Planning the “silly everyday things”

I love hearing from readers about how they’re learning to overcome their time investment challenges…

With her permission, I’m sharing Gaia’s insight about the process she uses to have realistic expectations of how many activities can actually fit in a day. You may or may not decide to take such a detailed approach. But I thought this insight into her thought process and methods could benefit you so without further ado, here’s her e-mail:

“Hi Elizabeth – I really enjoy reading your blog posts. You have such an honest voice and I feel like you’re right in front of me talking when I read them! I can tell you’re a very kind person.

I have struggled – and struggle – with time management and project completion, too. My biggest challenge is not realizing how long something takes, especially when factoring in silly everyday things like commuting, going to get coffee, talking to my parents, or washing the dishes, to name a few.

What I’ve started doing and has really helped me the past year could seem a little extreme to some people: I write down my entire day hour by hour and minute by minute the night before! A friend of mine rightly pointed out — doesn’t that take up a lot of time? It does… but not that much that it’s not worth doing! (maybe half an hour per day). It has really helped me realize how all the minutes add up in one day.

I use SpringPad with each note being one day (date). Here’s what it looks like:

6:30-7:30: Pilates

7:30-7:45: Meditation

7:45-8:30: Get Ready

8:30-9:00: Get Breakfast / Read News

And so on. I literally put things that take 5 minutes, like walking to work! (I might bundle it up with another set of immediately following activities if it gets too detailed or irrelevant).

One of the great things about the system is that it’s dropped my need for a to do list. I now put to do stuff directly inside the note that matches the day I need to do it in, and I schedule in a time slot the night before when I’m planning the day. I’ve recently started writing out 2-3 key tasks to complete per each day of the coming week every Sunday evening, so that when I’m writing out my day I have a reminder of what I had planned to do for the week. This link to my weekly planning has been nice.

But ultimately the thing I like is how it shows me how all the little pieces of ‘stuff’ and activities fit together. How did the day fly by? Oh let’s see… I was on the phone for half an hour and then my email took 1.5 hours… And then it was dinner time.

And so on. As a result of the system, I have a better sense of how long things take. And an immediate sense of how much time I actually have for a given task before I have to move to the next (or otherwise I won’t get to that dinner on time!) Of course I’m constantly shifting times and activities and moving some to the next day, but overall it’s really helped.

I just wanted to share as I thought you might appreciate it! I can see it not working for everyone either because of impatience or because they don’t need that much structure to get their stuff done. But it’s been great for me.”

Thank you Gaia for your insight! I hope it’s helpful to others. As a time coach, I would give readers who try this method one caveat: If you have activities that are not date-specific, you will probably still need to have a running to-do list of activities/projects and another list of ideas that you may or may not attend to in the future. These are the things you can’t put on your calendar on a specific date but you don’t want to forget.

About Real Life E

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E® a time coaching company that empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished. She is an expert on achieving more success with less stress. Real Life E® also encourages Christians to align themselves with God’s heart through Divine Time Management.

McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Harvard Business Review published her second book How to Invest Your Time Like Money. Elizabeth contributes to blogs like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company and the 99U blog on productivity for creative professionals and has appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.