Dust If You Must!

“A house becomes a home when you can write, “I love you” on the furniture.”


I can’t tell you how many countless hours that I have spent CLEANING!


I used to spend at least 8 hours every weekend making sure things were just perfect – “in case someone came over.”


Then I realised one day that no one came over; they were all out living life and having fun!


Now, when people visit, I find no need to explain the “condition” of my home. They are more interested in hearing about the things I’ve been doing while I was away living life and having fun.

If you haven’t figured this out yet, please heed this advice.


Life is short. Enjoy it.


Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better to paint a picture or write a letter, bake a cake or plant a seed, ponder the difference between want and need?


Dust if you must, but there’s not much time, with rivers to swim and mountains to climb, music to hear and books to read, friends to cherish and life to lead.


Dust if you must, but the world’s out there with the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair, a flutter of snow, a shower of rain.


This day will not come around again.


Dust if you must, but bear in mind, old age will come and it’s not kind.


And when you go – and go you must – you, yourself will make more dust!


If’s now what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.


Author Unknown


About Us


LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. We are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you.


For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Michele on 0437 311 802.

You Can Be In Control - Part 2

How have you gone the last couple of weeks? Have you taken note of the times you have not been in control?

Have you considered how you reacted to different situations and recognised the times when you could have reacted differently?

Have you tried to stop yourself when others are trying to take control?

Here are the steps!

Making the choice to be in control can be empowering you only need to control yourself.

> Recognise that you have the power to choose how you react to a situation

> Recognise when you are not taking responsibility for your life

> Practise stopping yourself when you are letting others control you and take responsibility

This is a new behaviour so practise is really important. But keep practicing.

“If you don’t run your own life, someone else will”

John Atkinson

About Us

LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. We are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you.

For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Michele on 0437 311 802

Is your planning system up to scratch?

I have personally had a really busy 6 week period and my routine has been totally changed by what has been going on. I was asked to project manage a project for a firm which would take 3 to 4 weeks. This meant working full time for the firm then in my spare time chipping away at what needed to be completed for the business.



Well how did it all go?


Firstly, I love managing the project and whilst all did not go according to plan the delays were elements way beyond my control. I was waiting for shipments from India and China to come in and they were not arriving at the anticipated time this extended the project to a 5 week period.


Then on week 6 when I was to get back on track with all my other work my 5 year old daughter has been sick and has not been able to go to school for 3 days. Whilst I loved the time we got to spend together it meant another delay to getting back on track.


Is my life now chaos?


Actually, no by using my planning system of ensuring I get the most important tasks done I have been able to stay “on top” of most tasks. It has been an incredible freedom not to be completely stressed and frazzled by the change in routine and the almost impossible task of keeping everything going.


I am wrapped and actually excited to have tested my systems to the maximum and not everything has fallen in a heap. I am not saying that I didn’t have a couple of nights where I was utterly exhausted but the overall big picture is positive. Every client meeting I had I kept, every workshop I was still able to deliver and some of the other tasks were done.


I guess that is the benefits of practicing planning on a weekly to daily basis. Tasks can be moved and flexibility is really important as well as understanding what the top priorities are.


Planning is really freedom!


About Us


LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. They are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you. For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Silvana on 0417 595 744 or Michele on 0437 311 802.

You can be in control!

When we let other people control our life we are passing control of our thoughts, mood, and experiences onto other people who are out of our control. When this occurs we are living a reactive life. The benefit of letting others control us is that we have someone else to blame – and that feels good.

The alternative action is that we could take responsibility for our self.

Are you living your life according to what others want?

We can automatically spend our lives living up to the standards of others instead of taking the time to work out what we want. For example:

 The man who has spent 25 years working as a lawyer because his father was a lawyer. He never changed his profession even though he had the ability, skills and drive to be a professional tennis player

 The mother of five children who feels that she’s less successful than other mothers because she is not a career woman and takes on board what the media says about stay at home mums

 The young adolescent who exercises and diets because the models in the magazines constantly remind her she’s not a size 8 and therefore not a beauty by today’s standards

 The musician who has a regular government job in finance because his parents told him to “get a real job” yet his passion was and always has been music

 The young basketballer who never reached her full potential because her parents focused on her mistakes in the game rather than all the really good plays she made

 The 45 year old father of three children who is still hoping one day his father will congratulate him on what he has achieved rather than point out what his failings are

Take some time and think about times when you have let others control your life?

