Time Management Schedule

Resources

The Site

[?] Subscribe To This Site

Time Management Schedule

-How to make your schedule work

Do you use a time management schedule?

Are you having trouble sticking to your schedule?

Whether you like it or not, we all run to a schedule. They are the anchor points in our week that define certain activities at certain times.

Whether it is the meeting with our boss, or lunch with a friend, having a schedule helps us to plan what we would like to do and what we "must do".

The benefit of a realistic time management schedule that captures your 'must do' activities is reduced stress and increased productivity.

A major cause of stress is the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time.

Too often we get bogged down in unimportant stuff and neglect the critical actions.

A time management schedule fixes this.

How does it do this?

Before I get to this, I would like to explain a time management story that illustrates an important point about planning first things first.

The 'Big Rocks' in your time management schedule

The importance of scheduling can be summed up by this time management story.

A time management expert was giving a lecture to a group of business students and placed a large, open jar on the table. He pulled out a dozen or so large rocks and filled the glass jar.

He asked the students:

"Is the jar full yet?" All the students shouted back "Yes!".

"Really!", he said, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out smaller pebbles which he put into the jar.

He shook the jar causing the pebbles to fall to the bottom and fill the gaps between the larger rocks.

He then asked the students again:

"Is the jar full now?"..."Probably not" replied the students.

"Good" he exclaimed as he reached into his other pocket and pulled out a handful of sand and poured it into the jar, filling the places between the rocks and pebbles.

"Is the jar full now" he asked the students. "No!" came the resounding reply of the students.

"Good" he exclaimed.

This time he reached for the glass of water on the bench and poured it into the jar, until the jar was full to the brim.

What’s the point of this exercise he asked the class?

One student raised her hand and said "that no matter how crowded your schedule, you can always fit more into it".

"No" replied the instructor, the point of this example is that "if you don’t put the big rocks in first then you will not get everything in" (adapted from Mancini, 2003).

How to develop a great time management schedule

Are you clear on your direction?

Are you are clear about what are the rocks or sand of your life?

If you don't know what your big rocks are then it is difficult to schedule and protect them.

Examine your work and lifestyle, are you happy with the mix of activities that you do?

These time management exercises enable you to clarify your priorities in more detail.

Plan first things first

To ensure that you get the most effective schedule for you, you need to align your priorities with the way that you are spending your time.

What activities of your life are the rocks and what activities are the pebbles and sand?

Do you know how you are spending your time on the rocks, pebbles and sand of your life?

In your life the big rocks are those activities that drive your performance at work, they are the quality time that you spend with your family and friends, they are your hobbies and your health.

To ensure that the sand and pebbles don't crowd out these important activities you need to put them into your time management schedule and protect them.

Use this weekly planner and make your big rocks a must!

Don't schedule too much

One of the biggest traps that you can make is to overburden your schedule with commitments.

The white space in your schedule is there for a reason. It is tempting to fill this white space with projects, but you need to give yourself free space to deal with the fact that life can throw things up that are unexpected.

Similarly, having more fat in the schedule gives you the freedom to be flexible with task durations and other commitments.

Do schedule proactive time

Look at the time management matrix. Try to schedule as much proactive tasks as you can and limit the ones that are reactive.

Why?

The proactive ones won't go away, and because they are important if you don't do them they will end up in 'the crisis quadrant'.

Also give yourself space in your schedule to deal with these unexpected crises.