So it has been two months since my last blog post which was Part One of this article. Two months!!! It is clear to see that I wish I had 30 hours each day. My time management has been beyond poor the last three months. This has then led to me having poor physical, mental and social health. I couldn’t get a handle on anything and I felt like I was losing control of my health and happiness in the process. As I mentioned in my previous article, I received a promotion at work. This took up an enormous amount of my time and also placed a lot of stress and anxiety on me. I was running out of time to complete work tasks and deadlines and I suffered three anxiety attacks in the last three months alone. Not good. My last anxiety attack was in 2014 and here I was suffering severe anxiety on a weekly basis. I knew I had to do something drastic with my life to ensure my own personal safety. But what could I do? This was my job we were talking about. And was my job the actual issue or was it my time management? It was both. My time management skills were under pressure due to the job I was in, and my job was placing large amounts of pressure on me because I was not prepared initially and I didn’t have a passion for it.
So what does this have to do with having 30 hours in your day you may ask? It sounds silly but I finally realised that you can’t have 30 hours in your day. Who would have thought? Yet a lot of us are out there and we are trying to fit 30 hours worth of tasks and activities into our days. It doesn’t matter if it is for business or pleasure, we are setting ourselves up for failure the moment we wake up and ‘plan’ our day. The fact is that we very rarely plan our day. We think we do, but what we actually do is write a rather large to do list that we know we are never going to get through. We then put pressure on ourselves to complete this incredible to do list and when we can’t get through it, we react in a number of negative ways. So think about this:
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Why do we always feel like we have to have a full and busy day?
Why do we always feel like we have to say yes to everything?
Why do we not stand up for ourselves and realise when our mind and body need a break?
Why do we not use the support network that we have and delegate tasks to others?
How many of these can you relate to? For me, I relate to every single one of them. It wasn’t until I got hit with a virus that had me in bed for a week in June that I realised that I was not doing myself any favours. I was waking up hating my job, hating my life and I just no longer wanted to get out of bed. I could feel myself slipping back into depression and I hated it. So here comes the drastic change. I went to my boss and I spoke to her about how this promotion was affecting my health in all aspects and how it was affecting my life. I am so grateful that I have a supportive person like her in my life who talked through the logistics with me and helped me come up with a plan on how to get my life back on track. I went back to my original job description this term and already I can see the benefits.
So this now leads me to all of you. How did I learn to deal with a 24 hour day? I learnt to prioritise. You are probably thinking ‘That’s It? That’s Your Big Advice?’. Yes, that is my big advice, but I am going to walk you through it as it still a challenge for me. Below are some steps that helped me organise my time management better. Some of these may work for you, some may not. If you can find just one step that works for you I am one happy girl!
1. Write down everything that you love and value in your life. This needs to be everything! So people, places, animals, objects, hobbies, everything. Anything that is important to you needs to be included into your Time Management Plan.
2. Prioritise your list of loves into different sections. These sections will include: daily, weekly and monthly. So for example my partner Tom is a very important love in my life. He is placed into the daily category as I want to be able to spend quality time with him to grow, reflect and love each day. Whereas yoga is a weekly love of mine as I am still learning how to do it. I want you to remember that you are not saying one thing is necessarily better than the other. You are just trying to figure out how you want to split your time up.
3. Find a Time Management Planner that suits you! There is no point in you using an app because everyone else is if you hate using your phone, or using a diary if your diary bookmark is still currently stuck in January. For me I have a number of different Time Management Planners. I use my Lorna Jane Diary for most of my planning. It is small enough to fit into my handbag but it is big enough to include everything I need. I also use a Kikki K family calendar for Tom, Hadlee and I. We are both such busy people that this is the easiest way to keep tabs on each other. We would often double book events before we purchased the calendar. At work I use my teacher diary to record all my work related tasks and dates.
4. Plan for the month. This is going to sound really daunting to some of you but it needs to be done. If you are one of those people who go with the flow and never plan, that’s okay too. Just keep some free time aside for that reason specifically. What you need to do for this section is to put in: your work dates and times; sporting events/games/times; pre-booked events such as dinners, parties and weddings; birthdays; doctor checkups; bill due dates; and anything that was in your love list as a monthly commitment. It is so much easier to see where your time goes when you are looking at your whole month on one page.
5. Plan for the week. I like to plan for my week on a Sunday night. It is totally up to you when you plan your week. You need to transfer your monthly overview to the week you are about to face. This is where we can get into more detail with times and venues. Here you should also plan your meals and exercise for the week. Get realistic though and don’t over do it. If your week is very busy, fit in the exercise you can and make up for missed workouts with incidental exercise such as walking at lunch time. My biggest failure each week is that I plan to many workouts and then I get frustrated with myself for not getting them all done. Take your wins as they come. Don’t forget to add your list of loves that are a weekly commitment.
6. Plan for the day. This is a brand new skill that I learnt last month from my Health Coach Katie Dean (www.yourwildlife.com.au). During a coaching session she asked me if I had a daily diary that I was using for to do lists. To do lists, are you kidding? I love them. However my to do lists were the never ending ones that I mentioned earlier. What I now do is each night before bed, I write down what I need to achieve for the next day. The exception to this is that I have to write down what time I am going to complete these tasks and how long it should take. Oh so you mean I don’t actually have to fit everything in the one day? Light bulb moment! Prioritise those tasks that are urgent and fit them in around your previously booked week of exercise, self love, meal preparation and time with friends and family. There is no point in making that tedious to do list the focus of your attention for the day. If you have to reshuffle some things, so be it. But don’t you dare forget about those daily, weekly or monthly commitments of love. They are the reason you are on this Earth. They are the foundation of you as a person. They should never be left out.
7. Reflect and maintenance. This is probably the hardest step of all. You might go through all the previous steps and think ‘yep I totally nailed this Time Management Planner’. Take the time though and have a proper look at how effective your planner was. Did you feel success because you survived the week or because you actually got to do things that you love?Did you get to make time for all of those things that you love on your special list or did you skip them to make way for another commitment of some sort? You need to look at your planner and make adjustments regularly. You are never going to have any week that is exactly the same. Sorry to all those routine lovers, but it doesn’t exist. Reflect, make adjustments, maintain and repeat.
I hope this article has helped some of you understand more about time management. It is never meant to be perfect and that’s why life is so amazing. Just keep working and learning through these challenges and it will become more beautiful. Time management is something I will be working on for the rest of my life and I am okay with that. Please feel free to contact me for any questions. I would also love to see how you end up creating your Time Management Planner so please share on Instagram with #theendlesstraveller.
Peace and love x
the endless traveller 