I am not often a horn tooter.  I do not think terribly highly of myself in many areas, I know I have extreme weaknesses, and I often struggle with confidence.  But if there was ever one thing that I know that I’m good at, it’s time management.  Somewhere along the line, I went right with that concept.

When I was in high school, I worked at DSW shoes.  I loved being on register.  I loved scanning things and pressing cash register buttons and not having to clean up the mess on the floor.  My time management skills go way back to high school.  I was a three sport athlete at one point, while taking ballet, jazz and pointe and still maintained a near 100 average.  Time management, baby.  I’m getting a little sidetracked here.  Back to the topic.  While working at DSW, I learned something that makes total sense, that doesn’t waste people’s time, and that leaves me scratching my head when I go to stores where the cashier doesn’t do this:  So, people put their boxes of shoes on the counter.  I check to make sure they are the right shoes in both the same size, and then I scan them.  They hand me a credit card.  Do I leave the boxes of shoes on the counter while I stare at the register, waiting thirty seconds for the card to approve?  And then when it approves, hand it to the person who signs it and then I start bagging their shoes?  NO!  But people do that, don’t they!  It happens all the time!  What a waste of everyone’s time!  Also, people do the opposite sometimes. . . they scan and bag the shoes entirely first, before they take the card and then the customer has to still stand there and wait while you did two separate tasks in the time it could’ve taken you to do one.  Instead, you should swipe the card, set it on the register, grab a bag, and bag those shoes while the card is busy approving!  And then you hand them the receipt to sign while finishing up the bagging process, hand them back their card and everyone is thirty seconds happier.  Multiply that by one hundred customers in one day, and wow, you sure saved a lot of people’s time, including saving three thousand seconds of waiting by the various customers in that line.

I believe it’s called being industrious.  Being diligent.

Really, it goes a long way.

People often ask me how I do all the things that I do.  I have my own business, while still staying home with my boys.  I do a lot, and it really does surprise me how much I can get done sometimes.  But in the world of industriousness (I just made that word up), you’d be amazed at what happens when you can juggle fifteen tasks at one time regarding business.  I don’t slow down during my work time, I use a lot of time management, and I bag the shoes while the card is approving.  Simple, simple.