How did it make you feel?

Do you still let others control your life?

What steps can you do so that you are in control of your life?

Who is going to have the biggest effect on your future?

About Us


LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. They are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you. For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Silvana on 0417 595 744 or Michele on 0437 311 802.

1,440 Minutes per Day

We all have the same 1,440 minutes per day – how we utilise that time determines our ability to have a productive day.



So focus on doing the really important and high priority tasks first, usually 3 to 4 tasks each day. Once you have completed those tasks, then you can start working on the smaller stuff.


At the very least if you only get the 3 to 4 high priority tasks done then you will feel like you have achieved something in your day. That’s such a fantastic feeling.


One of my favourite quotes from Stephen Covey is:

“I can not get it all done but I can get the most important things done.”

WHAT ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT THINGS?

About Us



LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. They are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you. For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Silvana on 0417 595 744 or Michele on 0437 311 802.

Time Tracking Exercise Follow Up

Did you complete the time tracking exercise? How many days did you track your time for? What method did you prefer the planning method or the recording method?



Congratulations on investing the time to save time. Seeing as we invested in tracking time it is important to evaluate our recordings. We want to do the following:


1) Analyse the way we used our time, what can you see from looking at how you spent your time?


2) What are some better ways you can use your time based on the analysis?


3) What are your wasteful tasks?


4) What are your unproductive tasks?


5) How can you reduce or eliminate your wasteful and unproductive tasks? It is okay to do this one step at a time.


6) How can you consolidate your time so you have large chunks of time for your most important work?


What will this achieve?


> make us more aware of adding “quick” tasks into our day


> allow us to slowly eliminate time wasting


> allow us to eliminate unproductive work


> allows us to find chunks of time for our most important projects


> ensures we question what we are doing and when we are doing it


About Us


LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. They are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you. For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Silvana on 0417 595 744 or Michele on 0437 311 802.

Time Tracking Exercise

Last post we focused on time wasters this time I would love to introduce to you a time tracking exercise that I really recommend. The objective is to think about how you are using your time, identify useless or non productive activities and eliminate them this also provides you with a better guide for how long a task actually takes.



In his excellent book "The Effective Executive," Peter Drucker identifies that effective executives follow three key steps to manage their time better:

1) They analyse the way they use their time and think about better ways of using it
2) They find wasteful and unproductive uses of their time and reduce them systematically
3) They consolidate their time into large chunks that they can use for their most important work.


So over the next two weeks I would highly recommend you attempt one of the two activities below:

This has 4 columsn which you record your activities in what you plan to do, what time you think it will take, what you actually did and how long that activity took.

TIME TRACKING OPTION 1



Time             Activity Planned    Est. Time   Activity Completed   Actual Time


6.00 – 6.30
6.30 – 7.00
7.00 – 7.30
7.30 – 8.00


In the above we plan our day and estimate how long an activity will take. Then we actually record what we did at that particular time and how long a task actually took. This achieves the following:


> Identifies whether we stick to our plan
> Identifies what we do when we vary our plan
> Identifies if we are accurate at estimating how long a task will take
> If we are not accurate, it provides us with a real life estimate of the actual time a task takes


TIME TRACKING OPTION 2

In this activity you record what activities you have been doing and then consider whether they were an essential activity or a non-essential activity.

TIME                                        ACTIVITY


                                    Essential          Non-essential


6.00 – 6.30
6.30 – 7.00
7.00 – 7.30
7.30 – 8.00


This exercise follows a similar example however this time we are reviewing whether tasks are essential or non-essential and identifies how much free time we would have each day if we could eliminate or reduce the non-essential tasks.


It is recommended you try either option 1 or 2 for 5 days however to get real benefits it is even better to do it for two weeks.


Good luck and enjoy your learning experience I personally got a lot of useful information from this exercise.


About Us
LifeStyle Refocus is a Melbourne based personal assistant, corporate concierge and lifestyle management consultancy. They are all about saving you TIME. By taking care of your “to do” list so you can spend time doing the things that are truly important to you. For more information go to www.lifestylerefocus.com.au or contact Silvana on 0417 595 744 or Michele on 0437 311 802.