Time management

[Joyous_5]

Hi all,

I'm busy.

I know, everyone is busy. But I'm so busy that now I'm not enjoying life the way I used to. >:( I need help but I don't know where to start--I tried reading a couple of time management books (never finished either) and just feel completely overwhelmed.

Can you give me suggestions on how you best manage your day?

The things that are priority to me are:
Faith
Husband
Child
Family (sisters/parents/in-laws)
Health (including healthy eating and exercise/fresh air and good sleep)
Art and Writing
Work (two part-time jobs = about 30 hours w/ commute included)

Then there are all the other things: church, house cleaning/maintaining, groceries, errands, appointments, etc.

If anyone has stellar resources or just "been there, done that" tips, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

[ctg492]

I think "ME" should have been 1 or 2 on your list, perhaps 2 since faith is a good #1.
I have to remember during this time of problems I seem to be dealing with, that ME has to be cared for. I do this in my own way, I go jogging at 5:30am. This morning it was raining, but it was still my time before everything else needed me today. A neighbor yelled to me kinda joking like "nice time for run", I yelled back "YES it is!".

[fidgiegirl]

Two things helped me cut back: When I very first started to explore voluntary simplicity, I read several books and they all talked about "no." I know, easier said than done. I'm still working on it, several years later. But I am getting better - for example, we are remodeling a house, and as soon as we bought it, I contacted the community band I was participating in and told them I wouldn't be available until summer. I am SO THANKFUL that I did that, even though I feel a little guilty and also I miss the band :) Nothin' like a good blow on the tuba to release stress :)

The other thing was Getting Things Done. Since the system is kind of complicated and you are already having trouble with time (it takes quite a bit to get it up and running), I'll share the one nugget that's made a huge difference to me: do it now. In GTD the idea is that if it will take 2 minutes or less, just do it. For me, it means just putting my dishes in the dishwasher, just washing up the dishes that can't go in, just folding that laundry the second it comes out of the dryer, just opening/recycling that mail right when it comes in the door, just sending that e-mail right when I think about it . . . you get the point.

Do you feel you priorities are getting priority now? What would it they look like? What I mean is, if faith is a priority, for you, does that mean attending church, daily prayer, service projects, daily Bible time, or what? How about husband? Does it mean date nights? Making his lunch every day for him? A cuddle before bed? Perhaps envisioning some of this might help - like, maybe if you can get to the core of what you want each thing to most most most importantly look like, you can cut out some of the other stuff, even though they are related to a given priority.

Otherwise, I echo ctg's sentiment: what about you?

[herbgeek]

I would start with an inventory of what's on your plate now, and a list of what you want to fit into your life. And by inventory, I mean in detail with how many hours per day or week each commitment/activity takes. Don't forget sleep and self care (dressing, exercise, eating, sleeping). If you are a visual person, one way to do this would be to make a chart of 24 hours, and then block in what's already allocated. Or you could make a clock and label the hours with each activity.

After you have everything all out in the open/on paper , then you can rate the activities: must have, really feeds my soul, doing out of obligation, time to get the kids to take this over and the like. Drop the lower value activities and see how that feels for a while, before adding on new activities. If you just swap one activity for another, you could be just as busy and frazzled. Doing it step by step helps you to find that balance point of where you have enough/are not bored but are not overwhelmed either.

[reader99]

Years ago I wrote the following World's Shortest Book on Time Management:


Time Management



If you need more timeto get things done, turn off the television.

If you need still moretime, take the books back to the library.

If you need still moretime, log off the internet.

If you need even moretime, turn off the telephone.

If you need even moretime than that, you are trying to do too much.

[sweetana3]

reader99, that was very very good.

I wanted to add also that I have gotten pretty good at saying No. Don't explain or come up with excuses why you cannot. If it does not fit, a simple "no, I cannot do it" is all it needs. Anyone that would follow up with a lot of pesky questions regarding why should just have simple "I cannot do it repeated".

Note also that most women really try to do it all and try to have a perfect life. Decide what you can give up and what you can delegate. Decide on even better priorities. Your child will only be a child once and once you form a plan looking ahead, you will see more time open up for other activities.

