Why Manage Time?
Thinking of the advice I gave to a friend after I said it, I wondered where did that just come from. She was thinking about going back to college but thought she was too old. I told her, you to think about going back to college. Say by the time you graduate, you will be 55, guess what, if you don’t go back to college, you will be 55 anyway. I thought I would write a blog on time management.
This Brings Me to my message: The Importance of Managing Time
Since I have been working part-time, my spare time is limited. When I come home from work, part of me wants to veg in front of the TV. The other part of me wants to get on with my life. I don’t want my minimum wage part-time job to define me. It almost feels my life is on hold but it isn’t, I am always learning new things, working on my business and hobbies.
Moment Wasters
The average Canadian spends four hours a day in front of the television. I spend six hours a day working and traveling to and from work, eight hours to sleep, three hours for eating so that leaves seven hours. I am trying for the life of me to figure out what I have been doing in those seven hours? A great idea is to write down on paper everything I do for a week and how long I take. That would be an eye-opening experience. Four hours for television is not an option for me. (anymore).
Social media can be a time-waster or a time saver. People have connected with long-lost family members, which causes joy for some. I have made business connections with social media. But going on Facebook and scrolling for hours looking for that hit of dopamine is not great for anybody.
Moment Savers
For me, I find goal setting is key. Find a scheduling tool that works best for you. I wrote a blog on goal setting. Goal Setting, (You must write them down). For an eye-opening exercise, take a week and write down everything you do, this way you will know what is happening to your time. You will find out how much time everything takes. Now that you know, you can block off time for each activity. We can adjust this as you get better.
Time Management Systems
Digital
Some people prefer pen to paper for time management, others prefer digital, one example of a digital scheduler is Trello. This looks like a bulletin board with sticky notes for each task. We can move these around as needed. Used in a business setting, they can share it among users. Trello is just one of many digital planners.
Paper Planners
As for pen to paper, there are dozens of planners out there. Two categories divide them, the academic ones follow the school year therefore they start in August or September. The other type follows the calendar year. Make sure you purchase one with lots of room for notes.
Daytimer
The one I purchased in the past was the Daytimer. This comes with either a refillable binder or a wired binding. The choices are endless, three sizes from folio (81/2×11”) to pocket (3 3/4×6 3/4”). Also one page a day, two page a day. You can choose whether to have the dates on them or fill the dates in yourself. These are particularly great for a business because there is room for appointments. The Daytimers are quite expensive but well worth the extra money.
These Daytimers and more generic planners can be found in your local business supply store. There are more choices online.
Bullet Journal
I use a Bullet Journal or BuJo for short.For this a regular notebook can be used but I like the ones with numbered pages better. Instead of lines, they have dots. Some have room for an index at the beginning. You could start with yearly upcoming events.
So that would be on page one. The first line in the index would say 2021 Yearly Events page 1 so then the next page you would want to write down things that need to be done in January so the next line in the index would be Things to Do January 2021 page 2. Then I would start into my calendar, I allow one page for three days. I would put in my index January pages 3 to 8. If I knew I have a busy month coming up, I may allow for one page for two days.
I was thinking about blog subjects for March, on the next page I did what you would call a “Brain-Dump” of all the ideas I had in my mind. So the index said, March Blog Ideas Brain-Dump page 9. Some people like to decorate these pages and most people have legends with keys to go beside dates. For example, X water plants would mean that item is complete, > Water plants, means you put it off to a later date. An * means very important.
Pomodoro Technique
Another time-saver is The Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro is the Italian name for tomato. It uses a timer that originally was a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. Set the timer for 25 minutes, do the activity for 25 minutes, the timer goes off, rest for five minutes. Do four of these segments and break for fifteen minutes. This gives you a clear starting and stopping time, it is great for procrastinators it helps with time management, so I thought if I am going to do this I have to have a tomato timer but the ticking drove me crazy and the ring would scare me so now I use my phone.
Use these time-savers along with time spent reading or listening to great books about motivation, some of which I mention in my recommended reading section.