Life is what you make it

Time management is probably not my strong suit.

I typically finish my freelance projects on time, but when it comes to my own projects or hobbies I tend to dedicate too much time to one or two at the expense of the others. It could be that the problem is I have my finger in too many pies. Mmm, pie. Still, because I don’t do the 9-to-5 grind and therefore don’t have to commute, there should be a few hours per day where I’m free to do other things than my work. Working for myself also means that I don’t always require an 8-hour slot to get done what office workers get done, because I don’t have the same amount of interruption.

In order to come up with a plan for managing my time, I thought that the easiest way would be to not only make a list of things I want to do, but just start doing them without necessarily giving them an order in which to do them or allocating a particular amount of time. I guess one loose rule that would work is to spend at least half an hour doing one thing before switching to another, and possibly put a cap on the maximum amount of time to spend in one session doing one particular thing before switching, perhaps 2 or 3 hours. I figure some activities will only need half an hour at a time, such as doing exercise or catching up on reading, whereas others will obviously need the 2 or 3 hour blocks, i.e. work. Still, doing bits and pieces of work, and intermingling them with non-work or hobby activities will probably also work.

The point is that I need to commit to doing all of these things every day. Not just say that on Wednesdays I do X and on Fridays I do Y. Do all of the things all of the days, and just vary the timing. This should mean that for each of the things I’m doing there’s less lag or refresh time to get back to where I was and focus, and I will also have enough variety in my day to feel that I’ve achieved quite a lot — as it’s this feeling of having days where I should have spent at least half an hour doing something I didn’t that has inspired me to write this post, and get back to writing each and every day.

I’ve got a fair amount of work to do tomorrow, but as long as I break it up into chunks and intersperse it with non-work activity that I want to get done, then I think it won’t even feel like work. If anything, it’ll feel like the work is just part of the process or the scenery which surrounds doing the non-work stuff. Not to say I don’t enjoy my work — I love it — but I also have a bunch of other things I enjoy that also need doing. So let’s get started.