How to find time in June - Your relationship overview

Have you ever put your kids to bed, wishing they would fall asleep quickly so you could get back to all the things you still needed to do?

If it is easy to feel that way.

At the same time, many parents wish they could spend more time with their children than they do and less time with people who drain their energy.

This month, I help you make the most of your time and energy by rethinking, reconnecting or cherishing your relationships.

 

Find time in June by looking at the different relationships in your life and do one of 3 things for each one of them:

• Cherish the time you have together
• Allocate time for it and don’t waste it by thinking about something else when you are with your loved ones.

• Reconnect with people you have lost touch with 
• If you think reconnecting will give you energy and joy. 

• Rethink the relationships that drain you. 
• Can you forgive and let go? Can you set clear boundaries? Can you stop seeing a person or significantly reduce how often you meet?

You can use the section Relationships in the Holistic Time Management planner or write your own table with people and actions in each category. (See the video for details).

Going deeper

I recommend Jack Pransky's book: Parenting from the heart. 

Here is an interview with Jack about how to Weatherproof your relationship and deal with jealousy.

I hope you will find time and energy this month by managing and enjoying your relationships!

For more help to get more done with less effort and deeper joy, you can read or listen to my book Beyond Efficiency.

Take care of yourself, your time and your life.

Your ethical will: What is a good person?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What is a good person?

Well, that is quite a question isn’t it?

I somehow hesitate to answer it, because, who am I to judge? Who am I to say what is good or bad or evil?

I often quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: 

“There is nothing either good or bad

It’s only our thinking that makes it so”

The same goes for there not being either good or bad people. It is only our thinking that makes us consider someone good and someone else bad. 

As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn so eloquently wrote: 

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Alright, now that we have concluded that there is no such thing as a good or a bad person (unless our thinking makes it so) and that good and evil cuts through, rather than between us…

What is a good person then?

One answer in Steve’s book goes:

“I never lie to my kids or cheat on my taxes. But if I needed to lie to protect my family, such as many Jews did during the Holocaust, then I would without question. And I’d still consider myself a good person.”

So what’s my answer?

What immediately comes to mind is the saying: 

Live and let live. 

One of my book releases had that theme. Maybe you were there?

Live and let Live is something I want to live by. It goes hand in hand with the quote by Hamlet above. Who am I to say what is good or bad, right or wrong, for someone else?

To me, a good person lives and lets others live in whatever way they choose. 

Another definition that comes to my mind are the 10 characteristics of highly evolved beings as described by Neale Donald Walsh. Out of these 10 I choose 3 to describe what a good person is to me: 

A good person treats everyone and everything with great care and respect.

A good person doesn’t bring anyone to justice. They do not punish.

A good person reaches out with love, knowing that only love heals all wounds and transforms people. 

Now, let me know what you think. 

What is a good person for you?

How to find time in May - give yourself enough sleep

Have you ever stayed up late to finish “just one more thing”? Or perhaps you've set your alarm ridiculously early to get some work done before the rest of the family wakes up?

If you frequently sacrifice sleep, you might think you're being efficient. However, you could be increasing Waste Time and gradually wearing yourself out. 

This month, let's focus on making (not wasting!) time by ensuring you get enough sleep.

Find Time in May: Prioritise Sleep for Efficiency, Beauty, and Health

Follow the tips in the video to create optimal conditions for a good night's sleep.

Going deeper

To go deeper, consider reading Why we sleep by Matthew Walker.  You can start with the 9-minute summary by Productivity Game on YouTube.

By prioritizing sleep, you'll not only become more efficient with your time but also support your overall health and well-being.

For more help to get more done with less effort and deeper joy, you can read or listen to my book Beyond Efficiency.

You can also dive deeper with my online course Restful Nights and Productive Days.  My offers are available on this link. 

Take care of yourself, your time and your life.

Your ethical will: What got you through your greatest challenge?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What got you through your greatest challenge?

Since Steve Leder is a rabbi he is often the first person people call when their lives fall apart. He says he has learned 3 important things from his own suffering and from supporting others in theirs. 

• Denial, ego, fear or shame prevent us from facing our failures, making the consequences worse than if we had dealt with these failures sooner rather than later. 

• Pain is halved when shared with someone we trust

• We endure challenges and learn to live and love more fully because of them.

Thinking about and sharing how we got through our greatest challenge will help ourselves and our loved ones face future challenges. 

One of the answers in the book resonates fully with me, I agree with every well written word in the following paragraph. 

“Know the difference between adversity and disappointment, a heartbreak and a bummer. Keeping a sense of perspective has always been what has gotten me through life’s challenges. It is difficult to count our blessings when we’re in the midst of trauma, but there are alway blessings. Give yourself time to grieve, to lick your wounds. Never discount your real feelings of pain and loss, but also don’t lose yourself in them.”

When I thought about my challenges, I found it hard to select one. We all experience several challenges in life and ranking them can give the faulty impression some of them weren’t that painful. When I think about the different challenges I have experienced, I find two things that got me through them. 

The unwavering belief I will get through it. There simply is no other option than “getting through”. Like Winston Churchill said: 

If you're going through hell, keep going. 

That’s what I do. I keep going. I don’t even consider giving up or getting stuck in despair with my feet burning. When I go through hell I keep going. 

