Barbara Corcoran, one of the busiest women in business turns her phone off at 6:30 pm in an effort to balance work and family. If this entrepreneurial power house can switch off with her busy schedule, surely, so can you!
One of my favorite time management tips from Barbara is that it is a myth that you can achieve balance. She called this a “Phantom Chaser” idea. You will always work to create an ideal situation, but it will never happen. Instead, she suggests that professionals follow two words of advice, organize and prioritize.
Learn to segment your day into bite sized chunks that allow you to separate things into a “livable order”. Create a schedule so that you’ll have a routine that is easy to follow, allowing you to commit to fulfilling the commitments of that time period.
Next, prioritize your schedules. It is exciting for me to know that I actually do something the way that someone so successful does them. Keep a running list of ideas, projects, tasks and things you need to follow up with. Every morning (or as Stephen Covey suggests, at the end of each day), spend a few minutes deciding what are your A, B, and C tasks.
Don’t eat dessert first. While, like Barbara, many of us may have the urge to be creative – to design, write, and simply do the fun stuff first, in order to be successful, get the A Priority things done first. I think about this as the paper shuffle. Often in order to avoid doing what we have to do, we invent things that we really want to do instead and try to justify them. STOP!
Want more business advice from Barbara Corcoran and the other entrepreneurs at Shark Tank? Listen to the Sharks.
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