The more senior you become in the organisation, the tougher it can be to maintain some form of work / life balance.

So what simple tips do I suggest for improving work / life balance?

Tip 1: Set deadlines
• Have you ever noticed that when you set a deadline for getting something done or a timescale to do something, you somehow do it? Setting a deadline is a bit like setting an intention which sends a signal to your mind.

Tip 2: Prioritise well

• Whether you believe it or not, some things are more important than others. Make the point of identifying and prioritising how you will use your time.

Tip 3: Be well organised

• Being able to find things when you need them, whether in a computer or filing cabinet, can pay big dividends.

Tip 4: Plan things out of work

• If you don’t, you will just end up staying that extra half hour, which will in reality end up being two hours.

Tip 5: Ask for help

• Don’t suffer in silence. Ask for help if you are struggling.

Tip 6: Focus on what matters

• Rather than stuff that keeps you busy.

Tip 7: Learn to switch off

• Tough as it might be, you need to be able to switch off.

The truth is, maintaining a healthy work / life balance can actually enhance your performance. So what’s your first step?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

1. Know what your priorities are.
2. Plan your time utilisation to focus on your priorities.
3. Periodically record where you are spending your time so that you can be sure that you are spending it appropriately.
4. Do what you do best and delegate or dump the other things.
5. Get the team you lead or manage taking on the things that they do best.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Tip 1
• Get clear on what’s priority and what’s not.

Tip 2

• Invest your time in the priority activities.

Tip 3

• If you have something that you have to do, make sure that you have the skills to do it.

Tip 4

• Keep track of where you are spending your time so that you can be sure that you are investing it wisely.

Tip 5

• Reflect periodically and make changes where necessary to take your personal effectiveness to the next level.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

“Too much to do, too little time”, is an all too familiar cry these days. So what can you do to get more done and achieve better results?

1. Know what’s important and priority and what is just a time filler.
2. Set yourself challenging but realistic targets for each day, week and month.
3. Set start and finish times for every task.
4. Don’t leave things half completed otherwise you end up with a whole lot of work in progress.
5. Get organised so that you can find things.
6. Automate whenever you can to boost productivity.

What additional tips would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

When I was studying for my accountancy exams, one of the topics we covered was limiting factors. More recently I have been noticing that we all have the same ultimate limiting factor: 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week and 744 hours in a 31 day month. So how can you make the most of the ultimate limiting factor?

1. Determine what things are most critical to your success or results that you want to achieve.
2. Prioritise every day so that your time and energies go first on those things that contribute most to your results.
3. Work in short, focussed blocks rather than long, marathon sessions.
4. Minimise the distractions that get in the way of you getting things done.
5. Build some slack into the schedule to deal with those surprises or emergencies that occur from time to time.
6. Track where your time is going and make adjustments if it is not being invested appropriately.

I wonder what tips you would add to make the most of your ultimate limiting factor?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Despite all of the advances in technology, managing time and getting things done seems to be tougher than ever. Trouble is that time, unlike memory on your computer, cannot be added to, so it is how you invest it that matters.

So what can you do to take control of your time?

1. Know your priorities – what is it that your success or otherwise is measured against at the end of the day?
2. Set time limits for everything you need to do in a day – you will be amazed at the difference it makes.
3. Do a periodic time audit so that you know where your time investments are going.
4. Start thinking of time like money and choose carefully where you invest it.
5. Don’t overload your plan with too much otherwise you will get de-motivated.
6. Try, wherever possible, to batch similar types of activity so that you make better use of your time.

Remember that time management is really all about planning and decisions. So what’s your best time management tip?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. For more information click here

Having sufficient time is often cited as a key challenge for managers and leaders.  So what are 8 quick tips you can work on straight away.

Tip 1: Get clear on your goals

Tip 2: Think clearly, calmly and positively

Tip 3: Stop moaning about the circumstances and start taking action

Tip 4: Say no when you really cannot take on anything else

Tip 5: Take breaks and try to get some exercise

Tip 6: When you are working, focus on working

Tip 7: Tidy your desk so that you can find things quickly

Tip 8: Tackle the time bandits who steal your time

So what other tips would you add?

When it comes to money, the vast majority of leaders and managers will be able to give an excellent account of where they spent the budget they were allocated and what they delivered with that budget.  On the other hand if you asked them how they were using their biggest limiting factor, time, how many would be able to give a clear answer?

In truth, very few of us ever take the time to accurately capture where we spend our time and what results we deliver from the time we have invested.  So why should you bother anyway?

1. You might discover that your time utilisation is a bit like a leaking water pipe.  A lot is being lost but you are not quite sure why.

2. You might be struggling to achieve deadlines or rushing at the last minute to deliver because you are not investing your time wisely.

3. You might be having to continually work extra hours (usually unpaid) to get everything done.

Not taking care of how you spend your time is a bit like not bothering to take care of company money or company equipment.

Doing a time analysis is really easy to do and has a ton of benefits, for example:

1. You start to discover if you are spending your time on what is really important to your success as a leader.

2. You start to become much more conscious of the cost of doing certain things.

3. You find ways of adding more value to the organisation without having to make more and more personal sacrifice.

Bottom Line – Time is probably the biggest limiting factor for just about everyone.  So what action could you take starting today to tackle the biggest limiting factor to you delivering results and achieving success

If you are a leader, your the ultimate measure of your success is what you deliver.  Yes there are other factors that contribute to how you are rated as a leader but at the end of the day it is results that count.  If you are in any doubt about this, just pick up the business section of any good quality newspaper or sector publication and chances are you will come across:

1. Some leader who is under pressure to deliver a certain result.

2. Some leader who has been removed because the results delivered were not good enough.

With all of this focus on results, it is important that as a leader you use your biggest limiting factor wisely.  So what is the biggest limiting factor?  In my experience it is time.  There are always many options open to you on how you could use the time available but the amount you are allocated in a day, week, month or year is fixed.  Contrast with a constraint like the amount of budget you have available.  You can make a case for more financial resource and if your case is compelling enough, you have a good chance of securing additional resource.

So if time is a major constraint, you need to know when your own personal prime time is.  It will be different for different people.  Some people are at their best first thing in the morning, while for others burning the midnight oil is best.  When you know your personal prime time you:

1. Can schedule the most important tasks for the times when your performance is optimal.

2. Avoid wasting optimal performance time on anytime tasks.  You know things like e-mails, routine phone calls or texts.

3. Deliver better results, because you focus your attention on the things that have greatest impact on the results you deliver.

Bottom Line – Your personal productivity greatly influences your results.  So what steps are you going to take to do the most important things in your personal prime performance time?

Ask any manager what one of their biggest challenges is and chances are that a lack of time will be pretty high up the list of answers.  Given that the total time available per day, week, month or year is out of your control, it is how you use it that matters.

With lengthy job descriptions and vague objectives being the norm, you need to take control and get clarity on your priorities.

It is pretty easy to do this.

1. List out your understanding of your priorities

2. Arrange to meet with your boss

3. Ask him or her to tell you what they see as priority

4. Come to an agreed list of priorities

5. Plan your time to focus on these priorities

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professionals, teams and organisations develop their management and leadership capability.