Stay in Control of Your Day with a Time Table

Oct 20

Stay in Control of Your Day with a Time Table

Going into your day with no schedule can be a recipe for disaster. It’s important to be conscious of how you’re spending your time, otherwise, you can get off-track from important objectives.

Modern life is filled with distractions, from co-workers to emails to an emergency at home. Without a schedule, it can be easy to drift from one distraction to another. But what is the best way to schedule your day?

Some people suggest putting every task for each day into a time slot on a calendar. Others suggest setting aside blocks of time for certain types of tasks, or for certain areas of your life.

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Take Control of Your Days

Become Time Conscious

The Closed List

In “How to Become More Time Conscious”, author Felicity Carter says the first step to taking control of your days is to understand how you’re currently spending them. She suggests keeping track, in 15- or 30-minute increments, of everything you’re doing, every day for a week. If you are not using your time constructively, this exercise will generally show you two things: only a small percentage of your time is used effectively, and you tend to underestimate how long things will take.
To wrest back control of your days, you’ll need to plan them out. One option is to put every task for each day – from doing a load of laundry to writing a proposal – onto your calendar. Still, you might find yourself wishing for a less intimidating method.

More Flexible Scheduling

A more flexible method of planning your days is known as a “time map,” “time budget” or “time table.” There are several approaches to a time table, but the basic theory is to break your days and weeks into themed chunks of time. For instance, you might allocate time for yourself, time spent with your family, time spent working on ongoing business projects and work time spent on daily requests.
By carving out distinct times for the key parts of your life, a time table can help you plan your days without overwhelming you with things to do. It can help you determine whether you should say yes to a request. You’ll be able to see the cost of, say, spending an extra hour at work: The portion of your time table labelled “spend time with family” suddenly gets an hour shorter.
“When you don’t have a time map, you have no idea what to do when. Every day is a total free-for-all. You just say yes to whatever screams loudest,” writes Julie Morgenstern, a productivity consultant and author of the book “Time Management from the Inside Out.”
Executive coach and management consultant Luis Mago of N4L Strategy Consulting says that to take control of your life, you should identify key objectives in each part of it – he suggests personal, professional, spiritual, friends, social and family – and map out time for each of these areas every week. By doing this, you have a visual reminder of what’s important to you, and you can see if you’re neglecting any one area of your life. When your schedule becomes unbalanced, correct it. This kind of schedule, he believes, will simplify your life. “Life becomes complex when you start trying to do everything,” he says.

The Basics of a Time Table

A time table can be basic or complex, as high-tech or as low-tech as you want. Grab a sheet of blank paper, a big whiteboard, a paper planner (preferably weekly pages), Outlook, Google Calendar or iCal. Many people like to colour code their time table, with work-related blocks in one colour and personal ones in another.
Once you’ve got a calendar, make a list of the key parts of your life. Also think about your energy cycles: the times of day when you are best for detailed work, when you’re most creative and when you drag a little. Think about what Zenhabits’ Leo Babauta calls the “Golden Times” – the times when you have the most control over your schedule. For example, mornings might be a good time for essentials, before your day fills up with unscheduled tasks that require your attention. Right after work or right before bed might be times that you can always control, so those might be good times for key personal areas of your life. Be sure to block off some time for projects and requests that will come up each day.
Now look at your time table. Does it reflect your values and priorities? Are there better ways you can consolidate the themes of your life or organise your days? Is your schedule too cluttered? Now is the time to start making some decisions about what areas of your life will get time on your schedule.
Remember, a time table is not fool-proof. There will be days you don’t stick to it, and even on days when you do, you won’t always feel balanced and efficient. By having the time table in a place where you can easily reference it (your desktop, the wall, or in your wallet), you can keep your schedule in check.

Julie Morgenstern’s Time Map

Morgenstern advocates a colour-coded map that includes blocks for everything, from routine tasks and project work to lunch, commute, relaxation and self time, errands, prepping for the week, showering and getting dressed – even sleep. She recommends no more than three to five broad categories in your life, such as work, family, self, finances and community.
If a whole-life map is overwhelming, she suggests a workday map that reflects your core responsibilities. That map might, for instance, have time set aside for ongoing work in the morning, and several hours in the afternoon set aside for requests that come up that day or week. If something comes up in the morning, unless it has to be done immediately, write it into the second half of the day and deal with it then, she adds.
Lifehacker.com

In her article “Geek to Live: Map your time,”Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani talks about using an Excel spreadsheet to allocate time by what percentage of your day you want to spend on each part of your life. Her downloadable spreadsheet automatically colour codes the various areas of your life and calculates the breakdown of your days based on a coding system.
“The more you work with your time map, the more you’ll become aware that the extra hour at work you put in … means you’ll spend an hour less with your family, doing things that you enjoy, or worse, sleeping,” she writes.
TimeThoughts.com

At Time Thoughts, productivity software maker Effexis Software’s website, a similar approach is suggested. The article recommends creating a few different weekly time charts and choosing which one to follow each week. The charts will have “activity type zones,” blocks of time covering areas of your life selected from a broad range that might include everything from health and fitness to romance, even community/legacy. One weekly time chart may focus on relaxation and fun, while another might focus on career and finances. Over time, revisit your time charts and adjust them as needed. The article also suggests adding routine tasks such as going to the gym, paying your bills, meetings, etc.

Stay on Track

Once you’ve made your desired time table, most experts also suggest keeping a time log for a couple weeks or even months. Compare it with your time table and see if the way you’re actually spending your time matches how you’ve allocated it. Note the difference, adjust the ideal time map or start changing how you spend your time.
Review your objectives weekly or monthly to make sure you’re meeting them, and correct yourself when you’re not – or make a new time table if your priorities have changed.
Still, even the most well thought out time table won’t work every day. “On average, your time map should work about 80 percent of the time,” Morgenstern writes. “Twenty percent of the time, you’ll have to toss your plans to the wind and deal with the urgency or opportunity of the moment.”
Nonetheless, having a time table can give you back some control. It helps you figure out when to accept a request and when to turn it down. While it will require some discipline, it can help keep your life in balance and reclaim your free time.