OrganizingTime

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Getting Your Time Organized

Most of us never feel like we have enough time to get things accomplished when it’s usually a
case of having too many things to accomplish in the time we have. We are a society of
overachievers who struggle to fill our days with all kinds of activities from work, play and family
time. When we jam pack our schedules, it’s the same as if we were just cramming items into a
closet. Eventually, things will spill over and we lose track of what we wanted to do in the first
place.

Organization & Your Time

When you get your physical clutter organized, you basically sort, purge, reduce and categorize
your items. You assign things a place or home and work out a system to keep them there. Your
goal is usually to reduce your amount of things. Well how does it apply to time?
When it comes to our time, reducing also means clearing out the clutter. Time clutter is not
something you can throw in the trash and be done with, but you do need identify your time voids
and get rid of those things that either can’t be used or have no value. I’m talking about the
things you commit to that don’t really help you achieve your overall goals.

Stephen Covey’s Four Quadrant theory of Urgent vs. Important

Understanding the difference between the things that we have to do that are Urgent vs.
Important is key to being in control of our time. Stephen Covey identifies urgent and important
as follows:

Urgent is time-sensitive; it means something needs to happen very quickly.
Important means there will be a significant consequences if this thing is not done,

Ask yourself how much of what you spend your time on is urgent or important? It's likely that
most of what you do are more urgent or important to someone else. Make sure your urgent and
important items are addressed first.

A Time Sorting Exercise: Tracking your time
In order to take ownership of your time, you have to understand where you're spending it. This
exercise is worth the time as it will help you take a look at how long things are really taking you.

Track your time Write down the things that you did yesterday (include sleep, errands,
meals, pit-stops, personal and business) and how much time each thing took (round up to
the nearest half hour)

Place them in Categories: Work Related, House Management, Hobby, etc.

Analyze what you did:

Can you see any time voids?
Is there anything on your list that you didn’t have planned?
How did it get there?
Could it have been avoided?
Was there something you could have delegated to someone else?
Was there something that wasn’t really urgent or important that took too long?
Was there anything on your calendar that didn’t get accomplished that you really
needed to get done?
If you could go back, what would you do differently?
How could you have avoided those things that weren't your priorities?
How could you have spent the time given to time wasters differently?

Plan your time.

Make a list of your priorities and note what goal they help reach.
Schedule time in your calendar to get things done.

Be realistic about how long things will really take.

If you think you'll be able to do 6 things in the day, plan for only 4 and schedule
enough time to get them done

Finally, keep your calendar with you at all times to make sure that you are staying on schedule
and maintaining a record of the things you do. If you find yourself leaving your calendar behind,
evaluate whether or not it works with your style. If it's not with you, it can't work for you.

Each week, as you plan for what's ahead, take a look at the week ending to make sure you're
accomplishing all your tasks and goals. If you are leaving a lot of things un-done, analyze what's
taking up your time and identify ways to avoid it.

Visit our Articles page for more tips and guidance on calendars and time management.