If you have 24 hours a day, that means you’ll only have 1440 minutes a day to spend your day. Okay, let’s not waste your precious time and get to business.
During the pandemic, millions of people are forced to stay at home and readjust themselves to how work fits into their lives and vice versa. The clock is ticking, yet you are probably not even halfway into finishing your daily tasks.
As a global speaker, author, emcee, moderator, broadcast journalist, trainer AND single mom, Freda Liu indeed has her own ways of managing her time for both her personal and professional life.
Working with Malaysia’s leading business station, BFM89.9, she has managed to interview over 5,000 influential figures including the inventor of the mobile phone Martin Cooper, author Stephen Covey, motivational speaker Nick Vujicic and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
So, let’s find out how the award-winning Freda Liu kicks away the procrastination bug and manages her time productively and effectively.
METHOD #1: Use ‘Wheel of Life’ to make priorities in life
“Wheel of life covers things like fitness, finance, friends, family, faith and all these things,” Freda said. “Look at each area and identify what kind of goals you want to achieve.” Whether it’s a small or big goal, list them down for each aspect of your life.
Wheel of Life contains:
- Career/Business
- Financial
- Spiritual
- Physical/Fitness
- Intellectual
- Family
- Social
For example, your goal is to run a marathon by the end of this year. Then, you will have to make ‘small’ goals to achieve this ‘big’ goal, like having training twice per week. Making small and deliberate actions throughout the year will help your mind to focus on one thing at a time instead of being overwhelmed by the ‘big’ goal.
Freda also emphasizes that different stages of life come with different priorities. The priorities of a 19-year-old will be different from a 29-year-old. “My 19-year-old son doesn’t need my presence as much as he used to, so now I have more time to focus on my career,” she said.
So, block out a day to ponder your life priorities at this moment according to the Wheel of Life.
METHOD #2: Write your thoughts on paper
Write. It. Down.
Put your thoughts on paper.
Experts estimate that your mind has around 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. That’s an average of 2500 to 3,300 thoughts per hour!
Instead of wasting time thinking ‘what if’, writing your thoughts down on paper will help to let you visualise what to do next.
Freda used to write down a SWOT analysis to decide on what job she wanted to take. You heard it right! She identified the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of potential job roles and wrote them all on paper.
By looking at your writings face-to-paper, it helps to organise your thoughts in better places. It will let you stop overthinking and start working on it.
Less time thinking. More time executing.
METHOD #3: Play a game with yourself by designing a ‘Reward System’
Juggling many roles in the media industry, Freda also has 6 books under her belt. With each book containing hundreds of pages, she set out to write 1,000 words every single day during those times.
By having a ‘reward system’, she would not engage in anything or anyone before finishing writing those one thousand words every day. No Netflix. No phone. No talk. Nada. Until 1,000 words on paper. This way she could fully focus on her task at hand.
Rewarding yourself in simple ways for small accomplishments can go a long way.
There you have it. 3 methods a super talented woman uses to juggle her personal and professional life.
Fun fact: Freda has a new role as well – the jury of MonStar Awards 2021. This woman is truly unstoppable!
Now, whip out your pen and paper and try her methods out yourself!
