The Glue That Makes Your Time Management System Stick.

When managing time, the one thing we cannot manage is time itself. Time, after all, is fixed, and there’s nothing you can do about that. However, that’s a good thing; it simplifies things.

If we cannot manage time itself, then the only thing we can control is what we do in the time we are given each day.

Your absolutes.

Now, there are some absolutes we should take care of as living human beings. We need a certain amount of time for sleep, and we need to eat. Then we need to wash, bathe and brush our teeth. I would hazard a guess and say that you likely already have that part of your life sorted out.

What about everything else we have to take care of? Despite what you may think, you have complete control over that. You may think you must go to work on Monday morning, but do you? You could call in sick if you wished. If you accept the potential consequences, you could decide to stay in bed all day. No one will come around and force you to get out of bed and go to work. You’re an adult now. You do have choices.

Whether you exercise those choices is up to you. The point is you have a choice about what you do with your time. Never try to convince yourself otherwise.

The real question is: What will you do with your time today? That is where having a plan for the day comes in.

You likely have goals or ideas about what you want to do with your life. What kind of work would you like to be doing, who you would like to spend time with, and what you like to do in any spare time.

That could be taking a drive with your family on a sunny Sunday afternoon, or it could be building yourself a model railway in your attic, or going out for a long bicycle ride on a Saturday morning. Your options about what you could do with your time each day are almost limitless.

However, how can you ensure that all these things you want to do happen and that other people’s plans do not hijack your day? Because that will happen if you don’t have a plan for yourself.

There are countless things we would love to have time for. Reading, exercising, going out with friends, sitting by the beach, taking a long walk in the countryside, for example, but the excuse we give ourselves for not doing these things is almost always related to not having enough time. But that’s a lie. You do have time.

It’s not that you don’t have time; it’s that you have prioritised something else above these activities.

The only way you will have time for the activities you want to spend time on is to make time available by excluding other things. Remember, we cannot change the amount of available time; all we can change is what we do in that time.

That is where planning the week comes in. If you wish to have time for the things you want to do, you need to plan for them. For instance, if you want to exercise for thirty minutes each day, you need to put it on your calendar. Similarly, if you intend to read for an hour daily, put your reading time on your calendar.

Everything else

What about everything else that needs your time and attention? Here, you need to know what “everything else” is. If you don’t know what that is, you will be in a reactive state. You will always be responding to events instead of controlling events. This means you have to have a list of all these things somewhere. That could be in a task manager, a notebook, or the notes app on your phone.

It doesn’t matter where these lists are as long as you have a list. This list will help you plan the week so you are controlling what you do with your time.

This means once a week, you want to sit down somewhere quiet and plan the week. When will you do the work tasks you need to do? When will you move your projects forward? What meetings do you have coming up? How much time outside your meetings do you have to work on your tasks and projects at work?

Having this information gives you an edge. It lets you control your time and gives you a set of objectives for the week. Achieving those objectives week after week drives your projects forward, ensures the right things are getting done and that you are not wasting time on activities that do not give you enjoyment or fulfilment.

Planning the week doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice two or three hours every weekend. An excellent weekly planning session should take only thirty to forty minutes, done consistently. Naturally, it will take you longer if you sporadically do a planning session because you will have to look at everything each time. When you are consistent, you will know what to and not to look at.

Equally, daily, you want to look at your plan to see what changes need to be made. Things change through the week. Issues you anticipate happening don’t happen, and things you were not expecting happen. Absorbing these changes and making any adjustments is what the daily planning session is all about.

Again, we are not talking about a lot of time. A consistent daily planning session should take at most ten minutes. It’s your time each day to review what happened and to make adjustments. Appointments will cancel, and new ones will be added. Deadlines change and further work will come in. All of this must be considered to ensure your weekly objectives are met.

If you want to have control of your time and the activities you complete, you need to plan the week. This is not about micromanaging every hour of your week; it’s about knowing what you want to accomplish and what you intend to spend time doing. Of course, things will always cause you to change your plans, but you will be changing things on your terms and not on someone else’s. That’s the key.

Where you spend your time is your responsibility. You cannot and should never delegate that responsibility to anyone else. Be clear about what you want to accomplish and where you aim to spend your time before the week starts and do what you need to do to stay on track.

If you want to learn how to do effective weekly and daily planning sessions, I have recently launched a new mini-course that will show you everything you need to know about planning the week and staying on track.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊

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