People often ask me
how I am so good at balancing my life – my priorities, my family,
extracurricular activities, my businesses etc.
I would be telling a big FAT lie if I said that it was a natural born
talent and it was just easy as 1-2-3. Although, I have always possessed some
qualities as it relates to effective time management; there were still things
that I needed to implement and stick to in order to maximize my ability to manage my
time more
effectively and more wisely.
Stress and anxiety has never been my friend and one thing that I
found out early on in life and in my career is that when I was placed under
pressure; I begin to feel stressed and a level of anxiety would hit me which made
me feel extremely uncomfortable. Contrary to some; they work best under
pressure, but that is not the case with me.
I am overwhelmed, overworked and stressed out under pressure and 9 times
out of 10; I do not provide a quality product, but I got the job done.
“Don’t allow time to escape you, use the time
allowed and use it wisely!”~Treal
When I do not use my
time effectively and I am pressured to finish something; I feel like I have
lost control over whatever task or situation I am dealing with at the
time. Many of us can relate to feeling
like we have lost control over something. It makes us feel that thing or task
has conquered us and in many cases it makes us feel like failures. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t
like feeling out of control, and I certainly don’t like feeling like a failure.
How Do I Manage?
Early on in my
career/life; I came up with a strategy that would help me stay in control, stay
on track and obtain the results that I desired.
This strategy was birthed during my professional career and was used
strictly for that purpose however; it can easily be implemented and effective
in your personal life as well (personal task, children/family, school work etc.)
When I first began my
career in the Human Resources field, I had the best supervisor ever. Her time management skills, worth ethic,
professionalism and her ability to communicate with others were
impeccable. She was the Vice President
of Human Resources and her job demanded a great deal from her. In addition, she directly supervised
employees, was in control over all of the Human Resources disciplines/functions,
and she was also over many other departments within the organization and she
managed extremely well. I was quite
impressed and in awe of her!
Throughout my career working
under her; I made a personal/professional decision that I would model after my
supervisor and adopted her as my professional mentor. I watched how she
operated on a day to day basis. She
would have projects/tasks on top of projects/task and always executed a quality
product within the time allowed (deadlines).
In addition to her work life, she took care of her elderly mom and spent
a great amount of time with her immediate family. She would host functions at
her house and would cook delicious meals and often brought extras to work. I wondered how in the world she was able to
manage it all and stay mentality and emotionally sound. To me she never allowed anything to get the
best of her, but she did give her absolute best and if that wasn’t good enough;
she didn’t stress about it. We would
often have talks and she would give me little tips of how I could be better as
a person and a women working in Corporate America. You better believe that I
never took her advice for granted.
Every hour of our
work day was used effectively. When I
got into work; I had a project or task waiting for me with a sticky note of
when it was to be complete (reasonable deadline). The more I
learned and the more efficient I became; the more she delegated other task to
me; even those outside of my normal scope of work. I learned a trick from her in completing
the most important task first and then prioritizing all of the
others. At the beginning of her work
day; she would have all of her projects/tasks that she was to complete that
day. She would then create a High,
Medium or Low priority stack and began to place the projects/tasks into the
assigned stack. After that, she would
begin working on each assignment according to priority and would work her way
down. Once she finished a task/project; she checked it off of her task list as Complete!
~Treal
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