Rent2Travel

Well it’s the 13th March and finally been able to access all of your respective blogs (thank’s Laura for showing me)!

 Almost everything we have in our lives we can quantify, appreciate, understand, qualify the benefits of and generally respect on a day to day basis; with the exception of TIME. Most of us complaining that there is never enough hours in the day, days in the week. Friends saying things like ’cant believe its nearly April’ or ‘Christmas is only 2 weeks away’

Planning how we use our week is vital for many reasons but importantly it provides inner peace:

1) our personal inner feeling of being ’satisfied’ with what we have achieved in the week

2) providing space to think about where you are with your clients and what their needs are

3) allocating time to be creative about your business ideas and new inventions or compiling training material or maybe starting the book you have always dreamed of doing

4) blocking off an hour a week for your bookkeeping

5) Writing in the diary a swimming session or time with your friends to keep outside interests alive and reduce the possible feeling of isolation

6) educating your clients to pre book your time for the next three months in advance (if they all signed up to this idea it would provide a much healthier and more balanced work flow/activities/private life schedule and you with an opportunity of forward thinking). It also shows your client that your time is precious and extremely valuable and that you are in demand.

7) providing an action plan for clients with specific date deadlines will assist them in focusing their energies and also start to develop their time management skills.

I could go on for hours about time management, forward thinking and planning ahead, setting goals and deadlines for personal and client benefit but I wont.

What I will say is that its taken me over 25 years to actually start appreciating my personal time and how I use it, to not feel guilty about putting me first occasionally and learning to say ‘no’ without feeling guilty and as if I have let friends, family or clients down if I have not given in to their short notice and sometimes highly demanding expectations and time commitments. I still feel guilty about saying ‘no’ but I am certainly turning a corner and it is a refreshing and liberating experience. Some of my clients are also understanding and appreciating that time is a precious gift and that we should treat it with respect and learn to enjoy every moment we are given (as well as charge for it without feeling guilty