The Organizational Quest: Timelogs and Superman

I must say that I’m really loving the new blog layout I picked.  Purple is really my favorite color and the design just goes great with my little word of the day and qoute of the day doo-hickeys. 

As stated in the last post I’ve been falling behind, ergh, and am now on an organizing quest.  It’s amazing just how many organizational sites and blogs are out there!  Many thanks goes to one site in particular at StevePavlina.com.  This fellow blogger offers lots and lots of personal growth and business development help, free.  Although, I have decided that Steve cannot possibly be a real person, because he’s like freakin’ Superman.  

He’s got hundreds of thousands of followers, I mean readers, knows Martial Arts, runs marathons and his head literally pulses with intelligence and inspiration.  Oh, and did I mention he’s got a super classy and clairvoyant wife?  Throw in a couple kids and their The Incredibles.

Anywho, he wrote about keeping track of his daily activities to improve efficiency and using the 30 day trial as a self-improvement tool.  I decided to make use of both ideas for getting myself back on track here and added a few other self improvement tricks.

The Mission:

I want to understand where all of my time is going during the day.  It just seems like there isn’t time to get all of the work done, yet I know I’m using up a lot of free time.  Part of my goal will be to find out where that time is going and make adjustments if possible to improve my time management and productivity. 

In addition, I need to establish a regular work schedule so I’ll always be certain of having work to rely on.  Right now, I have a few long-term clients.  It’s just that I’m not getting all of the work done for them on time. 

Regular Schedule=Regular Work=Regular Paychecks=Bills Paid on Time!

The Current Plan:

1. To get an idea of where all this time is going I’ve started keeping a daily timelog.  This is my third day of a full seven days that I plan on logging.  I’m keeping track of everything in 15 minute blocks of time from waking up to about 10 or so at night.  

Each night I log the day’s activities into an Excel Spreadsheet for later reference.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use Excel to figure out where the majority of my time is going, and also to understand what my current daily patterns are so making a more productive adjustment won’t be really difficult.

2. In addition I’ve implemented the 30 day test method for a couple of items.  I will be getting up at 8:30 am everyday for the next thirty days.  Today was my first real day, I’ve had false starts for the past two days.  I know what your thinking…and yes I admit being really lazy as far as wake up time goes.  But bed is like Nirvana to a Taurean like me and it’s part of why I wanted to go freelance.  8:30 am is the earliest I can really, gulp, think of myself getting up right now.  I’ll tackle an earlier wake up later. 

3. The other 30 day implementation is to simply spend one hour a day working on a long-term project involving product descriptions.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I find that a big part of my problem is not working every single day.  I usually end up working on projects in large chunks of time in the few days leading up to the due date.  A little time every day will save me a lot in procrastination dues.

4. Create a To-Do List for the next day.  This is going to be a permanent installment, but I haven’t quite decided what format to keep it in.  I’ve been keeping To-Do Lists on and off for years, especially in school when the projects and simple tasks really started piling up.  Bed memories tend to run in the family and even forgetting one little task can waste a lot of time, even an entire day.  So, I’m making it a requirement to create my next day To-Do List each night while the day’s work is still fresh in my head.

The Other Stuff:

That’s it so far on my organizational quest, but I do plan on researching more.  Of course I’ll be posting my timelog analysis and the time management solutions later and will keep you updated on how well this takes. 

There are lots of other ideas and goals floating around in my head that need solidifying and time created in my schedule for them.  I’d especially like to carve out time in my schedule for working on fiction again and get back to submitting.  I’m really starting to go into withdrawal over the lack of creative prose… 

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• The Organizational Quest: Pt 2 Willing to Change
• Another Labor Day, Another Holiday Worked
• wouldn’t it be good to be on your side
• 201932