I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 92…

Determine your peak energy times.  Schedule high brain tasks when your energy is high and low brain tasks when it is low.

A long time ago I learned that my energy is high at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day.  My energy is lowest mid day.  I do my best to schedule myself accordingly. 

I reserve the morning for my important and urgent tasks – like writing and posting this blog.  I use late afternoons and early evenings to work on my important but not urgent tasks – like writing my books and other thought pieces.  Mid day, I catch up on correspondence, return phone calls, exercise and run errands.

This works for me.  I think best and most clearly in the morning and have a bit of a sinker mid day.  My energy and mental acuity picks up again late in the day.  This is really helpful, as I get a lot done late in the day when many people are biding their time getting ready to go home.

This schedule works for me.  It may or may not work for you.  You have to determine your peak energy times and schedule yourself accordingly.

However, no matter how well you plan your day, surprises and interruptions will come along.  A couple of years ago, I saw a great article on Success.com by David Allen called “It’s Not About Time.”  Mr. Allen suggests that too often we focus on managing our time when we should, in fact, be focused on managing ourselves.

“The savvy know that self management is really an issue of what we do with ourselves during the time we have. Self-management needs to encompass managing our thoughts and emotions, and dealing effectively with our work, family and community relationships. It’s about gaining dynamic balance of control and perspective to achieve more successful outcomes and feel more relaxed along the way.

“Self-management is about knowing what to do at any given moment. It’s dealing effectively with the things we have to do to achieve our goals and fulfill our purpose. It’s also about deciding the importance of the varied and constant information coming at us.”

What do you think about David Allen’s ideas on self management?  I like them.  Even though I try to schedule my high brain tasks at the beginning and end of the day, I sometimes end up doing them mid day when my energy is lowest.  I have found that no matter my preference, sometimes I have to deviate from it to handle matters that are out of my control. 

As David Allen says, “self-management is about knowing what to do at any given moment.”  This means that you cannot become a slave to your to-do list or your personal preferences.  No matter how well you plan, you will be faced with new problems and opportunities every day.  Sometimes what I want to do is different from what I need to do.  I bet you find this to be true too.  My best career advice is to do what you need to, not what you want to, as you go through your day. 

Do your best to schedule yourself so that you can deal with high brain tasks when your energy is highest.  But when circumstances create different demands, suck it up and do the best you can every moment you have.  The problems and opportunities on which you focus at any given moment in time will have a big impact on the level of your performance and, ultimately, your career success.  Don’t be so focused on managing your time that you miss opportunities because they fall outside of your plan for the day.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to succeed in your life and career, you need to become an outstanding performer.  To become an outstanding performer, you need to become a lifelong learner, set and achieve high goals and be well organized.  Self management and time management are two important keys to becoming organized.  They are tied to the career advice in Tweet 92 in Success Tweets.  “Determine your peak energy times.  Schedule high brain tasks when your energy is high and low brain tasks when it is low.”  But don’t become a slave to your to do list or preferred manner of working.  As David Allen points out, “Self management is different from time management because it allows you to respond at your best to surprises.”

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 92 and the difference between self management and time management.  What’s yours?  As always, I’m interested in your perspective on these thoughts.  I welcome and appreciate your comments.  Thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 90…

Positive time management is an important habit to develop.  Habits are like muscles.  The more you use them, the stronger they get.

Here in Colorado, we are required to get our cars checked to ensure that they meet clean air emissions standards before we can renew our license plates.  It’s a good law, one that helps with the air quality in our beautiful state.  It’s also a pain in the butt.  It requires a trip to an emissions monitoring station and waiting in line for the test.  My plates renew in October, so every other October I spend a couple hours getting my car tested.  It always passes, thank goodness.

The last time I went to get my emissions sticker, Cathy laughed at me as I was leaving the house.  I had my briefcase with me, which had my cell phone, a couple of books and a bottle of water.  She said I would probably be the only one at the emissions testing facility reading a book.  That was OK. 

I had just received a review copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book Crush It.  I wanted to read it so I could review it on this blog – and to learn a few things.  Crush It is a great book – not just for entrepreneurs.  I was really flattered when Jason Sadler the I Wear Your Shirt guy, compared my book 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success to it.

Carrying a book with me is one of my time management and career success positive habits.  Sometimes it’s a novel.  Most times it’s a business or inspirational book.  I am in the habit of using spare moments to read and learn.  I was able to read the first four chapters of Crush It while I was waiting for my emissions test.  I also took some notes — ideas that I plan on incorporating into my business.  Not a bad use of my time.

