I’m Melinda Emerson and every week as @SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with experts on my Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. The show takes place every Wed on Twitter from 8- 9pm ET. This is excerpted from my recent interview with Allyson Lewis @allyson7minutes. Allyson is a professional speaker and productivity coach and the author of The Seven Minute Difference, Her book is filled with stories and practical tools to help you rediscover your purpose, regain control of your time and accomplish your goals and dreams. For more information: Http://TheSevenMinuteDifference.com
Smallbizlady: What is time management and why is it important to improve your personal time management skills?
Allyson Lewis: In order to improve work productivity, you intuitively understand a need to improve personal time-management skills. When someone is working toward completing a task, project, or activity, there are certain processes that will make them more efficient. Improve time-management skills by focusing on these basic time-management concepts:
* Clarifying the desired outcome or goal
* Proper planning
* Prioritizing your activities and steps
* Organizing your resources, tools and people
* Monitoring your progress
* Focusing, or persevering until the task has been fully completed
Here’s an article I wrote earlier this year about this. www.MorningstarAdvisor.com,
http://www.morningstaradvisor.com/articles/article.asp?docId=18948
Smallbizlady: Your organization system is based on a specific time frame, Why 7 Minutes?
Allyson Lewis : Partly, because my life changed forever in seven minutes. And, partly because as I was doing research for my book, The Seven Minute Difference I discovered that the attention span of the average adult is very, very short. Different studies on attention have stated that true attention varies from as short as 2 seconds to as long as 20 minutes, and maybe all the way to 90 minutes if you are in the “zone.” With that in mind, our company began to focus on time management and productivity workshops, tips, and tools that you could implement into your life in as little as “7 Minutes.”
Smallbizlady: There will always only be 24 hours in a day, so really what is time management?
Allyson Lewis: Time management is prioritizing. Period. Every minute of your day, you make a decision of what you will choose to do with your time. You choose to focus your attention on a high-priority task that is alignment with what you value, or you choose to squander those precious minutes of the day on low value activities that are not in alignment with what is most important to you. Therefore, the beginning of time management is taking the time to clarify and establish your personal life values or priorities.
Smallbizlady: What is “The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢?”
Allyson Lewis :The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ is a strategy that creates a framework to Prioritize, Organize and Simplify® your life both at work and at home. In my last book, The Seven Minute Difference, we helped people understand how in “7 Minutes” a day they could:
– Prioritize their personal and corporate values
– Rediscover their purpose
– Establish written 90-Day Goals
– Organize their game plan
– and, Simplify their lives down to a few simple actionable items that they will commit to accomplishing every day.
Smallbizlady: What is the best way to clarify and establish personal values?
Allyson Lewis: Initially we recommend our “7 Minute” community members schedule a retreat for themselves. Take a morning or an afternoon to be alone and begin by asking, “What is most important?” Then, take a sheet of paper and list as many values as you can. Many of our consulting clients will end up with a list that includes values such as: faith, family, peace, joy, health, serving, community, love, leaving a legacy, making a difference, meaningful work, learning, growing, creating, and sharing. The key part of this exercise is to step back and look inside your heart and find out what is truly most important to you. Then, look at your calendar and compare your daily activities to what you have just said is most important to you.
Smallbizlady: What is the next step in The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢?
Allyson Lewis: The next step is helping people discover or re-discover their purpose in life. Take out a blank sheet of paper and a pen and at the top of the page write, “My purpose in life is…” and complete the sentence. We believe purpose is how you serve others, purpose is how you use your gifts and talents to change the world, love is the foundation of purpose. This simple exercise of articulating your purpose can change the entire direction of your life from an inward focus to an outward focus.
Smallbizlady: How is goal-setting related to establishing your priorities and your purpose?
