Naturally, my life is as organized as an elementary school recess: lots of frantic running around, falling down, and then calling it quits once the bell rings for the day.
Since I have a tendency to forget and lose things, I’ve had to train myself to spend my time more wisely. I have by no means mastered it. Time is a wild beast that can’t ever be perfectly tamed. I’ve come up with a system to hack myself a bit and make sure I’m accomplishing the most important things, which is ultimately the goal of time management.
1. Do the most important thing first, every day. Each morning I commit to reading the Bible before anything else. I’m trying to kick the habit of catching up on 100+ tweets when I wake up since I’m 6 hours ahead of most of the people I follow. I get distracted, start reading articles, and start thinking and reading and favoriting and linking and then my morning is blown. So, I’ve started jumping out of bed, throwing a pot of coffee on and cracking open the Word.
2. Make a list of the most important things to do for that day. I know that I’m probably not going to get everything on my list done. That’s ok. I’m incredibly motivated by checking things off a list (so, yes, I even add things I didn’t have on my list originally just to check them off). Once I make the list, I reorganize it and put the most important things first, group tasks together that can be done at the same time, and do quick ones right away to build some momentum.
3. Use one calendar exclusively. If I have an appointment, it’s on my Google Calendar, linked to my iPhone and synced to my Mac. It’s important to only have events in one place so you aren’t wasting time cross referencing or, worse, double-booking. Google Calendar has a great feature to send a reminder e-mail to yourself a day (or more) in advance if you want to make sure you remember to do something really important or irregular. I’ll see it in my Inbox so I can plan ahead for unusual events (like dentist appointments or meetings in another city, etc.)
4. Block out time for other “appointments.” If writing is important for me, I need to schedule a time to do it on a morning before work or on a weekend. If not, I just end up wandering through my days like the Israelites through the desert. Block out time to do things that you love and put it on your calendar.
5. Review your week on Sunday evening. I want to have a good feel for what I have coming up each week. I look on Sunday evenings at all the appointments I have set up for the week ahead so I have a general idea of gaps in my schedule I can fill.
6. Make a stop doing list. Things that eat away at your time (like reading 100s of tweets, even with good people to follow) you need to stop doing all together or do during breaks or once you’ve accomplished your major tasks for the day. I’ve committed to stop hopping on social media in the mornings, not compulsively checking my blog stats, and not looking at my phone every 2 minutes. My solution for my phone (my biggest distraction) is to leave it in another room when I’m reading or writing, because out of habit I compulsively grab it and hemorrhage time.
7. Say no. When you say yes to an appointment, Skype call, or meeting, you are saying no to time doing something else with your spouse, friends, or spending time doing other activities you love. I limit the amount of appointments I have in a week to make sure my mornings and evenings aren’t getting eaten up by work and then as a result have less time to spend with my wife. This is easy in theory and the most difficult in practice, but it’s a game changer.