Discovering Time Management I

Some people seem to live life with 12 extra hours they discover at 5am. I know and love a dear aunt who wakes up early in the morning to get in a run, makes breakfast and lunch for her 2 kids, works a full time job, helps out with school functions and extras when they come up, keeps her marriage happy, and makes time for her friends and family. She does all of this without ever seeming overwhelmed or exhausted. I am not that person, but I want to be.

I began with the intention of figuring out the secret to Doing It All and sharing it in an article. Turns out it’s not that easy: who knew? I read article after article about productivity apps, and time management skills, and day planning, and I got overwhelmed. It felt like I needed 50 apps and 3 planners to be effective, and I don’t have enough time or energy for that. So this is not a how-to article about effective time management. It’s not the top ten apps to make your life easier. This is one part in a series that will walk through step by step my struggles and successes in finding those 12 extra hours.

After reading articles on Time Management and Productivity for a good 5 hours straight, I decided the best route for me was to get a planner. The planner I chose was a weekly planner with day to day note taking options (it has enough spaces to write down important events) and a weekly note taking area. I bought it 50% off because it was January, huge bonus.

I went into the process already understanding my priorities: the things I wanted to be doing but wasn’t, and the things I was already doing, but didn’t want to give up.

My list is as follows:

Exercise, Make Time for Healthy Eating, Spend Time with Significant Other, Write (long term projects) [of which I have 2 in progress and 3 on the back burner], Write (short term projects), Business Tasks [I’m also trying to start my own freelance bookkeeping business], Transcribing Work, Read, Crochet, Paint, Play Video Games.

It’s a lot. Now, you’ve probably noticed the last few items on my list. I have the unfortunate habit of sitting and not doing anything rather than doing anything productive, which also means I don’t actually do fun things. So those get added to the list. Those are my: when I don’t feel productive, think about these.

The first step was figuring out my “free hours.” Assuming I was exercising every weekday morning I would have “free hours” from 11:00 to 1:00 pm, and after I get off of work, as well as 4 hours on Saturday and more on Sunday. I say “after work” because that could be 7:30 or 9:00 or later, I never know. That also makes it difficult to count those hours. I tried. It was a bad idea.

I assigned tasks to each free hour, leaving my weekend a little looser. I was immediately overwhelmed. As I mentioned earlier, I am not the kind of person who can do everything with no stress. I needed more down time than I gave myself. Which is terrifying to admit because I only scheduled myself an hour of productive time per weekday, and it was “too much.” How do you recover from that level of obstinate laziness?

Well, one thing did work for me. Filling out tasks in my planner gave me permission to work on a single task and leave the rest for later. It gave me a visual representation showing me that by focusing on this one task, I would not be ignoring all of my responsibilities. I knew come Tuesday that it was OK to read after work, because if I had time after my shift the next day, I was going to write. That knowledge was freeing.

Et Voila, I have a plan B.

Planner 2.0.

Planner 1.0 asked me to start transcribing at 11 am. 11 am came about, and I was exhausted from my workout, already wondering how I was going to get through work, and somehow going through caffeine withdrawal despite the 200mg in my new diet pill. Planner 2.0 takes a different approach, with one focal item that I want to spend time on at some point that day. It’s vague, but anything is better than staring at my laptop wondering how I should spend my time, right? Look out for part 2 soon.