[Amaranth]

Part I

A good strategy is to fix one area at a time and to do it in a way that creates a positive snowball effect. It can also be a big help to use the Tasks in Microsoft Outlook to organize everything. As you decide when each thing should be done, enter it into repeating tasks. On the subject line you can make the tasks list in the order you want to do them by putting leading zeros in front of the time. For example a sample weekday is below. More details are included in the steps.
005:30 am Garden (everyone)
006:00 am Get ready for work/school
006:15 am Wash towels
006:20 am Make and eat breakfast
006:45 am Clean up kitchen
007:00 am Drive to work
007:15 am Check personal email
007:30 am Work job 1
010:00 am Read something inspiring for 5 minutes on work break and make some tea
012:30 pm Take walk
2:45 pm Check personal email
3:00 pm Errand route 1
4:30 pm Pick Child #1 up from sports practice
5:00 pm Dry towels
5:00 pm Do basket pick up game (children)
5:10 pm Wash MBR dark clothes
5:15 pm Cut up stir fry and soup items. Start soup. Make rice. Make stirfry.
6:00 pm Take out towels. Dry MBR dark.
6:10 pm Eat dinner
6:40 pm Clean kitchen
6:40 pm Dust room, scrub wall around light switch, vacuum Child room #1 (Child #1)
6:40 pm Portion of paperwork and bills (DH)
7:00 pm Fold/Hang Laundry and put away(me) Choose tomorrow’s clothes (me)
7:15 pm Watch taped show in 20 minutes by ff thru commercials (DH and Children)
7:30 pm portion of paperwork and bills then pack up workbag(me) Check personal email.
7:35 pm Choose clothes and pack up work/book bags (Children and DH)
7:45 pm Get ready for bed and read (children)
8:15 pm Sleep (children)
8:15 pm Get ready for bed and read (adults)
9:00 pm Sleep (adults)



1) Organize your eating so that you have healthy food but so the preparation is not overly time consuming. Or so that something that is time consuming gives you multiple meals. To start I’d go with oatmeal with fruit/nuts or cold cereal with fruit/nuts or fruit yogurt or nutritious homemade muffins (make ahead and freeze) for breakfast, nutritious sandwiches and fruit for lunch. For dinner I’d do 3 nights of soup, 2 of stirfry, and 2 of pasta and salad per week. For the soups make enough to have 2 or 3 nights per pot, eat one and freeze the other 2 nights worth for a future week. Start the next night’s soup while prepping that night’s dinner. Let it be cooking while you eat and clean up the current night’s dinner. Clean as much of the kitchen as you can while cooking. Run dishwasher after dinner. For this step and each thereafter, just do a reasonable job of it, say at the 80% level. Don’t try to get it at the complete or perfection level at the start. Just tweek things a little as you go along. Remember that perfect is the enemy of good. So at the start just do a reasonably good job. Also just do as much as you can in the allotted time. Prioritize. Clean up the raw meat spill. Dust if there is time remaining for that job.

2) Dry load of laundry from breakfast. Start a load of laundry such as clothes that need to be folded/hung straight from the dryer at the start of dinner prep. As much as possible for the first month use clothes that don’t need ironing. Switch into the dryer before sitting down to eat. Fold both loads after dinner after cleaning up the kitchen. Have a set laundry schedule so everything gets done and sport clothes are available on time.

3) Pack up items for next day and place in outgoing staging area: Bookbags, workbags, sports clothes/equipment, etc. Choose next day’s clothes.

4) Plan so you can get a full night’s sleep each night.

5) Get up early enough so you don’t have to rush. Get ready for work. Start a load of laundry such as underwear, sheets, towels, or napkins that can sit out of the dryer unfolded during dinner and wrinkling won’t be an issue.

6) Make breakfast and pack lunches. Eat breakfast. Clean up kitchen.

7) Go to work/school in an unrushed manner.

8) Take a walk for part of lunch.

9) Make a list of all the places you need to go each week and month for errands. Include in the list infrequent errands that only happen at certain times of the year such as getting vegetable transplants from a nursery or your child’s sports shoes or the farmer’s market. Think about whether it would suit your long term goals best to do errands on several different days or one day a week. Consider how to divide up the errands and possible routes. They might cluster around each work location or your child’s school/sports location. In some cases it may be more efficient to go to a chain store further from you that’s closer to a key non chain store. For example there are some regular grocery stores close to a natural foods store, so it’s more efficient to go to that chain grocery store location than the one closest to me. Find out about any school projects for the rest of the year and needed supplies. If your child’s school has some mega school projects that take several years to collect items for, take that into account as well. For example some states have projects where children need to collect historical/geographical/tourist literature from each county in the state to compile into a book. Each year your child might go to certain birthday parties. Get the gifts ahead of time when there are good sales or coupons. Let other family members know that you will be doing certain items at certain times, so you need to know in advance about any specific needs. Consider if you need anything to make errand routes more efficient such as a freezer bag or cooler. Consider if it would make sense to order some things on line and have them delivered such as pantry groceries. Test out the routes and clusters for two weeks and adjust as needed. Consider if your errand running can have a built in hike as part of it. For example Errand route #1 might have hiking from one end of the mall to other in it and Errand route #2 might have the mega grocery store.

