...In the world

Last week I ended up taking a day off from work to try and catch up on everything I've let slide around the house. I'm not the most habitual house-cleaner but it gets to me when I've got messes all over the place that have been building up for weeks or months. While I was straightening up, I decided I wanted to start doing better with time management. (Like most of us, I feel like I have a ton of other goals too, but this one seems to be at the root of most of the others.)

So, I decided to try a trick that I've used at work for years now. I started using a journal to keep track of how I'm spending all my time. (Literally: "7:00-8:00 - Woke up. Got ready for work.") It sounds kind of ... obsessive ... right? But the thing is, it works.

At work, I use it to stay focused and prioritize my daily tasks - I'll usually start out with a to-do list and then as I accomplish tasks I'll also note what times I was working on them. I'm not militant about it and when I get side tracked or pulled into random conversations I'll usually just go with it, but it helps me keep a sense of what needs to be accomplished. And, it helps me have conversations with my peers and co-workers about where I'm spending my efforts and whether I'm prioritizing tasks correctly.

At home, it's been pretty effective in doing the same. It's helping me evaluate how much time I *want* to spend on certain tasks, and helping me evaluate whether I'm putting the kind of time into my priorities that I want to (or need to.) I made a conscious decision not to try and schedule my tasks, because not only do I abhor feeling like I'm on a schedule, but also because it's hard for me to estimate how long some tasks will end up taking. It's been enough so far to decide that I don't want to look back at a day and feel like I wasted time. And, I wouldn't say that it's motivated me to be "productive" 100% of the time - to the contrary, in some cases it's helped me see how much I've earned some down time, which has been extremely reassuring and has let me enjoy my down time all the more. If any of you try something similar, let me know how it goes.