It’s the “merry-go-round” time again and this Friday the question is “Time management – how do you juggle your time and/or how do you wish you could juggle your time”.
Time management is the … process of exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity. … This process encompasses a wide scope of activities: planning, allocating, setting goals, delegation, analysis of time spent, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing. (Wikipedia)
Reading about “setting goals” made me look back to my new year’s resolutions and this goals and think about how successful I have been to manage my time to achieve them.
The past 10 years have been very hectic so for this year I have hoped to slow down, to live more balanced life = not only to work, whether in the houshold, around the children or fibres, but to do other activities and to rest more.
My biggest challenge is to stay realistic about what I can achieve in one day. I want to do and tend to plan so much that even 2 or three days wouldn’t be enough. Just recently I have made a chart of my week days and crossed out all the hours when I am busy either with children, house or other things I have to or want to commit myself. It gave me much better picture of the amount of time I have weekly available to devote to learning/making from the fibre, dyeing, photo taking and all PC work related to having a small craft on-line business. I keep a ‘to-do-lis’t and when I am planning what to do for the next few days it helps me not to choose too much. Slowly but steady is my motto these days. As I said I tend to overwork so I activly need to plan time to rest. It is not easy if one’s hobby is actually making. I have to plan this time in the same way as those who have a tendency to waste their time. To stick to a plan means to be disciplined, which is another challenge as we are not robots, but humans with feelings – and hormons.
On a more practical level, here are few random things I do/don’t
- I try to cook for 2 days
- I am working on decreasing my time on the PC
- I don’t watch movies or TV, it is strange but something I have never enjoyed
- I ignore dandelions and daisies in our lawn
- I try very hard to schedule and limit time doing houswork which I actually enjoy
- I try to make my appointments either at the beginning or towards the end of my working hours, also grouping them for one day
- I am flexible and usually have a back up plan if I can not do what I had hoped to
- I am learning to set bounderies to people who try to make me busy with their affairs, ’cause they have unwisely/in greed/deliberetly taken on too much
- and yes, sometimes I don’t answer the phone or door, after all I am at work
please visit the other merry-go-girls, you can find the links to their blogs in the right sidebar of this blog.
Red 2 White 
CJ Mahaney has some interesting comments on this subject. http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/cj-mahaney/post/biblical-productivity-series-pdf.aspx
I do admire your realism and your steadfastness— particularly when it comes to ignoring dandelions and daisies… 🙂
I think boundaries are so very much important and what better to set those boundaries than with dandelions and daisies. xo Samantha
ps. I think you forgot to add me to the Merry Go Round list?
I like your do and don’t list. Setting boundaries and limits is important and you seem very discplined! Also, we do need time to rest..I forget to schedule it most of the time!
The daisies and dandelions are a perfect touch! I love it. You seem far more organized than I am, but then I guess children will make that more necessary with fitting in all their activities too.
A lawn wouldn’t be a lawn without daisies and dandelions! I love ’em.
Setting boundaries is something I should really learn & you pushed me to work on that. Thank you, Monika.
Sounds like you have worked towards a do-able schedule and hopefully a schedule that allows you to enjoy what you do to the maximum. 🙂
” I tend to overwork so I actively need to plan time to rest” I do the same… I push and push until it is actually my body saying… stop. Enough.
I ignore daisy and dandelions in the lawn too! I think the PC is what distracts me more. Tv only goes on in this house after 8pm so that doesn’t bother me much, but the PC is always on. Not good. I do the appointment part in one day too, or shopping… all in one day. Trying to avoid going up and down to the store. Sometimes time is enough and some other times, no matter what i do, I need more hours! 🙂
i really enjoyed reading the specifics of you approach time management, and addressing the little things that can suck free time… i ignore dandelions, too! and i really appreciated your honest need to set boundaries — i think so many of us worry about hurting people’s feelings! but we need to have our time.