Q & A with Guest Author, Karin Vibe-Rheymer-Stewart, PhD
Time Management and Organizational Master
http://www.dailymastery.com/
I recently had an extensive conversation with Karin and was delighted to find that her approach to time management consulting is very similar to my approach in working with creative and ADD / ADHD clients to organize their home offices and paper. I hope you enjoy this guest post by Karin.
Also check out Karin's unique Daily Mastery Holiday Survival Program which is designed to help you get through the holidays with less stress! It includes emails, personal telephone sessions with Karin, Energy Healing Meditation Sessions with Cathleen Campbell, an Emotional Freedom Technique, Aromatherapy and Feng Shui practitioner. This is a very creative package at an extremely reasonable price! I highly recommend you check it out.
Also check out my newest articles on the Clutter Control Freak blog!
7 Neat & Simple Ways to Reduce Your Holiday Stress
Declutter Your Holiday Greeting Card List
Reader Question
What's wrong with me? No matter what I try, I can't seem to get organized enough to manage my time. I have all the right tools, (blackberry, a great computer planning system) but my schedule is in shambles.
Sandra, New York
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Karin's Response
Thank you so much for your question. In fact, most of my clients have the same issue! First, know that there's nothing wrong with you: you just have different brain wiring than most and don't have the right tools for your style.
During a quick conversation with you, you shared that while you have everything you are "supposed" to have (a blackberry, a great computer planning system) you still have trouble managing it all. You keep losing track of time, and never have a good sense of what your day is like. Even though you have a file drawer beautifully organized by your assistant, everything ends up in piles on the desk, competing for space with lots of post-it notes and other pieces of paper.
These are all clues indicating someone whose right hemisphere tends to be the dominant hemisphere in your brain, a right-brainer for short. Typical right-brainers all share the following characteristics:
- "Out of sight, out of mind" is their middle name
- they don't have a very good sense of time
- they tend to be very creative
- they are great with the big picture, but details tend to evade them.
Most tools touted as the standard in time management and organization are unfortunately made for the rest of the population, the left-brainers. As a result, right-brainers are often left to wonder if something is wrong with them. In truth, what's wrong are the tools recommended to them and how they're encouraged to use them.
Discovering this is often a revelation. In Lauren's words (Lauren was a participant to one of my Daily Time Mastery programs), "finding out that I was a right-brainer was such a huge relief. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense, and I could select in the program the tools that really work for me."
Here are some of the tools that worked well for Lauren and my right-brainer clients:
- Use a paper calendar instead of an electronic calendar, so that you can visually see how your time will be occupied. For a right-brainer, the classic view on an electronic calendar listing all appointments in a row for the day is very confusing. The visual is the same whether appointments are at 9 am and 10 am, or 9 am and 4 pm, so it looks like they are the same. Also, writing them down by hand helps you remember them.
- Time Managmenet
- Store active papers visually (i.e. the things you're working on right now, or will handle soon). Use containers such as trays or magazine holders to store your active papers on your desk, rather than tucking them away in a drawer. Because of your "out of sight, out of mind" tendency, things in drawers disappear. That's why the papers accumulate on your desk: you want to make sure that they don't disappear. Keep only your reference file in file drawers.
I hope this helps!
About the Author
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Karin Vibe-Rheymer-Stewart, Ph.D., Founder and President of Daily Mastery, a premier time management and organization services company, is a time management and organizational expert specializing in empowering clients to increase their productivity and create their ideal work-life balance. Karin combines 15 years of experience, professionally supporting others in organizing their lives, and personally as a business owner, manager, and mother to provide a unique perspective and proven tools to her clients who “want it all” in today’s 24/7 world.
