This is actually my second time reading Amy Lynn Andrew’s eBook Telling Your Time. I even purchase the newest version of her book which I’m happy I did! Ready to learn more about her book. Read my quick and easy review:

5 things I learned

Equating time to weight loss – minutes scheduled needs to be less than minutes in a day. Budget your time just as you budget your calories.

To not schedule every minute or live by the clock. I needed permission to not do everything, to let me know I was being to strict with myself.

Many times we make external changes, but it never works out because we really need to make internal changes. Here is another great analogy that is just like the weight loss mentality, we buy the workout clothes, the gym membership, the perfect app, but we don’t work on the issues that got us overweight and we are surprised when we fail.

Two of the most important roles you can add to your list of roles are self and dreamer. You are not adding self to make you center but because you are aware that none of your other roles can be accomplished without taking care of yourself. You need to add dreamer because if you don’t add your dreams to your schedule none of your dreams will really come about.

Writing everything you want and need to do may make you realize you may be trying to do too much.

6 amazing quotes

“Effective time management is not the key to a completed to do list, it’s the key to an accomplished life”

“Take control. Tell time how to work for you. Don’t be subject to it.”

“… your most important roles have to do with relationships. At the end of your life, relationships will be what really mattered and everything else … will pale in comparison.”

“Do not underestimate the importance of sleep. Because it’s so vital to your overall health and well-being, guard it fiercely!”

“Be realistic … If you are not realistic and try to squeeze in too much into your schedule, you’re only setting yourself up for failure.”

“… you should spend less time doing what you have to do and more time doing what you were made to do.”

5 reasons I recommend the book

Too many things on your schedule? Learn how to prioritize what you really want to do and learn to cut out the unnecessary.

Learn to not focus on specific goals but what your roles in life are. Prioritize these roles and find your true goals.

Don’t just use this book to make a daily life schedule. Use it to break down your business and blogging goals. Create a work schedule that will guide you to those specific goals.

Don’t get overwhelmed with knowing where to start. Learn to create your schedule simply step by step.

Even if you are not ready to jump into a full schedule learn how to prioritize your time. Use this system to create a loose  schedule.

Ready to Buy?

Or Get it on Amazon Kindle:

Do you have a daily schedule? A weekly schedule? What is your best tip for sticking to it?

This week we made a big purchase at Ikea: New Wardrobes. One for me and one for the hubby.

Look at that shoe storage, I’ve never had shoe storage before!

Eek! I’m so excited!

Click the pic for the full view:

One of the things I need to do to make my life easier is to have a menu plan. I’m not a cook, I’m a pull it out of the freezer or fridge and pop it into the microwave kind of mom.

To help me try and be a little healthier and a little more creative I have created a simple menu plan that I can use each week to stop the panic I get everytime I realize it’s dinnertime.

Right now it’s just a basic outline I follow each week. Hopefully I will start looking ahead a bit more and planning each week out more. But for now this works.

The Plan:

Monday – Noodle Night
Tuesday – Finger Food (Hot Dogs, Fish Sticks, Chicken Nuggets)
Wednesday – Sandwiches
Thursdays – Chicky Night (Happy Meal Night)
Friday – Breakfast at Night
Saturday – Something Special
Sunday – Mexican

‘Chicky Night may be going away, you will see tomorrow  about that. But I’ve been thinking about doing a soup night, but Zane refuses to eat soup. We will see.

A Good Example

As a good example today is sandwich night so I made the boys Banana and Peanut Butter Sandwiches with Brocolli and for desert Strawberry Banana Yogurt with Strawberry Slices.

For me I made a Toasted Strawberry Banana Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Bagel. Which was amazing and easier to make than say!

1. Toast your Bagel
2. Spread Cream Cheese on one side
3. Spread Peanut butter on the other
4. Place sliced banana on the Peanut Butter
5. Place Sliced strawberries on the Cream Cheese side
6. Squish it together and enjoy!!

Make Your Own Plan

How to make your own plan is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Figure out the meals you make the most: Mexican, Chicken Dishes, Casseroles, Fish, Hamburgers, etc. and categorize them.

2. Give each day of the week a category.

3. Write it Down!

What is your families menu plan? What is your families favorite night of the week?

