I’m exhausted. How can I improve my time management?

Connection to Self

4 May

As someone who has a tendency to push to optimise every minute of the day, I know that over-scheduling isn’t always the best way to make the most of my time. If anything, it’s me beating myself around with a stick for not being more productive at the cost of actually being less productive. My well-being suffers, my relationships go down the drain, and I feel terrible. What have I learned to do instead?

Before: A perennial time optimist, I’ve a horrible habit of underestimating how long something will take. When I’m asked how long something will take, I’ll often respond “10 minutes”, despite it probably requiring more like 20 minutes.

Now: I have a rule of adding 25 - 50% of the time I think something will take to the time I say it will take. The reframe for this, is recognising that running around like a headless chicken and showing up looking distraught for appointments isn’t a favourable look, nor does it scream respect for my appointees. Better to give grace to the event (and us) by allowing for more time. It’s more important to show up calmly, embodying peaceful presence, than it is to show up barking all over the place.

10 minutes becomes 15 minutes; 20 minutes becomes 30.

It’s not much to add, but does wonders.

Before: Trying to be productive, my calendar is filled with appointments and things to do, but in the spirit of overachieving, I would find myself scrambling around checking my phone/the diary/time perpetually to check I am on schedule. How not to be present, mindful, or grounded.

Now: I set alarms throughout my day. It might seem ridiculous, but trust me it works. Each morning I look at what I have that day, and any big appointments or transitions, I plug in a little alarm reminder on my phone to tell me to switch gears. I set this 5 minutes before I actually have to do it. This keeps me on schedule, gives me time for a bio break, and allows for some space to transition into my next activity. Even in a meeting or when I am with someone, if my alarm goes off, they rarely blink at me politely explaining it’s my alarm reminder that it’s time for me to get moving. If anything, it shows I am respectful of time and mindful of wrapping this up properly rather than having to bolt in a frantic rush. It works.

Before: I would trust my memory, Facebook, Instagram posts or similar social media to remind me of people’s birthdays, important events, and commitments. And then there’d be the time I missed one of my best friend’s birthdays because I was caught up in my own horrific drama at home with a flooded living room. Not an invalid reason to forget her birthday, but still hurtful, crappy, and not a person I wanted to upset.

Now: I live and breathe by my diary (aka Google Calendar) and make sure that every single thing is calendarised. Made a booking on booking.com that I might have to cancel but have until 20th July to do so? PUT IT IN THE DIARY. Friends birthday? Anniversary? Done. Study time for my training program? Lock it in. You get the gist.

It doesn’t sound radical, but us folks have a tendency to assume we’ve got it – when we actually don’t, our brains are fried. Much, much, much better to err on the side of caution and plug it in. Even reminders to remind ourselves.

If you’re a hands-on person, get a personal schedule journal that is small enough to take with you easily, or get a bigger one for home use. Stick it on your fridge. Put it in your handbag. Get a nice pen. Whatever works.
For a tech solution, use a calendar app that syncs across your devices (thank you Google)

Use the notification system, they are incredibly helpful
Use the event colours to help differentiate things at a glance. I have a shared calendar with my partner, so this has become a very quick way to understand what my day will look like. All yellow = it’s just me. All green = we’ve got joint activities. Purple = date night (better take a shower) etc etc.
My partner’s system is something like: orange = partner’s events, blue = my events/friend calls, green = joint events, grey = medical/professional appointments, purple = date nights, gold = subscription renewals & financial dates, red = Liverpool matches (up the Reds!)
Set birthdays and anniversaries to occur every year and for important ones, set notifications 4 weeks (Gifts! Plans!), 2 weeks (reminder of Gifts! Plans!), and a couple days away from the date. No more scrambling last minute.
For shorter events/appointments, set reminders between 12-24 hours (message to confirm plans are still on) and another two hours out to double check nothing’s changed (enough time for me to get ready and get to my destination). Might seem neurotic but trust me, as a sales leader who’s lived in ‘flakey city’s people do actually cancel 5 minutes before your appointment.
Make sure to set free vs busy. If you integrate your personal calendar with your business one, this will help ensure you’re not getting double booked for meetings and wasting time reaching out to reschedule, or worse, are unavailable for clients when you don’t want to be.

This all takes an extra few minutes to set up in your calendar and ultimately saves loads of time you might otherwise spend frantically running around last minute, apologising.

Before: I’d rush around trying to get tasks done quickly, find lots of them redundant, zoom through, and then realise I’ve botched the job. Eurgh. Have to re-do it, and more time wasted.

Now: I realise that if I rush a task, the odds are I will have to re-do it, so better to take that extra 10% of time and do it properly. It’s only 10%. I also then have to re-do a task I didn’t enjoy doing in the first place. This is madness. Doing it well the first time, actually saves time (and sanity)!

For example, instead of throwing dishes into the dishwasher haphazardly at the end of the night, only to have to rewash a number of them the next day because there’s still food stuck on, take an extra few minutes to do it well.
Instead of skipping the instruction manual while setting something up, only to realise you’ve missed an important step and have to backtrack, read the manual.

It’s simple but how many times have we done something rushing through, only to find we had to re-do it? What a waste of time!

Hopefully some of these little tips can help with our time management. More to come in another blog post soon.