Sunday, February 19, 2012

24 hours?

I've learned that no matter how much I pray that the Lord will add an additional hour or two to my day, it will never happen. I need to learn how to use all 24 hours of my day. I am terrible and managing my time, and when you work from home this can be VERY challenging, and can hurt your business. This is what my day normally looks like:

5:30am Wake up and work out
6:30am Shower, then eat a healthy breakfast of oatmeal or eggs
7:30am Jesus time
8:15ish Office time- read email, reply, etc
9:30am time for phone calls
10:30am Run errands
12:00pm Healthy lunch such as a salad
12:30pm Clean one room of the house
2:00pm Attend any appointments I may have for work
4:30pm Begin preparing a healthy, hearty dinner for my sweet hubby
5:30pm Dinner
6:00pm Play a game with Daniel, go on a walk, or watch news together
8:00pm Read a good book or do a craft
10:00pm Good night :)

I'm sure your day looks just like that, right? Ha. Who am I kidding. Normally my day consists of waking up when the dogs are ready to go outside (which Sam alerts me by licking my face), eating a bowl of sugar cereal, reading for a few minutes in my Bible, head upstairs to my very messy and unorganized office intending to reply to emails and make phone calls, but instead get distracted by a recent post on Pinterest, and the next thing I know Daniel is home and hungry. OH NO! What happened with my day?! I don't even know what I did all day, but I DO know that I did not clean, cook, work, or eat lunch...

It's time for a time management reality check. If I can't instill some sort of daily routine now, I certainly won't be able to when I have kids. I know myself well enough to know that this can not happen over night. It must require BABY STEPS! So. Step 1? Start planning my day out ON PAPER. I have never been good with keeping up with planners, but I do enjoy having a single sheet of paper that shows my whole week, and each day broken down. I put my creative side to work and made this to help me out.
Planning my day out will also require waking up at a certain time... guess it's time to figure out how to set my alarm clock!

Well, we shall see how Step 1 works out for me this week! Any suggestions from your time management extraordinaires on what Step 2 should be?