#2035 Time After Time
Time management was all the rage back in the Seven Habits days. Diary companies were coming out of the woodwork, each with a different twist on how to keep track of things.
Then Apps came on the scene. There are dozens of them with features that beep, vibrate, and recur with just a few clicks.
We have reminders, smart devices, and calendars that replicate across platforms and even share access.
We talk about deadlines, hard stops, Time-suckers, boiling the ocean, spinning wheels, going down rabbit holes, and faffing about.
We have been obsessed with mastering time for, well, time immemorial.
So, while there have been multitudes of smarter folks than me publishing books, giving TED talks, building apps, and offering hacks on SM, let me share a practice that has helped me for 35 years.
I plan in just four steps.
Goal setting
Monthly planning
Weekly planning
Dailey planning
Each December, I set aside a few days to reflect deeply on the coming year. I write a list of things that I want to see happen. I think in terms of personal development (learning a language, reading X books, running X miles, practicing X skills regularly, etc.)
Then I think about material things (a new car, a trip, or some more expensive home projects are examples)
Next is financial (savings, portfolio management, investing, and debt reduction)
Each month, I look at the goals and decide what I can begin, and that becomes my monthly plan. It is as simple as a list that says, "look at X model of vehicle, find a piano course, Google guides for a particular hunt, or look at the top 100 novels list and pick one"
Then, each weekend, I take a half-hour or so to look over my monthly plan and plug those things into the days of the upcoming week.
I have a Monday list, a Tuesday list, a Wednesday list, and so on, all on a single page in OneNote. OneNote is also where I have my goals and Monthly plans.
I don't necessarily sweat the daily stuff. If it's on the list for Monday but rolls over to Tuesday, I don't worry. Just having it there, instead of it sliding around in my Teflon brain, ensures that I will get to it. It is malleable. New things pop up during the week that I hadn't originally planned for, and it's nice to have a place to capture them.
Once this is done, the discipline is to recognize "the big rocks" (thank you, Mr. Covey) and do those things first and fully. If I have ten things on the list for Monday, I think first about what is essential and time-sensitive, and begin with one of those items.
This process has saved my butt for years. There are some folks with enough RAM to carry a plan like mine in their heads. I'm not one of them.
This process calms me. I have no anxiety about missing things. I feel more intentional than if I'd awakened Monday morning, checked my email and social media accounts, and then looked up at noon, wondering where the time went and sweating over what I'd missed.
My plan is much less ambitious today than it was in the nineties and early two thousand's. And as I work less, the plan will keep shrinking, but I don't see a day when it vanishes entirely. At this point, it's a security blanket, and I have been in the habit of quantifying things for so long that I don't think I want to stop. I have a goal to visit my Mom X times per year, excluding holidays. I have a goal to read four classic novels each year and to take the grandkids fishing X times each year. I think that without quantifying and tracking, I'd likely see Mom a little less, forget to sprinkle classic novels among the mystery thrillers I love, and fish with the kids less. As I navigate through the months, my plan is like billboards popping up to sell me on the things I deemed important back in December.
Again, it may be that you like to let the days and the weeks unfold and can teach me something about letting it happen and the peace you have with that. I'd love to hear your take on this. How do you organize, or do you even feel the need to?