Teaching Your Child (and Yourself) How to Manage Your Time Better
Denny 24 Mar 2008 | : Parenting Tips, Self-Improvement
We all have the same 24 hours each day. So why is it that some people get so much more done than others? The answer is easy - those people mange their time more effectively than the rest.
It is interesting to hear people say that they don’t have enough time in the day to get things done but then when I ask them how they spend their day, they aren’t able to give me any real information. So I approach this issue the same way as any other - in order to get the results you want, you need to learn what is wrong first. Start a time journal - For 1 week, track everything that you do and write it down in your journal.
The first mistake people tend to make is to sit down at the end of the day and then try to remember every minute of the day that is now over. This never works. You must be actively using the journal and write it in hourly or more. This will help make sure you don’t miss anything.
The second mistake people make is to write down too broad of descriptions. For example, watched TV. I recommend that you write down what you watched. Sitting with your family watching an educational program may weigh differently than watching an all-day marathon of shows you have already seen.
So now you have a week’s worth of your time logged - now what? Go through it and look for areas or “blocks” of time that are not being used effectively. It is pretty amazing when you start to actually SEE your day on paper, how much time is wasted or duplicated. You may be able to move some things around and put other things together which end up saving you time. An example would be, I used to go to the Post Office to drop our mail for the day each night at the end of work. I found that fairly often I was passing the Post Office during the day when I went to go eat lunch. So I moved dropping the mail to lunch time and now I don’t have to make that trip each night. I am not only saving time, I am also saving gas!
As with all of our skills, just because you have done this once doesn’t mean it is done and you can forget about it. Inspect your results every couple of months and see if you need to tweak anything to continue to maximize your day.
Once you have learned this skill, now it is time to teach it to your child. That is when you know you have learned this skill and made it a habit.