Uniquehorn Design:

• Take down old pages from i2i site
• Layout Design for Jo’s Studios
• Install WP for Jo’s Studios
• Work on sidebar for DowntownDiaries

Online

• Add a “Read More” button on my portfolio to testamonials
• Finish blog post about cake and food
• Redesign Twitter Background
• Clean up Bookmarks
• Clean up Google Reader
• Think of prizes for UBP
• Write a review on Gleefully Peacock
• Work on new secret site

Misc

• Transfer my phone #s from my old phone
• Upload pictures from Zarek’s b-day party

Okay my goal for today is to get the 3 underlined items done! I will update this evening what I got done.

What’s on your to do list? How do you get yourself motivated or keep yourself motivated? What are your 3 Most Important Tasks today?

Here is a little freebie for you for the New Year

Feel free and print it for yourself.

Get full calendar here.

I was really productive today even though all day long I kept grumbling to myself I wasn’t doing anything. Maybe it’s because I have too much on my to do list right now.

I was able to bake over three dozen muffins. Banana and Sweet Potato Muffins that I made from some produce I got at the discount grocery store for $1.50. I am freezing most of them and now I won’t have to make muffins for probably a month. Which is good because I need to start working on my holiday crafting and such.

I made dinner for Zane and I, took me an hour to cook my dinner and keep the boys entertained. Zarek even got fresh mashed sweet potato for his dinner. I tried getting Zane to feed Zarek a little bit so I could try and work on my dinner. He did pretty good until he got bored with doing it. But it gave me a few minutes. This was also my first time cooking tofu. I actually really liked it fresh.

I put together my breakfast, lunch, and snack for tomorrow. I also cooked the chicken for my dinner. I made Zane a bento for lunch and one for snack. I’m hoping he will eat them they are filled with fruits and veggies and a pb&j sandwich cut into a pumpkin. I wish I had a turkey cookie cutter.

I also cleaned out my email box today. Got through over 300 emails. I need to try and keep on top of this. I added some more labels so that should help.

On top of that I also got my workout in and got my devotional time in. So I feel pretty good about the day. How was your day?

Welcome to part 2 in the Remember the Milk series. If you would like to follow this series from the beginning please feel free and start here.

Rmilk (Remember the Milk) is a free service to help you create to do lists. Rmilk has some great features and one feature that makes Rmilk great is Smart Add. This tutorial will teach you the basics of Smart Add so you can enter your tasks that much faster and easier.

In part 1 of this series we learned how to add our tasks into the above highlighted field and then edit the task after entering it. Today we will be talking about how you can type one key to change the Due Date, Change Priority,  Add to a List & Add Tags, Repeat the Task, Time Estimate, Add Tags, Add a Location, and Attach a URL. Now I will show you how to add all of those with just typing a special sign for each.

Due Date

After you enter your task you can type the “^” symbol and you will get a drop down menu. You can select a day or just enter a date and that will add a due date to your task.

Change the Priority

If you type an “!” you will get a drop down menu to change the priority of your task. 1 being highest priority and 3 being lowest.

Add to a List & Add Tags

You can type a “#” sign and get a drop down list with your Lists. You can choose the list you want to add your task to. You may only chose one list. If you type another “#” sign then you can add a tag. You can add multiple tags by just continuing to add “#” signs.

Repeat the Task

You can get a drop down menu to make your task repeat by typing “*”. You can choose daily, biweekly, etc.

Time Estimate

You can choose a time estimate from a drop down if you type an “=” sign. You can also type a time estimate right after the sign if it is not in the list.

Add URL

To add a URL to your task is simple. Just type the address and it will be added to the URL field on the task. You want to type the full URL including the http://www to have it be placed correctly.

Conclusion

You can type any of these symbols in any order to edit your task. Once you hit the add button it is all set. But if you need to change anything you can edit it the same as usual.

Please stay tuned for part 3  where I will go over some of the Special Features of RMilk:

• How to add your to do list to Gmail
• Sync tasks with Google Calendar
• Learn about the Twitter app

As part of getting ready for the holiday season I am trying to get more organized. I got my calendar set up and ready to start adding parties and events as they come up in the holidays. Now I am working on my to do lists.

