Image by Ed Schipul

Sometimes we get into a rut with the way we are using our time and energy. This nine-day challenge is designed to help you break out of your productivity rut.

The goal behind the nine-hour challenge is not just to accomplish whatever you might accomplish during these nine hours. Ideally, you'll renew and inspire yourself in ways that will unblock your productivity in the future, opening the way to change how you approach your work and your life.

Here are the nine hours of challenges.

One hour for you

The more vibrant and whole you are, the better you can do your work and care for others. Plus, you are simply worth taking care of. Knowing this is not the same as practicing it, a distinction I myself know all too well. So here is an hour for you to practice.

Invest one hour doing passionately fierce or sweetly gentle self-nurture. In what way have you been most neglecting to take care of yourself? What has your body, mind, heart or soul been craving? What have you been avoiding because you miss it so much that you fear the pain of starting only to stop? What did you used to do and love that has somehow slipped to the eternal bottom of your list?

Do you need to dance like a maniac in your living room? Go for a hike in nature? Take a long bath and read a trashy novel? Make a healthy meal or go to the gym? Call the best friend whose jokes make you laugh out loud? Enjoy your hobby or make some art? Take your journal to the park or coffeeshop and dream with your pen? Go to a yoga class? Pray or meditate? Some combination of all of the above? Go do it, for an hour.

Is your self-care so out-of-whack (or maybe just so totally awesome!) that nothing comes to mind? Try taking a moment for yourself and see what your intuition prompts you to do next.

One hour of exciting work

What project gets you talking a mile a minute every time you think of it? What idea gets you misty-eyed and daydreamy when you ponder making it real? Choose a project that might or might not be on your actual list of active projects right now, but it's the most passionate and exciting piece of work you could do.

It doesn't have to be something big and meaningful. It could be something small and frivolous, too silly to normally spend time on. Whatever it is, spend an hour working on it and try to have fun. If your project is just in the idea stages, you can start by brainstorming and outlining, but try to spend at least part of your hour making something tangible and visible that you can show to another person in some way.

One hour of making space

What can you cross off your to-do list that is obsolete, no longer important, or so low-priority that you know in your heart you'll never get to it? Cross off everything on your to do-list that you know you won't or shouldn't do.

What requests in your inbox can you say no to or choose to actively ignore and delete? What stuff do you have in piles that you can file or at least box up until you do file them so that you can reclaim your desk or floor? What else can you find to say no to? What other clutter can you let you go?

Letting go of the things that don't belong in your life makes room for you to do more of what matters.

One hour spring-cleaning your to-do list

What are the persnickety little things that are important, non-urgent and piling up? Get yourself set to sprint through the small stuff and trim your to-do list down to size again with a novel strategy: focusing purely on number of items and how you can zing through a bunch of small tasks quickly.

This time isn't about getting things done because they are important, but simply making the number of tasks you are tracking smaller to free up still more space for more important matters.

One hour facing your fear

Spend on hour working on this project, whatever it is. You don't have to finish it, merely work steadily at it for one hour. Tell your fear that you are doing this only for one hour. If you feel anxiety rise up, take deep breaths. It's okay to feel fear, but for this hour, you are choosing to make progress on this work despite these difficult emotions.

Commit yourself to one hour of forward momentum. Ask yourself, what is the very next single thing that I need to do to move this forward? And if you finish that task, ask again, until you've spent an hour or you are finished, whichever comes first. Sometimes you will be surprised that an hour can make so much progress on a task that loomed so large in your psyche. Forward motion can release an astonishing amount of power.

I know this is the hardest hour I am challenging you to complete. You can do this, for just an hour. And it will be worth it. You will feel so much lighter afterwards.

One hour investing in the bottom line.

What is the one thing you could do that would directly improve your cash flow in the near-term? (If you're not self-employed, what's the one thing you could do that would improve your company's cash flow or otherwise really delight your boss? Or what's the one thing you could do to bring more income into your household or easily cut expenses in the near-term?)

Again, if the task that would accomplish this goal will take more than an hour, that is okay. You don't need to finish it right now. Simply sit down and make an hour of solid forward progress.

Keep asking yourself, how can I move this forward? You might find that the one thing you can do will actually take you less than an hour. That's fine too. Sometimes small tasks that have large returns still get pushed to the bottom of the list. Take the time now to invest a bit in yourself financially.

One hour focusing on the future.

If you could choose one project that would have the biggest positive impact on your life or business in five years, what would you choose? Spend an hour dedicating your time and energy to moving that project forward. Again, you may choose to spend some of this time noodling about with ideas, but try to balance any brainstorming with taking action in the world.