10) Organize the cleaning so it gets done in discrete chunks. If there is a tremendous amount of items out of place in your house(toys, books, mail, recycle, projects, clothes, used dishes, trash, etc) , I’d start by doing the basket pickup game for an hour after dinner each night for several weeks. For this you need a timer, two sturdy laundry baskets(1 for laundry, 1 for out of room items), a dish pan, a recycle container, and a trash bag. Bring items and all family members to front door the first few times you do this. Set timer for 10 minutes. In that room, put anything away that belongs in the room. Anything that doesn’t go, put in the appropriate container. Do as much as you can in 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes go to the next room to your right. Look in the out of room item basket and put away anything that goes in room 2. Otherwise do as for room 1. Repeat for first 6 rooms. When done, take laundry to laundry room or to individual laundry baskets in people’s closets, recycle to outside bins, dishes to kitchen, trash to outside trash cans. Set aside out of room items container out of way, but where anyone can look in it(but if anything needs to go in a bookbag or workbag, transfer it now). Depending on age of child, adults may need to carry baskets and bags up and down the stairs. The next night start in room 7. Once everyone gets in the habit of putting most everything away, you can usually do it with just one basket. Eventually, you will get to where you can do the whole house in 10-20 minutes or less. People with small children may want to do 10 minutes 4 times a day (before meals and bath—don’t do before bed as it gets them too wound up.)

11) Divide out the cleaning so part of it gets done each day. Consider if you want each family member to do a specific room or a specific set of jobs for the day. Depending on the size of the room and the contents, cleaning the room is likely to take from 15 to 30 minutes. Possible schedule:

Sunday: MBR bath, MBR, Children’s bath, Laundry room
Monday: Children’s room#1, Paperwork and Bills
Tuesday: Children’s room #2
Wednesday: MBR bath, Guest room/office
Thursday: Children’s bath, Family room
Friday: Hall or Guest bath, Living room, Dining room, Entrance foyer
Saturday: Garage, Porch

12) Plan a food garden that includes a mix of high maintenance and low maintenance foods. Work in it at least 4 days per week. Each day do some planting, some weeding, and some harvesting. Fit the gardening around daylight and your work schedule. On shorter days, you may need to garden before getting ready for work or between work and dinner prep. Make sure all family members can take care of some of the crops independently.

[Amaranth]

Part II

13) Once the first 12 items are well under way and running fairly smoothly, have a family planning meeting where you brainstorm a 5 year plan that takes into account the kind of relationships you’d like to have with friends and family, the financial situation you’d like to be in, the things you want to learn, the things you want to do/experience, the kind of faith/community service projects in which you’d like to participate, any sort of aspects of ecology/green living or economic relocalization you’d like to be part of, and what the children need/want to do to be well rounded and in a position to get into good colleges. Plan an order that makes sense. See what things can be combined. See what preparation is needed for each. Consider what each activity adds to the overall plan and goals. For example scouting gives kids a greater diversity of skills than soccer. Soccer allows most all of the children to be active though the whole game compared to 2-3 at any given minute during baseball. Tennis, golf, and backpacking give kids sports skills they can be doing when they are 70 compared to say trying to find enough adults for a soccer, basketball, or football game. Insert activities where they make sense. For example, you might alternate writing with gardening in the mornings and art with reading in the evenings. Projects that need bigger chunks of time can be scheduled for the weekends. Also look at how you can facilitate skill acquisition in other people especially in volunteer jobs. This will make it easier for you to work your way out of a job in the future as well as allow you to focus your time in areas where you have special interests, skills, or knowledge.

