Back To School Series: Never Be Late Again!

     Every organizing challenge requires time management to conquer it.  Spending a little time tweaking time management skills can help every area of life.  Try one or more of these tips and “Never Be Late Again”!

     Did you know?  Americans waste 9 million hours total per day searching for misplaced items, according to the American Demographics Society.  That breaks down to each of us wasting an average of 55 minutes a day, roughly 12 weeks a year, looking for things we know we own but can’t find, according to a Boston Marketing firm (statistics from the NAPO.net website).

     To Never Be Late Again, stop wasting time searching for stuff!  Make a home for the 3 or 4 vitally important items that you literally can’t leave home without, like your cell phone or car keys, and commit to keeping them there while at home and at work. Invest in a bowl, make it pretty if you’d like, make it the same at home and on your desk, if  that helps you, and make it a habit to put your important items there every time you arrive home or to the office.  This will speed the leaving process and save hours in searching time!

     Another suggestion is to prepare to leave again as soon as you arrive home.  My personal example is to re-load my briefcase with supplies at the end of every day, when I am more likely to remember what I need, instead of waiting until tomorrow.  It’s easier to take time now, when things are slowing down, than it is to do the same tomorrow morning when things are speeding up again!  This idea works for our personal lives, too – we used to re-pack the diaper bag for the sitter as soon as we got home from work.   Create a check list and keep it handy, like “6 clean diapers, lots of wipes, 2 or 3 clean outfits, etc.”

     Think about ambulance drivers and fire fighters.  They clean up and reload their rig after every call. I'm not suggesting we should view life as an emergency, but it’s easier to be flexible when we know we’re prepared.

     My next suggestion is what I call “next step-ping”.  I work through this process with clients -  at the end of today, look at tomorrow’s schedule and plan ahead now instead of reacting tomorrow.   If I look at tomorrow’s schedule, perhaps I see a PTA meeting, a tennis lesson, then 2 clients back to back.  So tonight I leave my PTA notebook, my tennis bag and clean clothes, and my briefcase by the back door to make tomorrow morning better.

     I do this with my kids, too.  We look at today’s schedule, starting with this moment and move forward to determine what needs to go with us to school, or at least into my car for later:  Eat breakfast, get bags to back door, think through course schedule and review assignments, make sure lunch is in backpack, consider after-school extracurriculars, take something out of the freezer for dinner, etc.  We might even think about tomorrow, to avoid last-minute emergencies.

     Finally, to Never Be Late Again, we need to understand and embrace the difference between Load Time and Leave Time (reference the article, Parenting 2009).  Sometimes our time management issues are our own, and sometimes they are created by others, but most often they are a mix of both.  I chatted with a friend about time management.  She admitted that she is late to every class she teaches because she can’t make it down the hallway without being stopped.  So, other people interrupt her, which is their issue, but she allows the interruption to make her late, which is her issue.

     Let’s say a meeting is set for 10 am and is 5 minutes away.  In a perfect world, we could leave at 9:55 and arrive on time, but – alas - we do not live in a perfect world.  Load Time is rarely Leave Time.

     To Never Be Late Again, we have to start factoring in that extra 5 minute cushion to respect our time and the time of everyone else around us.  Personally, I need to realize the 12-year-old will always have to run back in the house for something before we head to school. 

     Professionally, we have to realize that if the meeting starts at 10, we really need to arrive by 9:50 to network and prepare, instead of arriving at 10 and interrupting everyone else.

     My suggestion to my professor friend is to try a trick I use, set the alarm clock on your cell phone to chime warnings at 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 2 minutes to class time.  This allows a way to break out of unsolicited conversations in the hallway, and Never Be Late Again to her own class.

     I can’t guarantee that you will Never Be Late Again, but trying one or more of these ideas will certainly help!  Give them a try, and let me know what you tried and what worked for you!