One hour giving to others

Give the gift of time to your spouse/partner, a friend, your child, a neighbor, or someone you don't know. Find at least one way that you could devote a little more time than you normally do to making someone's day brighter. It might be making a phone call and being a good listener, doing a chore for someone, or going to an activity with someone.

Step back from the busy day-to-day world for a moment and enjoy the pleasure of an extra little dollop of generosity.

One hour making your systems more efficient.

Have you been meaning to create a filing system that will be faster to use? Set up filters in your email system to help you prioritize your inbox? Add some formulas to your expense tracking spreadsheet or revamp your email list manager? Get your address removed from commercial mailing lists to pare down your snail mail?

Whatever passing ideas you've had that would make life more efficient, jot them down and start working on them, one at a time. The only rule is that you must complete any given item from start to finish before moving down your list to another. No skipping around!

Once again, if you don't have time to finish your idea within the hour, that is okay. Just make an hour of progress.

The tenth hour

I encourage you to spend a tenth hour in reflection after you've completed your nine hours of work. Here are some starting places for learning from the challenge:

• What did you learn from each of the challenges?


• Does anything feel unblocked and freed up?


• Where did you feel unexpected ease, or surprising resistance?


• Are there parts of your life or work that you feel need more or less attention than you've been giving them?


• Do you have any projects or tasks that you want to let go, or take on, as a result of what you have learned?

Starting the challenge

If you're taking the challenge, commit to yourself. Set aside nine hours of time on your calendar right now. And come find me on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook to let me know how it goes. I'll be doing the challenge too and will share some of my own experiences as well.

Image by D. Sharon Pruitt

Within the past few months I've become frustrated with the glacial progress on a few of my big writing projects. I finally realized what was holding me up...a well-known foe I've seen many times in many forms, something I call pretending to work .

A blend of toddler-induced sleep deprivation and writer's block were taking the blame for a good long time, but eventually I noticed that I was focusing a lot of time and energy worrying about steps that were not core tasks to the endeavor of actual writing.

In this case, I was trying to figure out what's involved in formatting e-books and making them downloadable and purchasable on my website. That's going to be very important to figure out... but really, only after the thing is written.

I'm a holistic thinker so a certain amount of upfront time familiarizing myself with the end result I want only makes sense, but I had gone beyond that. I was worrying at the subject like a child with a loose tooth, using time that could have been devoted to actually writing. Anxiety about doing something new had tricked me into wasting a lot of time without even realizing that's what I was doing.

So my motto right now is content. Writing words on a page. No more outlines, no more learning about layout or file formats right now. The frustrations of trying to figure that out will look very different when I have a tangible product that needs the structure, rather than an outline. First content, then form.

The core work of writing is to write. So I am writing. Writing content. And as I weave the words together, slowly my project is finally beginning to take shape and grow solid. I'm not much of a fan of resolutions, but in 2012 the workbook I'm finally nurturing the right way is going to leap forth from the ground and blossom.

Have you ever found yourself accidentally (or not so accidentally!) spending time on form instead of content? Share your story in the comments.

Image by Jelene Morris

I’ve asked Anne Hubben, a career and life coach for creatives, to share her thoughts about productivity and creativity.

Anne, thanks for joining me here on Tame Your Time. I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas.

What are some ways that you integrate creativity and fun into seemingly boring organizational tasks like to-do lists and filing?

For me personally, it's all about the paper and pens. It seems that my most tried and true method is a combination of a To Do list in a notebook that's with me throughout my work day, post-its and whatever pen I'm loving at the moment. Right now it's brightly colored Sharpies. I've tried various apps on my iPhone and iPad, but I always go back to paper.

For people with creative jobs, what are some good ways to still find enough creative energy for non-work-related creative pursuits?

I think that’s a struggle for many creative people. Especially in advertising. The work is demanding, and often the last thing a creative person wants to do is create more when they get home. 

As a result, they tend to need to recharge more than anything. Refill the well rather than putting out more creativity. That could be exercising or whatever they do to clear their heads. Or it could be going to a movie, theatre, an art opening, listening to music, or just being out in the world taking things in.

In your blog, you write a lot about satisfaction in one area of life impacting other aspects. Do you believe that productivity systems play that kind of role in the life of a creative person?

Discipline creates satisfaction, which supports productivity. The discipline to do one's craft each day, or to do something that cultivates energy to create. It could be yoga, meditation, running or writing in a journal.