14) Consider which events can be combined. Consider which regular events you are going to routinely and if going to a rotating portion of them would work just as well. For example would it work to have four family birthday celebrations per year and celebrate all the January to March ones at one event? Are you going to every Wednesday church supper when really only 20% of the topics are of interest to you? Are you working at the soup kitchen every Tuesday evening, when instead your church circle could divide into 8 groups and cover the dinner by going once every 8 weeks? Then redo the plans in 13 to take into what can be combined, what jobs you can work your way out of, and which can be rotated to a less frequent basis.

15) Reconsider all the steps each year at regular intervals. Before the start of the summer, before school starts back, and late December/early January are times where natural breaks occur. Each step above will help you get a handle on an area and also make it easier to do the next step.

[mira]

I agree with fidgiegirl and sweetana3 - saying 'no' and turning down events/extra commitments when you feel you have enough on your plate is very important. I try to limit regular, scheduled activities (classes, groups etc) to two per week - otherwise I feel like I have no down time. Of course I do lots of spontaneous things in between (visiting family, friends, daytrips, cinema), but sometimes having too much planned feels like a huge weight on my shoulders.

Adjust things based on your feelings; don't feel forced to commit to certain things if you can't or simply don't want to. Maybe you'd have to space out regular activities a bit more (doing something every other week instead of every week, for example) if you want to feel less pressured.

[ApatheticNoMore]

DO LESS. Or ... you'll just make your self sick or at least depressed and haggard and maybe maybe sick too ....

If you feel crazy busy it is time to start dropping things! Unless you are in some unusual crisis situation where nothing is dropable, but in any situation short of that. Not everything that seems it needs to get done does actually does need to get done.

If it's gotten to the point where you feel so busy that even the most basic things like "pay the bills" or "put gas in the car" are getting forgotten, then write them down (a "to do" list yea). Believe me I have gotten there.

It seems to me that most of the priorities on your list should have some joy in them. I mean ok maybe work is not enjoyable and is just done for a paycheck, and child rearing isn't always enjoyable, but most of the list .... If there's no joy in it, what's the point? For instance exercise is very healthy but if it has gotten to the point where even exercise is just adding more layers of stress to your life, even it is not healthy anymore.

[KayLR]

I am a very bad procrastinator and have worked on it forever.
Years ago, I read David Burns' "Feeling Good Handbook" where he writes about the "Unschedule." It helped me a lot.

Basically, you take a blank daily-weekly schedule, block in the everyday things you MUST do, then see where you have free time. It's amazing to note that even though you seem like you are really, really busy, you do in fact have time in your day for the things you would like to do, but never seem to have time for.

I couldn't find anything online quickly by Dr. Burns about the Unschedule, but this fellow Neil Fiore seems to have picked it up and run with it:

http://www.lifeclever.com/how-to-unschedule-your-work-and-enjoy-guilt-free-play/

[Gardenarian]

Amaranth, you are one productive woman!

My only advice is to cut out the stuff you don't like doing and do more of the stuff that is fun. And when you can't cut out the things you don't like, try to make them as pleasurable as possible.

[iris lily]

Years ago I wrote the following World's Shortest Book on Time Management:


Time Management



If you need more timeto get things done, turn off the television.

If you need still moretime, take the books back to the library.

If you need still moretime, log off the internet.

If you need even moretime, turn off the telephone.

If you need even moretime than that, you are trying to do too much.


This is right on the money for me!

[shadowmoss]

I have a couple of things I've learned from the time management folks. FlyLady (who I followed when she first was doing the email list) suggested only starting one new cleaning habit a month, then once that was good and established, start another. She started with cleaning her sink each night. Also, from her is the idea of each week concentrate on 1 room in the house to clean well, in 15-30 min per night. Just tidy up the other rooms each day. So, 15 min on your main room for 7 days, and 15 min/day to tidy up the rest of the house. The GTD idea of 2 min or less helps me, too. If it takes longer to put it off than to do it, just do it. To make progress on the 'things I really need to get done', I schedule 3 of the tasks (pay a specific bill, drop something off somewhere, mend something, whatever) and list which is most important. So, one really important task gets done, and extra points for the other 2. Next day I pick 3 more from the list. If something keeps slipping to the next day, I evaluate how important it really is. If it is actually important, I suck it up and make it the #1 task that next day. And promise myself a treat (small) for sucking it up and doing it.

The over-all idea of these things for me is to break down my 'day' into smaller chunks that I can wrap my head around, rather than a jumble of 'busy'.