Remember the Milk is one of my favorite tools to help me with my to do lists. RMilk (Remember the Milk) is a free service to help you create to do lists. Some of the great features of RMilk are Syncing with Google Calendar, you can access it offline, you can use it on your iPhone or Blackberry, it can be used with Twitter, you can add it to your gmail account, you can email your tasks to your list, you can share your tasks with others… I could keep going but let’s start seeing how to get started using Rmilk.

Creating Your Lists

You will want to start by making your lists. (The Inbox and Sent Lists are defaults you use for some of the more advance features.) To add lists click “Settings”, click the “List” tab and above your current lists you will have a bright blue button that says “+ Add List”.

These are my lists I have created:

• Boyz
• Christmas (my to dos and present list)
• Church
• Home (things that need to be done around the house)
• Meals (Meal planning things, grocery shopping, etc.)
• Online (Posts I want to write and when)
• Personal
• Work (this is archived)

You can archive a list if you are not using it at the moment. I have “work” in my archives because I only work part-time now. I just pulled my Christmas List out of the archives this last week. You can archive and unarchive your lists in this same settings section. You can make as many lists as you want.

Adding Your Tasks

Now that you have created your lists you can now start adding your tasks. You can make your tasks as simple or detailed as you want. On RMilk part 2 I will go over a special feature called “Smart Add” which makes adding your tasks even faster and more advanced.

Adding tasks is simple type in your task and hit enter. It will show up in your list. Pretty easy. You can sort your list by priority, due date, or alphabetically. Now for the fun part, using some of those great features.

Editing your Tasks

If you click on the checkbox next to the task you will get a menu to the right. In this menu you can change many things about your task.

To change the name of the task click on the little pencil.

You can change when your task is due. One nice feature of this is you can type in the date, tomorrow, or Friday and it will automatically find the date for you.

You can set how often the task repeats. If you always go shopping on Thursdays you can make sure that it will be on your list every Thursday. In this field you can write it however you need also like daily, biweekly, yearly, after 1 day, etc.

You can also put in how long you think this task will take you so you can make sure you don’t overbook yourself.

You can Tag your task just like you tag your blog entries. That way if you need to do a search on everything that deals “food” your tags will pull those items for you.

You can enter a location for your task. This doesn’t have to be an address, this could be in your kitchen, the library, at home, etc.

You can connect a URL to the task also. Which is great for putting in URLs for recipes, crafts you want to do at a party, or a meme you want to participate in.

You can also see how many times you have postponed a task, who you have shared it with and if there are any notes.

If you click the top tab that says notes you can write yourself a note about the task. Maybe a place to write a grocery list or a list of participants, lots of possibilities.

Please stay tuned for part 2 and part 3  where I will go over some of the Special Features of RMilk:

• How to add your to do list to Gmail
• Sync tasks with Google Calendar
• Learn about the Twitter app
• How to Smart Add

This post is linked to WFMW.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_-YPOMHwnAj0/Svo_jvY_CWI/AAAAAAAAFUk/7FJDZKb5Knk/s800/Task.jpg

Some days I feel like the world is falling in on me as I try and deal with the disorganization that lives in my house. I’m not a supermom or a superwife or a super-housekeeper. But I try. And so far we have all survived.

I’ve been trying really hard to get more organized. I realized that the disorganization that lives in my house is making me go crazy. If I feel overwhelmed with the way the house is I just don’t feel like doing anything. Which becomes a never ending cycle that makes it really hard to not be depressed and unproductive.

I’m a list and schedule kinda person, but sometimes I get off course. Okay more than sometimes, a lot. I want to find a system that will work for me and my family. Maybe you do to and maybe you will join me in my quest.

I’ve decided to do this small series on organization because it seems some of my readers were interested in my post about my Google Calendar. And also because that is one main goals I’m trying to get accomplished before we get swept up into the holiday season. So I hope you will enjoy these posts and participate with me.

One thing that has really helped me feel more motivated is doing a list of 3 MIT (Most Important Tasks) for the day. I find that once I get even one of these items off my to do list I feel more motivated. Sometimes I get even more than the three items done. But if I only get the three things done for the day I don’t feel guilty or discouraged at the end of the day I feel accomplished.

Later this week I will write more about my MIT and how I do my to do lists and the tools I use to do this.

I learned about MIT from simplemom this is a great blog if you haven’t read it before.