UXL Blog

By Margaret Smith
Speaker | Career Coach | Certified Insights Discovery Practitioner

Making your voice heard, being noticed, overcoming your inner saboteur, improving interactions with others: These are many of the topics I discuss with my coaching clients. These are also many of the topics that the writer Julie Morgenstern addresses in her article, “Five Ways to Get a Life” published in O Magazine. Read on for a bunch of useful and fun advice about taking back your life!

Morgenstern’s Advice:

1. Shorten your work day by 30 minutes: This may seem counter-intuitive, but I promise that you’ll get more work done because committing to leave earlier gives you a deadline and forces you to eliminate the little time wasters (silly interruptions, procrastination, perfectionism) that typically eat up your day.
2. Avoid multi-tasking: Recent studies show that it can take the brain twice as long to process each task when you switch back and forth between activities. By learning to focus your full attention on one project at a time, you can regain the extra hour or two you crave.
3. Break the habit of total self-reliance: Insisting on doing everything yourself burdens you and prevents others from feeling valuable and needed. Delegate more at home and free up your time for things you love and excel at doing.
4. Capture all your to do’s in one place: People who haphazardly write lists on stray notepads, post-it notes, and backs of envelopes waste time wondering what to do next and worrying that they’re forgetting something. Choose only one tool to track everything you need to do and prioritize from the top down.
5. Schedule one purely joyful activity each week: Think of an activity (dancing, reading, playing an instrument) that you haven’t done for a long time that brings you instant happiness. Put it in your datebook as nonnegotiable and watch the quality of your life improve.

Also try to start each morning with the most important item, not the many small and easy tasks. Remember that you can always squeeze the little things into the gaps.

Your Challenge: Give one of these life-improving ideas a try, and let me know how it transforms your day!

Tags: How to Get a Life, Life Coaching, Margaret Smith, O Magazine, Time Savers, UXL