Rituals are what nurture that discipline. Twyla Tharp describes the important of ritual beautifully in her book, The Creative Habit:

"It's vital to establish some rituals - automatic but decisive patterns of behavior - at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way."

That could be lighting a candle to write or making coffee or having a meeting with your assistant. It's something that signals that it's time to work.

Can you share any favorite ways for working on a creative project when you feel stuck or uninspired?

When I feel stuck, I usually go for a walk. I'm also inspired by nature. I walk my dogs a lot and that's when I often get good ideas. I also get them in yoga.

But, the main thing is to get away from whatever I'm trying to do and stop thinking about it. I go out into the world and pay attention to what's around me.

Any tips for creative people who want to be more productive and organized?

Just that there's no "right" way to organize things. You have to do what works for you. But, stay focused and keep it simple. Creative people have to keep distractions at a minimum when they're working.

Distractions are different for everyone. Music could motivate one person while it causes another one to drift and daydream. Just pay attention to what works, including when you have the most energy. There are definitely times of day when we're all more productive and others when it's useless to even try to get something done.

I believe that practicing good self-care is critical for both productivity and creativity. Are there any types of self-care that you feel are especially important for people who spend a lot of time and energy on creative activities?

I believe wholeheartedly in some form of exercise or meditation. When I'm not being regular with these things, I simply don't function as well. When I'm regularly doing yoga, I have so much more energy and even need less sleep.

Any other thoughts you'd like to share about productivity, time management or organization for creative folks?

The only other thing I would suggest is to read Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit [affiliate link]. Also, I love Steven Pressfield's book, The War of Art [affiliate link]. These are more for getting regular with your daily practice than organizing things. However, I think if you have a daily practice as a foundation, the organization tends to fall into place.

Thanks so much Anne!

Got your own productivity tips for creative types? Share them with us in the comments!

Anne Hubben is a career and life coach. She helps creatives find their own satisfaction—so they can go on to create lives of meaning and adventure. Learn more about Anne and her work over at The Satisfaction Quotient.

Photo by theonlyanla

The social interaction is fulfilling an unmet need, and because it speaks to that need without really fulfilling it, I find myself drawn to it and yet unsatisfied by any amount of actual use.

Social media over-use is one of the biggest time management challenges I hear about from my friends and clients. It's so tempting to take a moment here and there to see what family and friends are up to, and once you're doing that it's all to easy for those few minutes to become twenty. Do that three times a day and you've lost an hour of work. Do that six times per day, and... well, you can do the math. Ouch.

If you are promoting yourself or your business online, the siren call of Twitter or Google Plus is even worse because the line between personal and business use of social media is pretty blurred. I often recommend building time for social media into the workday because for self-employed people, it truly is work as well as pleasure.

However, that business use makes it even easier to rationalize spending tons of time there. More connection, collaboration and promotion can always be done. Colleagues have limitless amounts of fascinating ideas to share. And yet, time spent on social media could also be spent on other valuable business activities. There's a balance to be found, and it's not always easy to be objective in finding it.

There are all sorts of great strategies out there for managing distraction and not procrastinating. The approach that's been working best for me lately is filling myself up. Make sure that I am getting enough time talking to people (who are not my toddler) face to face, and Facebook remains pleasant and useful for my business but some of the intense addictive allure drops away.

Loneliness isn't the only unmet need that can make social media and other distractions more alluring. Perhaps you need to relax your attention for a while and stop concentrating so hard. If so, can you meditate or take a dance break or a walk? Maybe you need inspiration or excitement. Would listening to some awesome music help? What do you really need?

Before you open up Facebook again, check in with yourself. Is this the best use of time right now? Is this what your heart and mind actually yearn for right now? If not, take just ten minutes to do what you really want to do. Give yourself over to something offline that really makes you feel good. Choose to be fully alive instead of choosing to go numb. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes of self-connection and self-care to make you more productive for the rest of the day.

Fulfilling your needs wisely minimizes temptation. It's like eating a healthful meal before going to a party where you know there will be junk food; by lovingly giving yourself what you truly need, you can avoid being excessively drawn to things that are wonderful in moderation but problematic in excess.

And now, I'm going to resolutely call my opposite-coast high school friend for a little while as my break from writing, instead of defaulting to reading Twitter or Facebook. Go me!

Photo by Ryo Chijiiwa

I'm not the neatest person in the world, but my living room is now nearly always suitable for company by my current standards. So I don't do that kind of shove job anymore. But over the years I've definitely found myself in situations where unexpected metaphorical company came by for a project that wasn't ready for them or a process that had gotten behind. You probably know the saying that you can pick any two of the three: fast, cheap and high-quality.

