I have been pretty excited about getting our budget worked out for when we have more predictable income, but it struck me that there is another thing that we have a limited amount of and must manage and that is time. Unlike the disparities between the spending capabilities of the rich and poor, everyone has the same amount of time, and furthermore, everyone must use it all.
I have never been taught how to effectively manage my time. My later teenage years seem to be a blur of hanging out on the internet, working a few hours a week (and complaining about and dreading my two-hour "work days") and doing projects with the family. That's not to say I wasn't taught how to work. On the contrary, I think my dad instilled in us all a very strong work ethic and I think about that every time I find myself meticulously picking things up off the carpet (my dad was big on picking things up off the floor. I do vacuum, but sometimes it's faster just to get your fingers out and pick up the 20 pieces of food on the carpet. I personally think I'm very good at picking crumbs up off the carpet :).
But work without managing your time can be pretty ineffective. I remember having great lists of family projects but not getting much done because everything was so important we couldn't pick one thing to start with and finish. It would be so incredibly stressful to have deadlines because we had a hard time meeting them. I remember putting cabinets in the bus at 9pm on the day we were leaving for our first bus trip. Yes, we did do a lot of work on the bus, but I think we could have been more efficient at our work and part of that would have been organizing our time better. That would have lead to a lot less stress when push came to shove.
But I digress, this is not about how I used to manage my time, this is just an example of something I personally need to work on and pay attention to. My time management is definitely better, mostly due to the necessity of having a large school workload on top of having a family, but I think it could be better.
What are ways you manage your time? Do you have a schedule? The idea of a schedule appealed to me at one time but then I found I never stuck to it and I never accurately scheduled the time I needed to get things done.
Hi Bonnie,
ReplyDeleteBeen following your blog from time to time and I just can’t resist commenting on time management. There are a couple things that help me (a perfectionist…who procrastinates…). Schedules still feel too restrictive, so I keep an ongoing to-do list. I either write task-oriented lists (“Read chapter 8”) or time-oriented lists (“Spend 1 hour reading chapter 8”). Time-oriented lists tend to yield the best results, because I know I only have a set amount of time to do something. The second thing is scheduling productive breaks. Let’s say I have three hours of studying to do and it’s only possible to concentrate effectively for 90 minutes. Instead of working for 90 minutes, surfing the Web for 30, and then finishing up, I use the break time to start a load of laundry and eat lunch. I know I have to fix meals and all that anyway, so I schedule those things as “breaks.” It sounds sort of dull and overly simple, but it’s seriously part of how I’m making it through college. Anyhow, hope you find what works best for you! -M
That sounds like an excellent plan! I really like the setting time limits. One thing I didn't blog about was the frustration of seldom having time limits on projects growing up. We'd go out and work on the yard for an indefinite amount of time. I would have been much happier knowing we'd quit at five, or whatever.
DeleteWell, I have a load of statistics homework RIGHT NOW that I need to do (Aftasie just went to sleep!) and I think I'll set the timer and have at it. Once you start doing stuff, though, you realize how much time it actually takes to do some stuff (such as homework). I was amazed when I started college how I could do homework practically all day and it would just slip by. Maybe the next step is organizing and being most effective about homework -- ie, figuring out what you know and don't need to study, studying in blocks to be concentrated, etc. The less time I have to spend on it the better.
Thanks for commenting :) Comments are always welcome! I see hits here and there but it's pretty nice to hear from people.
Actually, I'm remembering that one of my favorite things at one time was a watch that had a countdown timer. I LOVED that. In fact, it'd probably be a feature I'd look for if I were really watch shopping (although I want to stick with analog because I prefer them, and I don't think any of those would have a timer).
ReplyDeleteI really used it when I started practicing guitar lots. I would try to practice for 4-5 hours a day and set the timer for different sections of practice. I think I wasn't very smart about what I was practicing at the time, though, because hours and hours of drills don't do good things for the hands :P