In this video Margaret shares more detail about the third D of time management – Date-Out.
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Transcript:
Hi I’m Margaret Briem. I’m probably best known for the coaching and training services I provide and two of my brands Live the Life You Love and Delicious Sexy Business Secrets. We are your best choice for support in navigating the course to intentional success. Dare to dream with Margaret Briem. We will get you there.
Today we are going to talk about one of the four D’s in time management. The top questions I am often asked either through my coaching clients, potential clients or at events and meetings is how I get it all done. Sometimes I do not know how I get it all done. The reason people ask me isn’t just because I am a life and small business coach, but because I also have a very large family and they want to know how I manage that. I have specific goals in mind, specific things that I want my kids to learn and specific things I want to accomplish with my business and that helps me to maintain my focus.
What I use most for my actual time management I call the four D’s of time management. They are Delete, Deliver, Date-out and Delegate. Today we are going to talk about Date-out. Date-out is actually my form of project management. This is for a bigger project that might take several months, or even one month but has multiple steps to complete and it can’t be completed in one or two days or a week or less. Even if it could be completed in a week, but there are other things that have to happen too, I use my Date-out time management method.
The first thing I do on a particularly named project, I name the project. I list all the action steps that need to take place to complete the project. From there, looking at my action steps, I pick a reasonable, and this is key, reasonable deadline date. For me, because I have a large family and my kids are special needs, I need to allow what I call buffer zones, so I usually will allow extra time. The extra time depends on how long the project is like if it is a week-long project, I might take it into the following Tuesday. If it is a month long project I might add two more weeks, because so many things happen with my kids, calls from school, if we get the flu that circles around my house several times, projects at school that I have no awareness that they are coming up, different medical appointments, counseling appointments, speech therapy appointments, you name it, can come up that I might not perceive that are going to be coming up within the time frame. So I always allow a buffer zone.
From there, like I said I listed out the steps that the project takes. Once I set the deadline, I work backwards with those action steps and put completion dates in my schedule for those actions. So those are going to be actions that are either one day or an hour or less. I am going to put them out, listing them backwards, in my schedule, until today’s date, whatever today’s date happens to be when I am making that plan. From there, I honor that commitment, or adjust as necessary. I adjust within a narrow time frame. Depending on how long the projects determines what I mean by a narrow time frame. Do I have to complete part of the project, one hour at night after the kids go to bed, even though it is not during part of the normal hours I would do it? Do I have to plan to work on it on the weekend, and if I do, what else is going to be in conflict? So I have to look at those things and plan out a reasonable way to reschedule something if I miss, which is why I allow the buffer zone.
Once the project is complete, I try to celebrate it in some small way. That could be having a treat with the kids. It could be scheduling one of my favorite dinners instead of a kid food dinner, for our regular dinner. It could mean that I do something little for myself that I don’t tell anybody about like maybe do something great for my hands for self-care. Usually I choose to up my self-care in some way, a little treat. That is part of project management is knowing that it is an accomplishment when you finish the project and celebrating the accomplishment even if it is just you celebrating it because it was just you doing the project and nobody else understands you celebrating it. You have to celebrate it in your own way.
That’s it for Date-out, project management. Let me run through the steps one more time. Name the project. List out the action steps to complete the project. Schedule a reasonable time for completion allowing for buffer zones. Work backwards with the action steps and schedule them in your calendar, in a way that if something comes up you can slightly reschedule it, which is what the buffer zone is for. Once you completed the project, on the deadline or before, you celebrate, in your own way, even if no one else knows or understands. So that is it that is Date-out, how you do project management Margaret Briem style.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them below. As always, if you know someone who can benefit from this information, please share it with them. Thank you.
I’m Margaret Briem, telling you to choose to live the life you love. Don’t you deserve it? Until next time, take care.
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