A shove job is now what I call picking the fast and cheap method and letting quality go... at the last minute under time pressure rather than by conscious choice. Sometimes doing a project fast and cheap is a great decision, but unfortunately people often choose this option in panic mode, feeling the pressure of unexpected urgency due to an outsider's presence. Often a shove job is chosen amid a wave of guilt for a project someone was procrastinating on. As they throw on a glossy outer coating and shove the unsightly bits under the metaphorical sofa, they think, "If only I'd been prepared! If only I'd done it earlier!"

I think the trick is to identify ahead of time how you'd react if your project or process were suddenly needed months sooner than you had planned. Would you be okay with the progress you're making? Would you push back on the urgency or would you be comfortable rounding out a few rough edges and calling it good? Or would you feel pressured to turn the whole thing into a desperate shove job?

Have you ever had to do drastically cut corners while presenting a smooth surface for an important project? What kind of planning can prevent a shove job? 

Photo by William Brawley

Some activities are nearly always good for me in any amount that I’d feel tempted to do them, like hanging out with friends, dancing, learning drum rhythms, going for a hike or taking a hot bath. Some activities, however, are like junk food: enjoyed best only occasionally and in sensible small amounts.

Watching the occasional episode of a fluffy TV show that I love? Awesome. Catching up with my friends on Facebook for ten minutes? Lovely. I walk away feeling happy, relaxed and connected with myself.

But mindlessly engaging in those very same activities for unlimited periods of time doesn’t have the same positive effect on me. If I end up reading my social media stream for an hour or watching videos for a whole afternoon, I feel dazed at the end rather than refreshed.

I don’t feel the need to be productive every moment, but when I am at leisure, I want to really enjoy the heck out of it and feel like my enjoyment is worth the time investment. Now that I have a toddler, having even an hour to myself that’s not doing chores is a huge deal. I don’t want to fritter away that valuable resource on something that gives me numbness rather than happiness. I want my relaxation down time to actively enhance my joy and productivity when I’m living the busy parts of my life.

I have a mental list of activities that zone me out instead of give me true pleasure if I do them for very long, and a sense of how long I can do each kind of activity before I cross the line from fun to numb. Even still, sometimes when I’m tired I ignore it and just zone out when I’d probably do better to just lie down and outright go to sleep, or fully relax by doing some gentle stretching on the floor while listening to peaceful music.

How do you make sure that you get the most out of your precious recharging time? Are there any activities that tend to eat up too much of your down time?

Photo by Guiri R. Reyes

1. My email is not my work. Email is a communication medium and a means to an end, not the end itself.

2. No constant checking. I can choose to check my email only as often as makes sense for efficiency and genuine business needs. Just say no to excessive monitoring due to fear, habit, boredom or avoidance of work. I can choose times to work on email and otherwise close the browser, turn off new message alerts, and stop obsessively staring into my iPhone or Blackberry every five minutes.

3. Receiving an email is not an obligation. Not everything deserves a quick, full response. People can wait or get hold of me other ways. I can let people know when I plan to address their request rather than feeling pressured to answer fully or not at all. I can ignore requests from strangers completely when appropriate.

4. I will never be “finished” with email. There will always be more coming in – and that's okay.

5.I can choose to change the venue. I can step away from too-tense or too-complex email exchanges and connect via a more personal real-time communication method.

6. I don’t have to read all this stuff. I can unsubscribe from newsletters, notifications and other stuff I don't read.

7. I will invest time in email efficiency. I can spend some time setting up rules, filters, folders and so on to manage my information flow instead of getting overwhelmed.

8. Email is my tool. Email is not my boss, not my client, not my jailkeeper and not in charge of my priorities.

How do you keep email in its place? What else should go in an email freedom manifesto?

But saying that you're behind or need to catch up on work is rarely a useful thing to tell yourself. It's vague, demoralizing and ignores the root cause to focus only on the pain of the symptoms.

Not that I don't sympathize-- the pain of those symptoms is very real. I've been there plenty of times. You might feel sad, anxious, fearful, tense or angry. You might be aware of negative consequences likely to come in the future if you don't turn the situation around, or just know that the status quo is taking a quiet constant toll on your quality of life.

But unless you want to live your life feeling behind all the time, you have got to dig further into what you mean if you often catch yourself thinking or saying that you are behind.

Being behind is about an imbalance between the demands placed upon your time and energy, and the available resources of time, energy and help that you can bring to bear upon the work you've taken onto your plate. Fixing it means identifying and correcting this imbalance. (Yes, this is far easier said than done.)

