Health and meaningful relationships add years and quality to our lives. Few people contest this fact. Does it then follow that more people are focusing on these areas of their lives? Do you regularly exercise and go for holidays or fun meals with your spouse/partner and family? If the answer is no, why not? Expenses could be an issue. If your reason is “I can’t find the time,” you’re not alone. You keep track of your expenses and know how much your bank balance is, but do you also know exactly where your time goes? Here are simple tools to manage time and become conscious of how you spend it.
1. Pause and review your past week.
You attend to many things at work and after work. How do you decide on which tasks to prioritize? Usually, you first do those that need to be finished sooner or whose deadlines are looming. This generally works, but over the long term, it could turn into crisis management rather than a way to manage time. Cheryl Richardson in her book Take Time for Your Life challenges us to check where our time goes. Determined to get an accurate indicator for the exercise, I came up with these forms that assign colors per Life Area to make it visually easier to track time.
First, look over a typical week. On the Time Tracking Daily Form, block the hours spent per day according to the color of the Life Area they fall under.
Next, total those hours by Life Areas on the Time Tracking Weekly Totals Form. An optional step is to convert those weekly totals to a pie chart for a more dramatic visual.
So just where does your time go? Aside from sleeping and eating, which area of your life do you spend the most time on? Which life area gets the smallest portion? I had expected work to eat up a big chunk of my time but was surprised at how little I spent on Spiritual well-being and Fun and Adventure.
2. Make a plan to manage time; decide which life areas need attention.
These forms are not absolute and have room for improvement. Exercise, for example, is grouped with sleeping under Physical and Emotional Health. Although this area gets the largest share of your time, it does not necessarily mean you are spending that time on exercise. Watching TV falls under Fun and Adventure, but it’s a poor substitute for traveling or participating in a hobby. Reading falls under Physical and Emotional Health when it could be considered a hobby. You can tweak the activities that go under each life area or even change the colors altogether. What’s important is you’re aware of the other areas of your life you may be neglecting and can then decide to manage time so these get more attention.
The Simple Abundance Companion author, Sarah Ban Breathnach remembers the shock she had felt while looking at her calendar and realizing, in her own words, that “there was no space in the day, week, or month for me to take care of my needs.” She talks about how our inability to say no to family, friends, colleagues and volunteer work can quickly fill up our calendars, leaving no time for ourselves. Taking action, she set aside two hours a week on her calendar just for her. She didn’t label it but blocked the time with a bright yellow marker. This visual prompt made it easy for her to say no to any activity that conflicted with her “just my own” time. Her color-blocking tip inspired me to use colors on my weekly and daily schedules.
3. Prepare your weekly to-do list and daily schedule to prioritize those life areas you want to focus on.
Planning what you want to accomplish every week works well. List the tasks by Life Area on the Weekly To-Do List.
These tasks can then be carried over to your Daily Schedule. At the end of each day and week, review what you have accomplished. The colors will clearly show which life areas you spent most of your day and the week on. You can then decide to focus on the other areas in the coming days and weeks.
Often, there will be demands on your time beyond your control. These effective, colorful tools will equip you with some leeway for deciding how you spend your time. Consider it like a bank or expense account that shows you where your money goes. Unlike money, time is a finite resource. Once spent, it can never be recovered. When you consciously manage time, you can balance not just your finances, but more importantly, your life.