Allyson Lewis: Once you have defined your priorities and established your purpose, then you will create written 90-day goals. You will want to write each goal in present tense as though it has already happened and you will follow each goal with 5 action steps. It is important that you can’t really accomplish a goal — you can only accomplish specific action steps that will draw you closer to reaching your goals. These short-term written goals are a key turning point for many people. When they can identify what they want to accomplish and the action steps to accomplish it — they begin to FEEL new excitement and energy to actually do what they said they will do!
Smallbizlady: What are “7 Minute Micro-Actions?”
Allyson Lewis: After you have your written 90-day goals for your personal life and your business life — it is very easy to translate big goals into what we call “7 Minute Micro-Actions”. A micro-action is a tiny step forward. It is an action that is so easy to accomplish you feel no burden or emotional barrier between what you want to accomplish and what you can actually accomplish. Having a list of a few of these daily micro-actions sets you up for very powerful psychological improvements in your well-being. If you have a list of a few micro-actions that will allow you to become the person you want to become and that are in alignment with your priorities, your purpose and your goals and you accomplish those micro-actions — imagine you will feel? The simple answer is that you will feel GREAT!
Smallbizlady: Talk to us about the importance of having a daily written plan of action.
Allyson Lewis: Time management begins with prioritizing what you want to accomplish each day and then blocking out the appropriate amount of time on your calendar to start and completely finish each task. And, by having a daily written plan of action you will do much more that merely have a vague idea of what you will want to accomplish – you will have a written roadmap. If we choose how we will spend the minutes of our day, a written roadmap will help you make much better decisions.
Smallbizlady: You have created a system of completing your 5 before 11®. What does this mean?
Allyson Lewis: Your 5 before 11® micro-action list is one of the planning activities you will do on a daily basis. Just before you leave the office for the afternoon we encourage you to create a written plan of action. Your 5 before 11® micro-action list will be a prioritized list of the five highest-value activities that you are willing to commit to completing before 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Your life will be radically different if you start every day knowing what five specific action steps you must take that morning in order to get closer to reaching your goals. This process makes every day count.
Smallbizlady: How can entrepreneurs really change their lives “7 Minutes” at a time?
Allyson Lewis: The single best way for entrepreneurs to change their life is take “7 Minutes” at the end of every day to create their 5 before 11® list for the next day. This single idea of identifying the 5 most important action steps and placing them into a daily written plan of action is transforming people’s dreams into tiny micro-actions that they believe they can accomplish. They no longer feel the pressure of having the overwhelming and demoralizing list of 50 tasks that they know they cannot accomplish — rather they walk into their office each morning with a written plan of the 5 most important things they need to do before 11am. And, here’s the difference — because it is only 5, they do it. The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ is about DOING what you say you will do.
Smallbizlady: What is the end result of living The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢?
Allyson Lewis: The end result is that your life is congruent. You spend your time focusing on your faith, your family, using your gifts and talents to change the world, living from a deep understanding of your purpose, finding fulfillment in a job well done, and making a difference in the lives of those closest to you. The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ is about discovering meaning. It is about regaining energy and excitement and it is about having the time to love life again. The great paradox of The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ is that as we take the time to become more self-aware, we will become less self-directed. Life is a journey. The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ breaks down that journey to single steps.
Smallbizlady: What tools have you created for entrepreneurs?
Allyson Lewis: I have been an entrepreneur since I was a child. The word entrepreneur is from the French word entreprendre, which means to undertake. My problem has always been that I want to “undertake” TOO much. I had so many ideas and dreams and goals, that I wasn’t accomplishing any of them. I was driven, but I was distracted. So, I have created concrete processes, tools and repeatable systems to make sure the work I do every day is CONSISTENTLY moving me forward. We have written the book, The Seven Minute Difference: Small Steps for Big Change. And, in July 2010, we released The 7 Minute Lifeâ„¢ Daily Planner that walks you through a system of materials and exercises you can read about here http://bit.ly/dxsbwG. You can find out more information about our books and planners at www.TheSevenMinuteDifference.com; and twelve of our most popular free time managements tools here as well: http://bit.ly/9jtN4L.
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