Being behind can look like one or more of these situations:

• Long Slow Slide.

  
  Work input, demands or commitments are coming in at a pace faster than time and energy become available to accomplish them. You know that a reckoning is likely to come eventually because undone things are piling up ever higher. Any moment you know that you might end up underneath an...



• Avalanche.

  
  Like a long slow slide at a faster pace, you are being literally snowed under with more work being thrown at you than you can possibly accomplish.



• Dysfunctional System.

  
  Your work input, demands and commitments are reasonable to accomplish, but you are disorganized or otherwise working with ineffective tools, impacting your ability to get things done effectively.



• Personal Pain.

  
  A lot like Dysfunctional System in its effects, except that you yourself are the system not at its best, because of some kind of personal pain or trouble impacting your ability to work or cope effectively.



• Crisis-Driven Backlog.

  
  Your regular inflow of commitments and work is doable, but you had one exceptionally large project or unexpected thing come up which took away time normally devoted to your day-to-day work which has suffered.



• Always on the Edge.

  
  Your work input, demands and commitments are so close to fully allocated that the normal ebb and flow of life routinely pushes you over and over into a Long Slow Slide or Crisis-Driven Backlog. You get out for a while but always end up back there again.

At its core, feeling behind means that demand is exceeding available resources. I see three possible steps to recovering the situation, and you might need more than one approach:

1. Make the pipeline smaller.

2. Adjust your priorities.

3. Make a push for change.

Starting Place

Of course all of these concepts are very high-level and solving a real-life problem of feeling behind means applying them in ways that address the messy complexity of real life. So, these ideas are intended to be a starting place to solve a very complex problem.

I encourage you to to listen to yourself if you are saying that you are behind. Think about what you really mean when you say that, and how you can turn the situation around. Don't stay behind-- it's not a pleasant way to live life.

I feel behind in my blogging and email processing right now, to be honest, among other things. It's kind of a Long Slow Slide sort of thing in which my baby's sleeping habits are taking more resources than I'm admitting and I keep thinking it will get better before I make more lifestyle changes around the new normal. I haven't really decided what to do yet to address my own current personal variant of "behind." Sigh.

What are some ways that you have dealt with feeling behind?

Photo by Garlandcannon

I confess to being one of the lucky ones in this regard. Even when deeply absorbed in something, if I mentally let myself know that I need to change gears in five minutes, twenty minutes or an hour, I usually feel an intuitive prompting when the time gets close, aided by a couple of quick glances at the clock now and again as I work.

I'm so used to doing this that it doesn't even interrupt my train of thought. If out and about all day without my cell phone (I haven't worn a watch in years), if someone asks me the time I usually can guess within half an hour or so accuracy. Often I'm within five minutes. It's one of my tiny modern super-powers.

I wasn't always this good at estimating how much time had passed. I developed this skill in high school and college on the days when I forgot to wear my wrist watch, or during long interludes when my watch ran out of battery and I didn't get around to replacing it. I still had to get to my classes on time, or home when I told my mom to expect me, and I did this by glancing at public clocks in libraries or occasionally asking people what time it was.

After a while, I came to like being able to sense what time it was without having to check. I started testing myself by guessing before I looked at my watch or cell phone as a fun little game. After years of habitually doing this, the constant feedback loop made my accuracy increase.

If you find that you tend to run late a lot because you simply lose track of time, I highly recommend playing the "What time is it?" guessing game. Pick a trigger so that you won't interrupt yourself... for instance, whenever you change tasks or whenever the phone rings, guess the time quickly and then check to see how close you were.

Similar to the way that biofeedback helps you learn to control your body by increasing awareness, guessing games with time followed by feedback on accuracy will help you become more accurate at sensing how long things take. This skill helps you not only be on time more often, but also develop a better sense of how long tasks take... which can help you plan your time better.

But please don't do this while you are doing things like talking with friends, trying to fall asleep, or taking a long relaxing bubble bath. An awareness of time is great, but some things are meant to be enjoyed timelessly. After all, while time itself ticks along at a consistent pace, our experience of time passing is subjective. They say time flies when you're having fun, but sometimes time can actually slow down into this beautiful floating eternal feeling that comes only when you don't give a damn about watching the clock and exist wholly in the present timeless moment. And that's just as it should be.

When your focus is productivity, though, meshing your subjective sense of time with the clock can be super useful.

Do you have any techniques or challenges around developing an intuitive sense of time?