This week you have a gift and this gift is 168 hours – the number of hours in one week, seven 24 hour sessions. How you spend those is up to you.
Planning to maximize these hours is worth an hour of your time. If you live by a schedule, expanding the schedule to identify all your time for one week will often help recognize either time that is not used wisely or maybe just not what you want to be spending time doing.
When I’m facing a very busy week (think stressful with many personal responsibilities and career responsibilities), I will open my calendar and schedule myself fully. I use Outlook, but any calendar will work – even a paper one. During a stressful busy week I may schedule everything including reading, exercising and sleeping.
Tuesday might look like this:
- Sleep 12-6AM
- AM routine (shower, coffee, check email, etc) 6-7:00
- Greet grandson and play with him until it is bus time 7-8:20
- Prepare for work and drive there 8:20-9
- Work 9-Noon
- Lunch and/or a meeting with friend/client Noon-1
- Work 1-5:30
- Drive home 5:30-6
- Start dinner 6-6:30
- Walk dog 6:30-7
- Have dinner 7-7:30
- Volunteer Activity Meeting 7:30-9:30
- Spend time with Husband, maybe watch some TV 9:30-11
- Sleep 11-12
Notice what is not on this schedule – surfing the internet, talking to friends on the phone, looking at Facebook, writing a novel, playing in the garden. Yet, this is very realistic of what my Tuesday looks like regularly. If Tuesday is this busy, it will be important to schedule on my calendar time for just being me on other days. Even though it always seems cliché to say, “make and appointment with yourself” it is sometimes the only way to get inside your own head.
How do you schedule time to be just with yourself? ask fred
