Mapping Out My Time

I've been really busy lately. But I'm not getting anything done.

Of course that's not exactly true. I'm working, writing, blogging, editing, organizing. But I believe in challenging yourself to become better, do better, learn more. This is especially important for us self-employed people, who must always be the expert.

Lately I feel as though my self-development time has been sucked up in the vacuum of deadlines and paychecks. I realized I needed to step back and reassess my priorities and goals.

I remembered the Time Map. Julie Morgenstern explains this concept in "Time Management from the Inside Out":

"The Time Map is simply a visual diagram of your daily, weekly, and month schedule," she writes. "But it's also a powerful tool for helping you be proactive amid the swirl of demands that come your way."

Basically, the time map helps you focus your priorities and makes sure you have a place for each of them in your weekly schedule. You can create a time map just to help you define your work schedule or for your whole life. For work, a time map can break down the times of day when you will schedule meetings, phone calls, filing, emails and other tasks. This way, you will schedule certain hours during which you ignore those items in favor of actual work on that project or report.

In life, you can use your time map to see all of your commitments and make sure you have time each week for yourself. When someone calls you and asks you to serve on a board or committee, you can check your time map to see if you want to give up some self time once a month on Thursday evenings.

To create a time map, you begin with a list of the broad categories into which your priorities fall. For example, mine are: Work, Self (Relaxing), Love (time w/ my fiancee), Knowledge (Self-improvement) and Home. I needed a time map not for work, exactly, but to make sure I was including some time for self-improvement/knowledge and time for exercise and writing the book I'm working on. This is the start of my time map, which is incomplete.

Morgenstern cautions against scheduling every hour and minute of every day. Some evenings I may use self/fun time to read. Other evenings may be time to watch TV or do a crossword puzzle. In the end, it's another tool to help you "see" your time and figure out how you want to spend it. If you're struggling to get it all done, give a time map a try. You can read more about them in Julie's book. There's also a mention of time mapping in one of her ezines.