I struggle with time management although I’m a very detailed person and I’m a “list maker.” In a coaching group I belong to, one of the first assignments was on time management. It included writing down what you do daily and planning your days including routines and systems used.

I struggled for a couple of weeks over this. I tried many different ways, based on suggestions from those within the group and articles I researched, to complete this project.

What I finally realized was, even though time management is an excellent way to be more productive, everyone has to come up with their own way to manage their time. It’s not a one size fits all.

Here are three things I found while researching along the way:

Juggling Projects:

There are basically three areas that we are juggling and dealing with on a continuous basis throughout our day.

• Current projects: Work, home, children, volunteer, hobbies, etc.
• Your roles: Spouse, parent, grandparent, caretaker, caregiver, business owner, employee, manager.
• Things in the back of your mind that you haven’t finished: Existing projects, new project ideas, household items, business related projects and the list goes on.

These are things that need your attention throughout the day that maybe aren’t “planned” into your time management system.

For me, it’s the unplanned interruptions that seem to cause me the most problems.

My husband is a dialysis patient with treatments three times a week and, due to vision problems, is unable to drive himself to treatments. Even though he has been able to return to driving around the neighborhood, he still has difficulty driving in the dark. Since his treatment is a 6:30 a.m., during the winter it’s still dark and I have to drive.

I’m taking him in and picking him up 4 hours later, three times a week. On these three days, it’s difficult to get a train of thought going or any long time required projects completed because just about the time I “get going,” it’s time to stop.

I’ve found it works best if on these days I schedule short projects to do a – that type that interruptions won’t affect, then I can just pick right up where I left off.

This means that projects that require longer periods of time to work with, need to be scheduled either in the afternoons (and I’m a morning person) or on the days hubby doesn’t have treatments.

So these “unplanned” interruptions have now become scheduled “planned” interruptions.

Two types of time – Clock time and Real time

• Clock time – by definition this is an actual clock: 60 minutes, one hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year. Never changing, it is what it is. Time doesn’t change.

• Real time – definition is: “The actual time during which a process or event occurs: ex. ‘information updated in real time’”
In clock time, if something is 25 years old (a person or thing), then it’s 25 years old.

In real time, time is relative. Think about how you sometimes say at 10 in the morning “This day is dragging by,” yet if you were doing something you really liked doing, at 10 a.m. you could find yourself saying “Boy, this day is flying by.”

It is the same 10 in the morning, but there are different ways of viewing it depending on your “real time” situations.

“Clock time” comes into play because there are always specific times of the day we are dealing with. Time to get up, to start work, to take the kids to school, kids out of school, leaving work, to cook dinner, appointments to keep, etc.

But we actually live in “real time” because when something comes up -good, bad, planned, unplanned – that’s what we deal with, that’s where we react.

With “real time” it’s created and since we created it, it is also something we can manage. We may not be able to eliminate interruptions, but we can learn to manage how we deal more positively with them.

Three ways to spend time: Thoughts, Conversations and Actions

No matter how we manage our time, there are only three ways to spend it:

• Our thoughts
• Our conversations
• Our actions

These are also the three areas where time management will come into play.

Thoughts:

• Do you spend your days day dreaming?
• Are you thinking about what you need to do or you should or should not have done?

Conversations:

• Maybe you talk too much on the phone, or even online conversations at your social sites
• Are you drawn into an online conversation and before you know it, a couple of hours have passed away

Actions:

• Are you watching too much TV?
• Are you running errands off and on all day?
• Are you spending too much time on our social networks?
• Are you checking and answering e-mails too often?

No matter how diligently you plan and schedule with time management, it’s going to be impossible to get it all done.
The 80/20 rules even applies here. Twenty percent of your thoughts, conversations and actions will produce 80 percent of your results.

When you look at it in those percentages, what can you do better in your 20 percent to get more positive results within your 80 percent.
I’d love to hear your comments about time management and you.

In fact, Mari Smith, the Facebook marketing expert, has dubbed “2013 The Year of the Video.”

Video marketing is simply a technique for using videos to market your new products, new services and even new companies. In fact, video and online marketing is considered one of the most influential tools for promoting sales and advertising, regardless of your business niche.

So what are some of the benefits to video marketing?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) = Higher Rankings
Looking for a way to get higher SEO rankings? Forrester-conducted research found webpages featuring a video are 50 percent more likely to appear on the first page of Google.

This means your site is ranked higher and, therefore, will be found faster which may increase your business leads and, ultimately, help you gain new prospects.

More Conversions
The goal of marketing is to acquire some type of conversion. Whether you use a landing page, a sales or products page, webinar, teleseminar, or an e-mail, if it contains a video the conversion rate will be as much as 25 percent higher than a promotional item without a video. A higher conversion rate is reason enough to use videos.

More E-mails Opened
Want more of your e-mails opened? Studies have shown subject lines that contain the word “video” are more likely to be opened — two to three times more, in fact.

Not all e-mail programs are compatible with videos. To work around this, capture a picture of your video and insert it into your e-mail message. Then include the link to your actual video — it could be a webinar/teleseminar or live event. When your viewer clicks on the link, he or she will be taken directly to your video.

These are just three of the many benefits associated with using video.

Don’t be left out.

Did you know every time you:

* Write a memo
* Create or record a webinar or teleseminar
* Write a blog post
* Record a video
* Create a PowerPoint presentation

… you are creating content. Have you ever wondered what else you could do with it?

Fortunately we can reuse or repurpose (Repackage) content and it can be done in many ways.

For example, you can take one blog post that may have several bulleted or numbered items within the post and then expand on each of the bullets or numbers in a new post.

You can then turn the posts into articles, videos, and audios for your market to review. There’s no limit on how you can repurpose your content.

Repurposing Your Content:

For your online business to grow and prosper, you need visibility. If no one knows you’re there… they can’t do business with you. Repurposing adds new life to your existing content and allows you to reach brand new audiences.

Repurposing your content allows you to take the information you already created and ‘repurpose’ it into another format for distribution.

For example: Notes taken at a webinar or meeting can become blog posts or a script for a video. Excerpts from an eBook can become articles. Not only does repurposing your content make sense, it also gives you much broader reach with your target markets.

Visitors have different preferences on how they like to receive information:

* Some prefer written content
* Some prefer to listen to content (audio)
* Some prefer to see your content (video)

Visitor preference is why you should create content in as many different formats as possible.

6 Ways Content Can Be Delivered and Repurposed:

* Blog posts - Huge resource for articles, tweets, Facebook posts, and videos.

* eBooks - Break down several parts or chapters of your eBook into different blog posts, articles or videos.

* Articles – Create blog posts and reports from your articles.

* Tweets – Create tweets from your articles or blog posts and link them to your articles or blog posts.

* Facebook posts – Facebook posts can be created from your content and then linked to your blog, article or video.

* Webinars/Teleseminars – Articles, blog posts, and relevant, helpful information make for great webinars/teleseminars.

No matter how you deliver content… it must first be written, even if it’s just an outline to follow or content for a video.

With repurposing strategies, you can make your content work harder for you! You can appeal to more people and a larger market, both foreign and domestic, just by re-formatting your content and tailoring it to the needs of specific groups of people.

You’ll find your content will pay for itself many times over when it’s repurposed in fresh and creative ways.

These are just a few suggestions for how you can repurpose your content. What other content formats can you think of for repurposing?