Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Managing my time

Cheryl St John had a link to a lovely article on ten ways to effectively manage your time. Time management is something every author struggles with, particularly as they are not in an office situation and the buck stops with them. I followed the link and found another article on how not to manage time but to get a life.
It made a certain amount of sense. Everyone has the same number of hours in a day, but what they accomplish is down to themselves. Trying to manage time is a tautolgy as you can stop time slipping through your fingers.
You can however choose what you do and how you do it. The second article pointed out that sometimes jugglingtwo jobs at once is possible -- for example ironing while watching tv, or even three -- ironing, listening to music and thinking about your book. But for non routine tasks, you can not juggle and you end up spending more time on both. Learning where your priorities lie is important.
Goal setting is good.
Busy people often get jobs done quicker as they are more aware of the time. My mother always said that her house was far cleaner when she worked, than when she had all day to do it. And somet imes, it is the antcipation of doing the task that is far harder than the actual doing...
Anyway, I have a long list of tasks to do today including doing my editing of the next Viking, cleaning out my stoudy, going into the bees and seeing what is happening there etc etc. Right now, I just sincerely hoping that I do not drop any balls. And I sincerely hope these things less time than I worry it might take.

2 comments:

Donna Alward said...

You sound like you are getting overwhelmed....and I know you're doing renos so I find the chaos of UNroutine always throws me off.

I have to remind myself one thing at a time when I start getting freaked about what's to do. You should know, you've talked me off the ledge a few times this last month. LOL. In a week this will be over (for both of us!) and you can breathe again. Until then...one thing at a time and it all has a way of getting done.

Hugs.

Kate Hardy said...

That link is BRILLIANT. Thanks.

Now go and invest in 30 minutes' quality time FOR YOU. It will recharge you and bring you back to a place where you can manage things in your normal style. (Yeah, yeah, pots and kettles - but it also means I'm talking from experience *g*)