30 Days of November, Day 21: Of Schedules

I am still working on making the most of my time, and so I am trying out a daily schedule. I found a simple Excel spread sheet that created time slots of 30 mins from 5AM-430AM and adapted it to fit my needs. Because I work shift, I can't really go by the days of the week alone, so I decided instead to create a schedule based on my shift cycles.

This turned out to be a really good idea because when I plugged in the nonnegotiable items like work, meals, exercise and sleep I was left with very small pockets of time in some cases. These time slots shrunk even more when I put in the tasks that are connected to being responsible such as household chores, getting ready for work, bible study, regular study, finances and light tidying up. I also designated a couple slots of time to work on my projects for the Worker's Union in my capacity as PRO.

The left over time slots were soon swallowed up by gaming, crafting and time spent generally doing online stuff like checking forums, shopping, answering emails etc.

Having a visual display of how much of my day I have to diligently pursue my goals was very sobering. It is no wonder that I hardly get things done some days because it is very easy to get distracted when I am in the midst of a task, like writing a blog for instance and then it ends up taking almost an hour to get any one thing completed when perhaps 30 mins of focused effort would have be enough to effect a similar result.

I plan to work with the template I have for a few weeks to see how it holds up to real life, and tweak it if necessary. It is also necessary to see how it pans out on days where I have standing tasks like Saturday being my day for shopping, and Sunday when I spend the whole day in worship.

Once it has been finalized and any kinks worked out, I will update the digital version, complete with different text colors for each task to make them more easily distinguished and then I will take it to a printing house to get it printed and maybe laminated so that it doesn't get ruined by an accidental spillage of water or scuffed by dirt.

Hopefully this adds the final cog in in the system of my organization that allows me to systematically achieve all of my goals, while having a balanced life. I will keep you updated on my progress.