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.

Take Control of Your Days

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, …

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