Organizing Your Life - The Schedule

Time is important. Unless we die, It is a resource that we always have, and are always using. When we try to make time bend to our will, we often find ourselves at the mercy of a schedule. An unrelenting schedule that thrives even if we fail to get out of bed. It can be overwhelming to see that spontaneity has seemingly been stripped away from your life. It is like eating the same meal everyday, forever. With the same example in mind, i want to examine the “eating” habits that we try to form life around. The goal is not to force feed yourself healthy material, it is to discipline yourself to be able to perceptibly take on, or pass up, any feast that lay before us. If today you are to weak and you push through, tomorrow you will be stronger. Time keeps going even if you decide not to.

If you are just starting out, you might find that there is a lot of back work that is interfering with your current tasks. Maybe you have not cleaned the house in a week, and now that one hour block of time you have scheduled to clean, will not bring justice to the chaos that is your living space. Maybe you are trying to set up an E-commerce site, but you still have to build your website, you have no inventory, vendors, business plan, advertising content, models, etc. What do you schedule for all of these individual items? This is where a scratch to-do list comes in for me.

The main goal of a schedule is to efficiently, and seamlessly, maintain the things that we already have up and running. This is not to say that you cannot start new things in your schedule, but it is a good rule of thumb to have 50-80% of your current schedule being attributed to maintenance. It is okay if you do not have that much time to allocate. The overall purpose of your schedule is to examine where you spend your time, and where you have some to spare. You want to waste as little as possible. So if you have an empty schedule, this simply means that you have the freedom to choose how you are going to spend your time. Feel blessed, and use your time wisely.

My Google Calendar. 

Google Calendar has always been my main schedule making application. Easily adjustable and easy to set up. There are some tricks to being more efficient with Google Calendar, but the overall connectivity with other Google applications, and the mobility of your schedule, makes it a front runner in terms of effectiveness. 

If you are making a schedule exclusively with yourself in mind, your task is a lot easier to accomplish. Simply start mapping out your day, and for the things that you do routinely, put them on repeat. Keep building up your schedule and adjusting it until you know that you are happy with how you could spend your time.

For myself, I have to build my schedule with my partner, and my daughter in mind. I have to make sure that i have time set aside for both of them. I need quality time alone with my baby girl, and her mother needs quality time away. This way i get to invest into my daughters education and life, while my partner can take a step back from that, and invest in herself. This also maps out a plan for both of us to contribute to the household evenly and regularly. We can see how much time we each spend working and relaxing. Some parents might do things differently, which is fine, but we never have questions about whether either of us are “pulling our weight.” We trust each other, but we also have the proof. We are in constant open communication about fairness, which i believe is ultimately important. There are so many things that we both want to accomplish that without a detailed schedule, would be closer to impossible. We plan to extract the most value and life out of living, and a schedule helps us accomplish this. 

When you get to a point in your life where you do not know what to do with your time, but you know you want to do something, a schedule helps to clearly lay out an action plan. Personally, i reached a point where i had so much to do that it became difficult to focus on anything. I was not sure what i should be working on in any given moment. I knew i had the work, but i did not have an understanding of the priority. This led to me aimlessly and frustratingly trying to accomplish ten things at once. Obviously, It did not work. Now i know that i have to do x task, at x time, for x results. The formula is simple, but without something delegating my schedule, i felt lost. Do not feel lost yourself.

It is very important to note that you are building a schedule that will bring you the most joy, peace, and productivity out of life. There is nothing wrong with scheduling “down-time.” Ultimately, you need to be adaptable to make your schedule work for you, and not you for it. Be accountable to yourself, and perhaps your partner or child. With practice, you will find that your plans align with your present, and create a vivid image of your future. I wish you well on your journey, and hope that you conquer this time frame that we have all been provided. With everyday, be grateful for what you care about. This keeps your priorities in perspective. The present is so beautiful, the past so elegantly fleeting, and the future, elusively captivating. Paint a clear picture for yourself, and find love exploring the fine details of your masterpiece.