I read while waiting for appointment with clients.  I read while waiting for my dentist, or doctor – and you know how long those waits can be.  I read when I go to get my car washed.  I read before a movie if I’m by myself.  This is a small habit, but one that allows me to read at least two more books a month than I normally would.  That’s 24 books a year – and a lot of good ideas to help me grow my business.  Carrying a book with you — and reading it in found moments — is career advice that I give to all of my career success coach clients.

Reading spurs ideas.  These ideas give me inspiration for this blog.  They help me make decisions about my business.  They help me clarify my thinking on my passion – helping others create the life and career success they want and deserve.  Reading helps me provide better career advice.  Reading will help you become the life and career success you deserve to be.

Reading in spare moments is one of my most positive habits.  What is your most positive habit?  If you are thinking that you don’t have many positive habits, I suggest you check out Dan Robey’s site www.thepowerofpositivehabits.com.  There’s a lot to be learned there.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people set high goals and achieve them.  Positive habits will help you reach your goals – but only if you take the time to develop them.  Remember the career advice in Tweet 90 in Success Tweets.  “Positive time management is an important habit to develop.  Habits are like muscles.  The more you use them, the stronger they get.”  Reading in what I call “found moments” – the time I spend waiting — is one of my positive habits.  I’m amazed at how much I learn just by always having a book with me.  Take the time to develop some positive habits of your own.  You’ll be surprised at how much they help your productivity and your career success.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 90 and reading as a time management positive habit.  What’s yours?  What are some of the positive habits that have served you well over the years?  How did you develop them?  Please take a minute and leave comment sharing your thoughts and ideas with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 88…

Get organized.  Organize your time, life and workspace.  Sweat the small stuff.  Success is in execution.  Execution is in the details.

Effective time management is one of the keys to personal organization.  If you’re like most people, you always have more to do then there is time to do it.  I’m pretty good at managing my time, but I do get stressed and overwhelmed occasionally.  Time is a very precious and non renewable resource.  When a moment is gone, it’s gone forever.

When you think of your time, all activities fit into one of four categories:

• Not Important and Not Urgent
• Not Important and Urgent
• Important and Urgent
• Important and Not Urgent

Unfortunately, a lot of people spend a lot of time engaged in not important and not urgent activities.  Surfing the web is one of the biggest culprits in this area.  I, like most people today, search for and find a lot of the information I need on line.  I am pretty disciplined, yet I can caught up following interesting links when I am researching something on the internet.  Following links after you’ve found what you’re looking for is not important and not urgent activity.  It is a waste of time and a productivity killer.

Not important and urgent activities can become time traps.  These are the kinds of things that you have to do, but in the greater scheme of things, they are not likely to do much to help you become a life and career success.  These are things like expense reports that must be done within so many days of a trip, weekly staff meetings that you either lead or attend – the types of things that you have to do, but often don’t contribute to your larger goals.  The trick is to get these activities done in a timely manner, but not to spend a lot of your precious time doing them. 

Important and urgent activities are just what they seem.  I write this blog five days a week.  My blog is a very important marketing tool.  It increases my awareness in a very crowded market.  It positions me as a career advice expert.  And it reinforces my Common Sense Guy brand.  Writing and posting my blog is an important and urgent activity.  I do it first thing every day.  I’m sure that you have several important and urgent activities on your to do list too.  Do them, and do them well.

Important but not urgent activities are where you get the real payoff when it comes to creating your life and career success.  For example, it’s important to become a lifelong learner.  That’s why you need to read, join professional organizations and volunteer for projects in your company.  You probably don’t need to read every day and join all of the professional organizations in your field and industry.  These activities are just not that urgent.  However, you have to make time for them over the long run.  If you don’t, you’ll find that you are falling behind, not getting ahead or standing still.

Another example – my books serve much the same purpose as my blog.  They increase my awareness in a very crowded market; position me as a career advice expert and reinforce my Common Sense Guy brand.  I don’t need to work on a new book every day.  Writing a book is an important but not urgent task for me.  I manage this by budgeting at least three hours per week to write.  As one book goes into the editing and production process, I get busy writing another.  In that way, I never find myself without a forthcoming book.

It can be hard to budget time for important but not urgent activities because they are after all, not urgent.  However, important but not urgent activities left unattended will soon become important and urgent and may even become career success crises.  My best career advice is to focus on your personal set of important but not urgent activities and build some time into your daily or weekly schedule to work on them.

Time management is not the only key to personal organization.  The other day, I was looking for something on my office book shelf and I came across one of my favorite booklets.  It’s called 110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life.  Paulette Ensign is the author.

Paulette has packed a lot of common sense advice into this 16 page booklet.  I’m going to share my favorite ten nuggets with you here.  If you want the other 100, you can purchase the booklet by going to www.tipsbooklets.com.