The other behaviour that helps me get through tough times, is looking beyond the misery. Finding the light in the darkness. This is one of the many wonderful things I learned from my mother. No matter how dark it is, there is always a light somewhere. 

As Elvis Presley sings in If I can dream:

Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle

That beckoning candle guides me out of hell. 

So my advice to my loved ones when they are facing difficulties is: 

Keep on walking. Hell has an end. The beckoning candle in the darkness will guide you out of it. 

If you want to read more about how to get through challenges, you are welcome to read some of the blog posts I have shared over the years on this topic. 

I thought I was prepared mum

Secure a happy ending

Of course it will work out

Tragic things will happen - and it will be OK

So much love, so much pain

Only life knows its length

How to find time in April: Use business cases

Do you often wonder if you're using your time effectively?

Stop the guessing and endless internal debates. 

There's a clear method to make smart decisions about your time.

This month, I'll show you how to choose the best use of your time using Business Cases.

Find time in April by creating business cases for activities you spend time on.

List the values and costs for the activity (considering time, energy, and opportunity), and then ask yourself if the business case is a good one.

If not – get creative and find new ways.

The business case concept is an important part of the Courageous Time Management method, step 1: Create your Foundation for Holistic Time Management. 

Use business cases whenever you feel you are not using time the way you would like to. 

They will give the clarity you need to use your time better. 

You can read or listen to my book Beyond Efficiency for more help getting more done with less effort and deeper joy.

Take care of yourself, your time and your life.

Your ethical will: What was your biggest failure?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write down your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What was your biggest failure?

Hmm, isn’t this a strange question? What is a failure anyway, isn’t it just a lesson?

Maybe.

In my experience a failure can hurt even if we learn from it. I know the failure I will tell you about still saddens me even if I have learned from it and things turned out alright in the end.

As Steve Leder writes:

“Failure is a great teacher, attacking arrogance while inviting humility, painfully yet fortunately forcing us to take a cold, hard look at our own dysfunction, its roots and its thorns.”

Let’s have a look at a touching failure shared in the book:

“My greatest flaw, in my view, is I could not accept my dad, who was an uneducated man damaged by his poverty-stricken upbringing, a survivor of the Holocaust who lost his first family. He was not the flawed one, I was. I just wish when my dad had dementia and said at the age of ninety-three that he didn’t think I loved him, and I said I did, that I meant it at the time. I do now!”

 

My biggest failure was letting go of Russin, a wonderful labrador-border collie mix. I grew up with dogs and never thought I would ever need to give one up. My Springer spaniel Lotti and I even won prizes at obedience competitions.

Sure, I noticed early on Russin was more insecure than my previous dogs, but we were convinced we would be able to raise her to become a stable dog, just like we had our previous dogs. When our first child came to our family, Russin didn’t know how to deal with him. As long as he was too small to move around it was alright, but when he started crawling and standing she saw him as a threat. Then, suddenly, Russin started attacking Lotti, our other dog. They had been great friends up until then. Their fights were not just skirmishes, Lotti got badly hurt and the fights were hard for us to break up once they started. We lived in a war zone, having to keep the dogs apart and worrying about Russin possibly hurting our baby one day.

Of course we thought we could fix it. Of course we tried. The alternative, giving up a dog was at first unthinkable. In my head that was what bad dog owners did. People who gave up too quickly, irresponsible, uncaring dog owners. Surely we weren't like that?

In the end we realised the best for the whole family, Russin included, was to find her another family. We did. They loved her and sent us photos of her life with them for many years. 

While we tried to fix the situation we got to know great dog trainers and became more intuitive dog owners. By letting go of Russin there was eventually space in our life for Jaspis, the best possible dog for a family with by then three children.

Still.

Despite all the learnings and all good things coming from this situation, I still hurt when I think about Russin looking at us through the rear-window of her new owners’ car.

To my wonderful Russin, now in heaven since long,

I am sorry things didn’t turn out as intended even though they did turn out well in the end. Love you forever.

Matte Annika

How to find time in March: Plan what fits

Are you falling short of completing everything on your to-do list?

Do you blame yourself when plans don't materialize?

Don't.

Self-blame doesn't just drain your energy and joy—it wastes precious time. Remember: even with perfect efficiency, 300 hours of work simply cannot fit into a 168-hour week.

This month, I'm offering a solution to help you escape that perpetual feeling of being behind.

Ready to transform your relationship with time and productivity?

 

Master Your March: The Power of Realistic Planning

Stop overwhelming yourself with impossible expectations. The math is simple: you cannot fit 300 hours of work into a 168-hour week—no matter how efficiently you work.

This March, use a different approach: plan only what realistically fits into your week, not everything you think you "should" accomplish.

When you fully accept this reality and find the courage to say "no"—both to yourself and others—you'll notice a positive change. By focusing exclusively on what's actually possible, you'll accomplish more than when you're stressed about everything that doesn't fit.

The secret to productivity isn't working harder—it's making smarter choices about where you invest your limited time.

Ready to transform your relationship with time? Find the courage to say "no" to what won't fit in your glass of time, so you can fully enjoy and excel at what does!

Want to go deeper? For more help getting more done with less effort and deeper joy, read or listen to my book Beyond Efficiency.