My Plan - Because Planning Matters

byTraceC

118 followers

8 years ago

Reading Kyle's blog yesterday about not having time really hit home for me. I'm juggling a lot of jobs right now (at last count 5) and finding time for everything is hard to do. Do I have 40 hours a week to devote here? No. But I'm sure I have 14 if I look hard enough for them. 2 hours a day on average isn't much. It can be done, especially if I start looking for the little cracks of time I have available to me.

Crack 1 - Lunch break. Work on content at lunch at work. To be honest on my break I don't want to talk to anyone anyway (my job involves a lot of interpersonal stuff and mostly I need a break from people) so why not take most of that 30 minutes to write? I have a netbook which comes to work with me, and I can easily store blogs on there.

Crack 2 - Before bed. Right now actually, on a normal night I would be starting to unwind, having a drink or two, and curling up with a book. That all still needs to happen (I'm bad at sleeping and need the ritual) but it doesn't need to be quite as long as it is. I can shut the electronic world down at 8 or 8:15 instead of 7:15. I can get another hour that way.

Crack 3 - Facebook. I don't spend a Lot of time on social media but there are definitely times I get sucked into reading debates or comment wars and I don't really need that in my life. A quick check for updates from people I know and love. A quick browse through the couple of groups I'm involved in, and out.

Crack 4 - Drinking. Honesty time here. I drink too much. It's a crutch I use to deal with stress, but it can also be a time sink. If I have less to drink, and drink Later or not at all it'll be a lot easier to use that evening time I mentioned above.

The other thing I need to do is set a schedule. I already have planner time set aside every week but to be honest it's been pretty nebulous. "Work online" has a block of time but that's 2 jobs, with no specific "what am I working on today" written out. If I look at a week and say "One blog about personal acting experience Tuesday, One product review Saturday" that's a lot easier to work on.

So tonight I'm going to sit down with my planner and get down and dirty. There is a lot to do. I have an amazing capacity for getting things done when I actually use it. Time to use it.