10 of Paulette Ensign’s Tips on Organizing Your Business Life

• Create your own systems based on your common sense needs.  Modify whatever you read, hear or see (including these tips) to accommodate your personal requirements.
• Set a toss out date for publications and reports.  If you haven’t read something by the date, your life has probably continued fine without that information.  Today, information comes so quickly that much of it is outdated shortly after you read it.
• Decide if you really need hard copy of everything you have electronically.  Most times a backup disk is fine.  You will save money, time and space – not to mention a few trees – by printing a hard copy only when you need it.
• File paper by asking “where would I look for this item? not “where should I put this item?”  The putting part is easy – it’s the retrieval that can be difficult.
• Write the date and circumstances of the meeting on each business card you collect.  The frame of reference this provides will be very helpful in follow up conversations.
• Break large projects into short segments.  This will keep you motivated to finish the entire project.
• Schedule regular time for reading.  Usually lunch time or the end of the day is best for reading.  Scheduled time will keep you up on what’s happening in your business and life.
• Schedule high brain activities during your peak energy time and low brain, mechanical tasks during your low energy time. 
• Use a phone headset to free your hands while you are on the phone.  This will facilitate note taking, and finding items important to the conversation.
• Use a conference room, library or unoccupied office to do work where you need to concentrate and be free of interruptions.

These common sense ideas for organizing your time and life are great career advice and are only 10% of the ideas in Paulette Ensign’s booklet 110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life.  Try them.  If they help you become more organized, buy the booklet to become even more organized and productive.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are outstanding performers.  Outstanding performers are well organized; they manage their time, life and stress well.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 88 in Success Tweets.  “Get organized.  Organize your time, life and workspace.  Sweat the small stuff.  Success is in the execution.  Execution is in the details.”  Manage your time and life well by following this career advice.  Engage in “not important and not urgent” activities like web surfing in your leisure time only.  Complete “not important but urgent” activities quickly and move on.  Focus on “important and urgent” tasks.  Get them done well and in a timely manner.  Create time to work on “important but not urgent” tasks.  This will give you a leg up on your competition and lead to your life and career success.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 88.  What’s yours?  What is your personal organization system?  Please take a minute and share it with us by leaving a comment.  In case you’re wondering.  For me, reading and commenting on blog posts is an important, but not urgent personal development activity.  Thanks for setting aside some time to read this one.

Bud

I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them.  I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing.  You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.

Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 86…

Stay focused.  Don’t get distracted.  Treat time as the precious commodity that it is.  Manage your time and life well.

The other day I saw a great quote from Margaret Thatcher…

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

Ole’ Iron Maggie really nailed it with this one.  I like this quote because it’s great career advice that  gets at the essence of committing to managing your time and life. One way to demonstrate your commitment to your success is managing your time and life. Only you can make you a success.  You must be willing to do the things necessary to succeed.  To do all the things necessary you need to manage your time well and react positively to the negative stuff that happens as you move forward toward your goals.

Those days in which you have a lot to do, and you get it all done, are not only satisfying; they demonstrate your commitment to your success, and help strengthen that commitment.  I’m writing this on a plane on Friday night.  It’s about 8:00 in the evening.  I’ve been up since 5:00 because I needed to finish an important project for a client before I attended an all day workshop with my internet marketing mentor and business partner.  I’ve had a full, but very satisfying, day.  And, as Ms. Thatcher points out, one in which I feel a sense of supreme satisfaction. 

I’ve demonstrated to myself that I’m willing to do the things necessary to succeed.  More important, I’ve managed my time in a manner that resulted in me finishing everything I needed to do today.

A while back I had a bout with the flu.  It left me feeling weak and tired.  I spent all of a Monday afternoon and a good part of Tuesday morning in bed.  It couldn’t be helped.  I needed to get my strength back.  By Tuesday afternoon, I was feeling physically better, but emotionally drained.  I felt as if I hadn’t moved forward toward my goals.  I didn’t get anything done for about 24 hours – and I hated it.  But I also realized that staying in bed to recuperate was the best use of my time those two days.

