Dude, Manage Your Time

I am awful at managing my time. I wanted to focus on time management this weekend, and I took a look at my old method. I very rarely write out my schedule, and what I do write down is usually very vague and messy. Here’s a picture of what it looked like, the black ink is what I had written before, and the blue ink is what I added to. This shows how unorganized I am, and how much structure I need added to my schedule.

Since I don’t focus on this schedule very much, there were a lot of things I over looked doing. I had a few curve balls thrown at me this weekend too, but a schedule should allow for some room for mistakes and surprises. The book Work Stress, Health Care Systems in the Workplace discusses the idea of “Quantitative Overload” which, in other words, is when you have too much to do with too little time and you begin to break down. With work, school, and helping my family I often feel like I’m running out of time to get everything done. I decided to take this opportunity to practice writing a better schedule. In the picture below, I wrote out my schedule for the next week. I wrote down everything I know at the moment that I need to get done this week.

Making check lists often motivates you to finish all of the tasks you have for the day. Now that I have a better organized schedule, this makes everything seem smaller. I can visually see the timeline of each of my days, and if anything happens to pop up, I know I have a few hours to give here and there everyday. In order to keep improving, I need to refer to this schedule a few times a day to make sure I keep on track. It’s easy to write everything out, but it’s a lot harder to check it continuously and make sure you’re keeping yourself on track.
Citation: Quick, J. C., Dalton, J. E., & Quick, J. D. (Eds.). (1987). Work Stress: Health Care Systems in the Workplace. New York: Praeger.