[shadowmoss]

Oh, one other thing I have done recently is I set up a calendar at Zoho.com and send reminders to my email on anything I need to remember on a certain day. All my bills have reminders to check them 3-5 days before they are due. Any recurring meetings send a reminder. If there is something I see a reference to while I'm surfing, I set a reminder to check it at a later date when I have more time. I leave these in my (personal, not work) email until I actually do them. This is the second month, and so far so good. I've remembered to do my timesheet at work, a weekly meeting that my co-worker and I both forgot the week before I set the reminder had both of us reminding each other (he set a reminder as well), and so far I really like it. Since the calendar is on the internet I can get to it from work or home to set reminders.

[Joyous_5]

THANK YOU!!!!! Thank you all so much for all the ideas and helpful suggestions. I need time to re-read all the comments and take some notes but am so grateful for all your help. One thing that stuck out--the comment(s) around adding more joy to my day. I think that's a BIG part of what's missing and why everything is starting to feel like drudgery. I want more of the joyful things (for me, reading/art/mindful exercise/writing) and less of the boring-but-have-to-be-done things. There's a LOT of great food for thought here--thank you again!

[Mrs-M]

Time management, IMO, boils down to application and dedication. Deducting, outside, and, inside influences, from ones scheduling. i.e. Television, internet, telephone, etc.

I gave much thought to this thread and definitely think my routine for setting schedules and managing time, was much easier when my kids were younger/babies. Seemed I was in control of everything (more so), establishing set time frames to coincide with my day-to-day schedule/routine. Way easier and simpler some how, because I made it work for me, around me.

But then independence sets in, and all changes. Suddenly, there's appointments (which take a large bite out of valuable time and energy), there's a heavier workload contending with such things as laundry, cooking, and even shopping. Everything becomes far more magnified the older a household gets.

Now, instead of being tied down to the simple, basic of things, such as changing diapers and fixing and distributing bottles- with the addition of a quick load of laundry in-between (here and there), and anything else needing tending to, one finds themselves playing taxi service (to and from), scrambling to make school functions and events, and playing catch-up more often than one likes to entertain.

With my own family, ages 6 through 19 (needy husband added to that), I have more help now than ever before thanks to the likes of the older ones, and that definitely adds to more of a sense of "scale back" in relation to all things household and family. But I still need to remind myself at times, that, this needs done, or, that needs done, or, I haven't tackled such-in-such since last Monday or Wednesday.

Unfortunately, when it comes to time restraints and scheduling, I find making up for lost time is an all too familiar past-time for me. In other words, having the lights on later into the evening (night) in order to get back on top of a situation or two again, or, instead of waking at a leisurely time and easing myself into a gradual and semi-relaxing day consisting of ordinary "things to do", I find myself waking long before (hours before) the rest of the house, and getting a jump-start and lead on things in order to see your way clear to tackle something else later on in the day or free-up a little valuable R&R time for ME, at some point in time throughout the day. Welcome to "burning the candle at both ends!"

While there isn't a magic bullet that one can adopt or incorporate into daily life that relieves one of all the hustle and bustle that comes by way of having a family (at least to the best of my knowledge there isn't), I do know that prioritizing chores, tasks, and scheduling jobs that in turn help keep things running smoothly and efficiently, is still the best way.

I suggest starting small. (Think, baby steps). Set a scale as to "most important"- to "least important", then start the process of tailoring and fine-tuning it from there. It takes a while to establish a refined method and system related to time management, so be patient, and, at the end of each day (or week), make a point of sitting down for a stretch and accessing how things are working out in respect to progress, accomplishments, and (if it just so happens to be), where time, slipped from your grip, escaped you, and left you with previously unattended chores and things still sitting idle, untouched, and neglected. Now, with a workable list that defines both the stronger and weaker areas in your hands, you can change-up scheduled tasks to suit, rearrange time allotments to pick up the slack, and work on jostling around other odds and ends that come to mind. Things I like to refer as "irritants".

And now a handful of "key" words/sayings to help coax you along. Coax you towards success.

Balance. So important to maintaining ones sanity.
Slow and steady, as in, "slow and steady wins the race".
Happy- medium. (Step-by-step. Not too much at one time. Pace yourself).
Prioritizing.
Focus.
Determination.
These are my own set of words/sayings that have worked for me personally, but everyone is different, so you may find yourself coming up with your own set of encouraging buzz words/sayings to help steer you along and guide you. Just remember, success in the "time management" department isn't going to happen overnight.