When it comes to managing my time and life I agree not only with Maggie Thatcher, but with George Bernard Shaw, my favorite playwright…

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.  I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

I want my life to be a splendid torch that burns long and brightly.  How about you?  Do you revel in hard work and accomplishing everything you can?  Or do you prefer those days Maggie Thatcher describes as one in which you “lounge around doing nothing”?  If you revel in hard work, you’ll be focused.  You’ll treat time as the precious and non renewable resource it is and you’ll succeed.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people commit to taking personal responsibility for the creating the successful life and career they want and deserve.  They set high goals – and do whatever it takes to accomplish them.  They react positively to the people and events in their lives – especially the negative people and events.  They relish the days when they have a lot to do, and then go on and do it.  They get great satisfaction from working hard and seeing the results of their labor.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 86 in Success Tweets.  “Stay focused.  Don’t get distracted.  Treat time as the precious commodity that it is.  Manage your time and life well.”  When was the last day when you were truly busy? How did you feel at the end of it?  If you’re an achiever – someone who is committed to your career and life success, I bet you felt exhilarated and ready to go the next day.  That’s how I feel most days, and I’m proud of it.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 86.  What’s yours?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Today’s post is on Tweet 13…

Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.

I probably should amend the tweet to say, “Your vivid mental image is a goal.  You need to create a plan (a blue print) to make this goal a reality – and then do the work.”  Regardless, the career success coach message here is simple.  You have to do the work to achieve your goals.  It’s up to you.  You’re the one who has to do the work.

My current vivid image of my career success is one in which I work primarily from home as an internet marketer. 

I have a plan to make this vivid mental image come true.  To implement this plan I need to manage my time well. Most of the really important work I do requires large chunks of unbroken time.  I create large chunks of time for working on big projects and important activities – like writing books, blogging and creating products.    

The same is true for you.  You have to figure out what’s important to you and then create chunks of time to do what’s important.  Besides my career success goals, my health is important to me; so I allocate 30 to 60 minutes a day for exercise.  I’m going for a bike ride as soon as I finish writing this post.  I have friend who reads inspirational literature for at least 15 minutes each night before he goes to sleep.  He says that this helps him begin each day inspired and ready to move forward toward his goals.

The important point here is to plan your days in advance.  Schedule specific fixed time periods for particularly important activities and tasks.  Make appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them.  Set aside thirty, sixty and ninety minute time segments in which you will work on and complete important tasks that move you toward your vivid mental image of success.

Stephen Covey tells us that successful people find the time to focus on the important, but not urgent tasks.  If you’re not careful, your day will get taken up with urgent (sometimes important, and sometimes unimportant) tasks.  If this happens, you will be keeping your head above water, but not gaining any ground.  You won’t be moving toward your vivid mental image of your success.

Writing and posting this blog is a good example of one of the chunks of time I carve out for myself.  My blog is an important, but not urgent activity for me.  If you’re a regular reader, you know that I post every day, Monday through Friday.  This structure helps me when it comes to composing my posts.  Right now, I’ve added even more structure.  I am doing a series of blog posts that further explain the advice in Success Tweets.  This is the 13th post in the series.  I will keep going until I have done a blog post on all 141 tweets – there is a bonus tweet in the book.  If you want a free copy of the eBook version, go to www.SuccessTweets.com.

I usually write my posts two or three days ahead.  At a minimum, I write blog posts the night before I post them.  It takes me 30 to 45 minutes to write a blog post.  My discipline in writing a day before I post means that I don’t feel under the gun to write something every morning.  I think it results in better quality posts, and moves me toward my vivid mental image of success.

I post my blogs first thing every day.  If I have a very early meeting, or will be traveling early, I post the night before.  It takes me about 30 minutes to post this blog, as I post it in several locations.  www.BudBilanich.com is the main page for this blog.  However, I also post to several other sites.  

All of this takes time and discipline.  The time I spend writing and posting every day is a very important part of maintaining my internet presence.  My internet presence is the cornerstone of my marketing efforts.  I carve out large chunks of time to do the important, but not urgent task of building and maintaining my internet presence.  I have disciplined myself to set aside 60 to 90 minutes per day writing and posting my blogs.

I also carve out time to comment on five blog posts, written by other bloggers, every day.  This also helps with my internet presence and takes about an hour a day.  I have identified a number of blogs I read regularly and on which I comment.  It takes about seven to ten minutes to compose a thoughtful comment for each post.

In the past, I have had good intentions of doing this, but the urgent tasks that come up every day have made this a hit and miss proposition.  Recently, I decided that I will take one hour at the end of every day to read and comment on other blogs.  I will do this before I end my business for the day. 

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  From a time perspective, you get the biggest bang for the buck from the activities that are important to your success, but are not urgent.  Unfortunately, important but not urgent tasks often don’t get done because of all of the urgent tasks that come up during any given day.  Tweet 13 in Success Tweets says “Your vivid mental image is a blueprint.  It is a plan for success, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality.”  One way to get started doing the work is to schedule time to work on the important but not urgent tasks that will result in achieving your vivid mental image of your career success.  My best career success coach advice is to keep your commitment to yourself and your career success by planning you work and working your plan.

That’s my take on Tweet 13 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud