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9 EASY TIPS TO MAKE BETTER USE OF YOUR TIME

It’s easy to feel like there’s an infinite supply of time. In reality, with each day we live, there’s less of it. Whenever I’m asked if I could change anything about my life, I always say I wish I had more time with my grandmother. As a child, the thought of there being a time when I would live without her never crossed my mind. But that is now the case. She passed away when I was 16 years old. For every great and not so great moment in my life since then, I’ve wanted to call her and tell her all about it.

The lesson: Time spares no one. As the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and second, pass, we can never get them back. And in order to make the best of it, we have to make sure we learn to spend it wisely.

With 2016 upon us, I want to be more purposeful and intentional about my time. I have an ambitious year planned, and the goals I want to achieve are not going to get done on their own. I need to dedicate myself to carving out the time to bring them to fruition.

As creative, smart, and ambitious women, I can’t think of a more important asset to our creativity, careers, and businesses than our time. Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the results of the 2014 American Time Use Survey, an annual survey of around 11,000 Americans who are asked to give a detailed description of what they did on a particular day.
The biggest activity was sleeping. On average, Americans spent 2.82 hours, or 2 hours and 49 minutes, watching television, and 0.74 hours, or 44 and a half minutes, shopping for goods and services.

Here are 10 easy tips to make sure you make better use of your time in 2016:

1. Be Time Conscious

With anything you’d like to change, you must first increase your level of consciousness. Our time is no different. Be conscious of the fact that you can’t get wasted time back, and that we don’t have an infinite amount of time to play with. Taking stock of these facts can change your mindset, for the better. You won’t live forever, so commit to using the time you have now to the best of your ability.

2. Be Intentional

There is power in living with intention. By intention I mean truly knowing or having an idea of what I want to use my time for. Without intentionality, I’ll end about spending hours watching TV or browsing social media. I’m sure there will be days I’ll do that in the name of self-care, but I want most of my days to be more thoughtful.

3. Do a time audit

Take an honest look at how much time you’re spending on what. Does it add the career, life, or style of your dreams? If not, then why continue? Through my time audit, I’ve been able to discover that some hard truths about my distractions, spending too much time window-shopping online, watching documentaries, and browsing social media. I don’t plan on cutting these activities out of my life completely. Instead, I’m setting a limit.

4. Plan, Plan, and Plan

Planning is key. A plan is evidence that you want to be in control of your time, making moves instead of waiting and allowing things to maybe happen. For 2016, I have developed a daily schedule. I’m sure there will be unexpected surprises, but I, at the very least, want to be prepared. . It’s impossible to make better use of your time if you don’t have a plan for how to use the time you’ve been given.

5. Wake Up Earlier

As a child, my grandmother woke me up at 6 a.m. every day, even on the weekends. I never really understood why until I started to remember how long my days were back then. There was always time back then, but today, there never seems to be enough. . Myliek Teele, CEO of curlBox always says that if you’re sleeping in, the competition has already won. By waking up earlier every day (yes, even weekends), I’m giving myself more time to do things I enjoy, more time with my loved ones, and more time for my goals.

6. Develop a Morning Routine

I recently decided on a 2016 morning routine:
6:00: Wake Up & Devotional Reading (something that feeds my soul)
7:00: Write
8:00: Breakfast & Get ready for work
9:00: Commute, social media, read
10:00: Arrive at work
My routine is solely based around the things I’ve said I want to do more. I want to read more, write more, eat breakfast more, therefore I must set aside the time to actually do those things.

7. Limit distractions

This may seem obvious but it needs to be clearly stated. There are so many things vying for our attention these days. There is social media, reality TV, text messages, emails, and so much more. The truth is when we give something our attention, we’re really giving away some of our time. Not everything or even every person we give our attention is worth the time we’ve invested in it. As we continue to live the career, life, and style of our dream we really can’t afford to give our time to anything that does not fit the dream.

8. Done is Better than Perfect

Productivity and time go hand in hand. As a creative, my desire to get things done perfectly before releasing them is a time manipulator. Of course our projects, products, and content should be given the time they deserve to be completed at a high quality. But for 2016, I’m committed to getting things done without striving perfection. Complete it, release it and I’ll continue to tweak it.

9. Stay Ahead of Your Time

I tend to underestimate how long it takes to get a particular task done. I think I’m superwoman, and can get things done in the blink of an eye. This isn’t true. I usually end up falling behind on things because I failed to stay ahead of my time. Overestimate how much time it will take to get something done or to get somewhere. If you complete a task early or arrive early, great. You can simply use that time for something else.

How do you plan to make better use of your time this year?

THERE IS NO SHAME IN A NINE-TO-FIVE JOB

By Fleur Leave a Comment

In March, Damon Dash the Co-founder and former head of Rocafella Records did an interview on New York’s Power 105’s the Breakfast Club where he got into a heated discussion with DJ Envy about entrepreneurship when he stated, “Jobs are for lazy people that don’t want to invest in themselves.”

Dash may be a bit harsh in his statement but he’s expressing something very real about the times we’re living in. Welcome to the age where it’s no longer acceptable to have a nine-to-five job with benefits and a steady income. You can’t read your social media timelines without someone telling you to be a boss or encouraging you not to work for anyone else. Almost everyone you meet is a hustler, a side hustler, a brand, an entrepreneur, a mogul or an aspiring business owner. Most of these people also have a nine-to-five job that they rarely talk about and hide, as if it’s a dirty little secret to be ashamed of.

We’re all working so hard to make our dreams come true that it seems counterproductive to shame anyone for the job they do. The resources provided by the Internet and the decline in job security over the last decade, and a lack of job satisfaction were definitely legitimate reasons to consider having multiple options to earn money. With that said, succeeding as an entrepreneur is extremely difficult and recent strides in job satisfaction and job security there should be no shame in having a nine to five.

