manage my time better

I’ve made a couple steps in managing my time, both in my personal and professional lives.

My girlfriend and I have started a Google Calendar where we’ll make plans for the week. We’re practically living together, so we may as well start communicating on when we’ll be together and when time is up-for-grabs. It’s also a great chance for us to look at our personal goals and make plans according to those plans.

At work, I’m trying to use Outlook to plan out how I’m going to spend my time for the week and for each month. I have goals set for the quarter, so it was nice to take a moment to see how much time I have left to complete them. So I’m using these tools in Outlook:

• Note for each month’s overall goals
• Note for each week, with specific goals and expected completion percentage
• Task for each specific goal
• Appointments for blocks of time I’ll be spending on each goal

It’s kind of complicated to coordinate all of those elements together, but I’d rather have it all in one place than having 5 different programs open.

It’s time to jump over that hoop of denial and admit that I have a time management problem.

This is a 3 month challenge for me. This is something that is very important to me as I become more ambitious with my goals. I’ve started feeling more overwhelmed because of it. I’ve done a great job of determining what I want to do, but now I need to focus on how to get it done. Time management will become very crucial.

A great quote that I read on Penelope Trunk’s blog called Brazen Careerist:

People know that if they don’t pay tons of attention to how they spend their money then they’ll never be rich. But think about this: If you don’t pay tons of attention to how you spend your time, you’ll never be happy.