Time Management, Nannies etc.

Last night I needed some downtime, so i turned on Super Nanny, I think it was called. This reality show also reinforced some valuable tidbits not just related to child-rearing. For those of you that missed the show last night, here’s the premise…A Mom and Dad and their 3 closely-spaced daughters; one was 4.5 and twin 3 year olds. These children were totally out of control. Not listening to their parents, beating each other up and tantrums galore. The Mom and Dad seemed like nice, caring people, but they just didn’t know how to handle the kids. After observing, the nanny gave the girls’ parents tools to help them curb the behavior of the girls. One of them was a schedule.

The mom stayed home and had no rhyme or reason to the day. Most of the time, they had ‘free play” and since they didn’t know how to use that time well, they would get bored, and the behavior would start to deteriorate. With the help of the nanny, they created a specific schedule breaking down the entire day and what activities were supposed to take place at which time. The schedule included a group craft activity from 4-5 p.m. where mom gave them her undivided attention and helped them. It gave the girls something to look forward to each day, and with the schedule, the girls knew what was expected of them.

This got me thinking of how important schedules are and how much more we can accomplish with them. Break out your day and set time allotments of when you will work on what type of tasks. If you always feel sluggish at 2:00 p.m., schedule your favorite work task at that time. Have something to look forward to. With your new schedule, see how much more focused you are when you know what you are supposed to be doing when, see how much more productive you are, and avoid operating in crisis mode.

Speaking of which, my blogging/checking email/checking RFPs time block is coming to an end. More later.