The Great Recession of 2008 really took a toll on the psyche of Americans and forced many of us to figure out how we can make money in non-traditional ways. Recently, the tide has begun to shift and Americans are more satisfied and secure than they’ve been since then. According to a report by the Conference Board satisfaction survey nearly three decades ago, 61.1% of workers said they liked their jobs. That number has slid over time, reaching an all-time low in 2010, when only 42.6% of workers said they were satisfied in their jobs. According to a 2014 Gallup poll 58% of full- or part-time workers are completely satisfied with their job security, an increase from the aftermath of the Great Recession from when roughly 50% of Americans said they were completely satisfied.

The Internet has completely revolutionized the way business is conducted but it has not made succeeding as an entrepreneur any easier. Access to new audiences, new ideas and low overhead costs has made it more and more attractive to start a business online. The one thing the Internet has not done is improve the business failure rate. According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months. Dash is certainly a prime example of the challenges entrepreneurs face despite having access to the Internet and many other resources. He’s become just as well known for failed business deals, huge tax debts and repeated legal battles as he is for partnering with Jay-Z to start Rocafella Records.

This isn’t to scare anyone out of becoming an entrepreneur but we should all consider the reality of being a successful entrepreneur before shaming people out of their nine-to-five.

As a budding entrepreneur, I don’t want to feel ashamed of my nine-to-five, especially since I actually enjoy mine. Plus, none of the work I’m able to do on the GlamSavvy Life would be possible without my steady paycheck. I recently had to release myself of the pressure of going full time. Being a full time blogger/entrepreneur would be amazing but in the meantime I can enjoy and appreciate my job while working on building my dream. Many of us rely on that to build our dream and become our own boss, and there is really no shame in that.

WHAT PEOPLE DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT GOAL SETTING

By Fleur Leave a Comment

I have a special bond with ambitious goals, which are rooted in my purpose and passions. Due to this, I have always been a passionate girl. This ambition is what fuels my goals and turns my ideas into my reality. In junior high school, I wanted to be the smartest girl in my class. I went home after school every single day and studied. There was no playing and no watching TV because I was so determined. This method worked! My grades were often the best in the class or close to it. During my senior year of high school, I had a goal of wanting to become school president. I worked so hard that I almost had a nervous breakdown and my mother had to step in to stop me from running myself into the ground. Despite the obstacles I faced, I won the election to fill the position of President for my class.

Since then, life has gotten a lot more complicated. I can no longer throw all my complete focus and energy to one goal at a time. I have a full time job that I enjoy and want to excel in, while working to build a business that I want to be my legacy. Through trying to balance it all, I have learned over the years that setting a goal is not enough to ensure success.

Goals are essential part of any achievement. I rely on my goals to wake me up in the morning, and to keep me pushing when I get exhausted, which happens often. There are a usually a few things left out of how to use goal setting to achieve success. You cannot just make list of things that you want to achieve, close your notebook and go back to bed. One of those goals on that list will require an immense amount of consistent effort, time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears. In order to aid you along the process, here are five things people do not tell you about goal setting:

1. Have a specific plan

This is hard because if you are anything like me, you want to start DOING! For example, I launched my t-shirt line after I thought I had waited a bit too long to start the project. It turns out I should have planned a bit more because inventory, printing issues, and overall branding are just a few of the challenges I have faced. In recent months I have doubled the readership here on the blog, but I am also doing a lot more planning and strategizing.

Writing a goal down does not a make the plan easy. You can start with the most ambitious goal in the world, but you will have to sit down and break that goal into specific steps that will create an action plan. For every ambitious goal, there are thousands of steps you will have to take on daily, monthly, and yearly basis before achieving that objective.

2. Be strategic

A strategy is defined as a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time. For me, I create strategies to help me execute on my plan. As a blogger, I have strategies for content, marketing and social media. Goals are usually a marathon, where you have to employ strategies that will keep you on track in the long haul.

3. Take action

After you have planned and strategized, you have to begin to take some action. Let your action plan be your guiding light because the more you do, the more you will learn. It is no secret that we sometimes get stuck in the planning and strategizing phase. I have found that the thing holding me back from acting is the gripping fear that can sometimes take over all of my will to take action. It would be dishonest for me not to acknowledge that this happens to me almost every single day. However, I remind myself that the fear is a sign that I should move forward with that act. The more we use fear as the thing that propels us to act and not the thing that prohibits our actions, the more we will achieve.

4. Expect challenges & failures

The other great thing about taking action is that you start facing your challenges and failures almost immediately. By putting off action, you are only putting off your challenges and failures. There is no amount of planning and strategizing that will result in no obstacles coming your way. The great thing about preparation is that they allow you to focus on overcoming an unforeseen challenge while keeping the goal alive.

5. Invest in yourself

Perhaps, the most important thing I have learned about goal setting in recent months is that you must invest in yourself. No matter how smart or hard working you are and how much you have achieved, you must understand your shortcomings to be able to fill in the gaps. Your goal may be great with a detailed plan and sound strategy, you will not reach your goals without the necessary skills, and talents. Be sure to invest some time in sharpening your skills by learning new talents or taking e-courses and webinars. All of these may cost you some money, but the return on your investment will show itself in your achievements.

Goal setting is hard. I have countless number of notebooks and documents with lists and goals. Some I have been able to reach with pure resilience and tenacity, but many I have forgotten and will probably never reach. The ones that I was able to reach would not be possible without the five step process above. I am sure that if you implement these steps into your goal setting, you will have great results! Be sure to share what achievements you have conquered in the comments below.