If you were paying close attention this week, you’ll notice that I missed posting one day . The simple truth is I ran out of time on that day. We’re all busy. Some days you just can’t get everything done. When I was just a few years younger, I would have never thought about being this busy. Every adult I knew told me it was coming, but I had no idea. As I get older Time management is becoming more and more important. Figuring out what’s important and what’s not on a given day is becoming absolutely essential.
Time management is a skill that you’ll learn by doing. As with the example of missing a post this week. I am far from knowing everything I need to about time management. That said here’s a few things I have learned
Know what’s important
This is going to sound really stupid, everybody should know that paying bills on time is more important then playing video games right? I think logically we all know that but sometimes you just don’t want to pay that bill right then. So you tell yourself, I have a few days I’ll do it later. Then the day it’s due you scramble around trying to get it paid. I hear you saying I don’t have the money to pay that right now. That happens to the best of us. In that case you have to prioritize what’s most important.
For most of us it goes like this
- Food
- Rent
- Utilities
You have to eat, you need a place to sleep and you need power and water. sounds like a no-brainer right? Well I’ve actually met people who will pay their cell phone bill, Before they pay their utility’s
That’s kind of an extreme example but it applies to everything you do in life.
Make a priority list
To me, my cell phone is not a priority I’d much rather eat. I’m using the bills example, because it is something we all have to deal with, but I have a List of priorities that are important to me and they change depending on the days of the week.
On Monday I stand in my standing frame. It’s not something I want to do it every Monday but it’s something my body is telling me needs to happen because I’m getting older and my body is getting tight. That usually takes two hours from start finish. After the standing frame, I eat, get a massage(when that option is available) and get a shower. From that point on I try to focus on whatever work I have for that day. Whether it’s working on this blog or working on projects for the New Media Arts nonprofit. NMA is paying gig, so if there is work to be done. I try to focus on that because I have bills just like you do.
When the work is done, I come here and start to write. Each post I write , takes a ton of time, even with speech to text. A post like this routinely takes an hour or more. That’s just one.
When I’m done with that, I usually try to pray and study. (Although that has fallen through the cracks lately) Long story short, by the time all of this is done, and I look up it’s seven or 8 PM Monday night.
I watch about an hour of TV a day, because most days that’s all I have time for. If you’re looking at my Monday saying to yourself “that doesn’t seem like much” just remember, it takes me 2 to 3 times as long to do everything you do. It gets done it’s just slow. For me that makes time management even more important. It also helps to know what can wait until tomorrow. I rarely get everything done in a day that I need to, My Tuesday was completely different than Monday. As does Wednesday each day have a completely different list of things I need to do.
So let’s recap
Know what’s important, prioritize
Know what can wait
Be smart enough to do big stuff first, bills beats video games
You can only do so much in a day. Rest is important. It is something that I struggle with as well you can read more about that right here
I decided to put this down because it’s something that I struggle with, and it causes stress in my life. Life is too short, to be stress the point that you’re overwhelmed. That’s not good for anybody. I’m not an authority on this and your results may vary. I’m just telling you what I’ve learned.
Who ever originally said one day at a time, was a really smart person.
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