calendars, scheduling and time

Today I decided to have a full review of my calendar. Not in the sense that I am over booked or even fully booked but I need to know where I’m using my time on and which time slots I can remove, replace or move around to make sure my time is being spent effectively.

More than a time management exercise, this is a personal assessment. It helped me understand what really matters to me at this point in time. 

I have always had very poor time management skills. Until recently I had never needed to focus on that aspect of my life because, well, life just happens, and I have always followed life’s flow without giving it a second thought.

Now that I did, I realise how much time is wasted while I didn’t plan. Not only that, but how much more stressful my life has been at times, because I just went along and often got caught by surprising events.

When we work for a company as part of the staff, there are a lot of things we don’t have to think about. Our time is “pre-scheduled” for us and we are just there to do our job and come home. Every single day. So we don’t really have a reason to plan much, unless we’re talking about holidays. We just manage the remainder of our time around the main working hours. I feel like I found a magic recipe! (A bit later than many, you will probably say).

Yesterday I decided to have a full review of my calendar. I’m not doing it for being over booked or any other issue.  I felt it was time to find out what I’m using my time on. Finding which time slots I can remove, replace or move around, to make sure my time is being spent in an effective way.

More than a time management exercise, this is a personal assessment. It helped me understand what really matters to me at this moment. 

I have always had very poor time management skills. Until recently I had never needed to focus on that aspect of my life. Because, well, life happens, and I have always followed life’s flow without giving it a second thought.

Now that I did, I realise how much time I wasted while I didn’t plan. Not only that. How more stressful my life has been at times because I went along and often got caught by surprising events.

When we work for a company as part of the staff, there are a lot of things we don’t have to think about. Our time is “pre-scheduled” for us and we are there to do our job and come home. Every single day. So we don’t really have a reason to plan much, unless we’re talking about holidays. We just manage the rest of our time around the main working hours. I feel like I found a magic recipe! (A bit later than many, you might say).

This has helped me clear my goals. Sometimes they get too fuzzy. That’s all the white noise around us. The media pressure that we get from all fronts of technology can be overwhelming.

Sometimes it’s good to reassess our priorities. It’s useful to focus on targets in a more realistic and achievable way. They don’t even have to be long term goals. Because if we schedule time in our calendar to review them we force ourselves to dedicate time to this. And we are bound to make changes to it.

I found it to be a very useful and healthy exercise. Have you tried it?