day, protein and cut down sugar and fat. Good rest, relax, and exercise for these healthy habits. These are all quadrant 2, important but not urgent, and yet we need to do those. Good emotion, take care of our own body, our mind, and our spirit. Self-esteem, goal setting and then plan it out online to our priority.
Remember to schedule difficult task for the most efficient time. When you have a clear mind and some difficult tasks, remember to eat the frog first. Let me get it done first, oh wow after I get it done, I feel so accomplished. Then the rest of the easier task will be less challenging and will be more motivated to get those done. Multi-task or focused. Some things you may multi-task, is not as important. Some things we want to focus. So, you have a good way to optimize your time. And then some tools like personal management tools, software, calendar, are good skills to use. And reflect at the end of the day, how did our day go? Wow we’ve got so much done and we get more motivated. And then sometimes, once in a while, take a full day break, and a retreat, just meditate, and reflect and renew, and that really help us to do the right things in the right way. See you next time.
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