Friday, January 6, 2012

Got time?

I tried a new time management technique today.

As I mentioned in my original post, I am often in awe of how quickly time passes. Part of my mission to live more fully is spending the time I have wisely. If fully immersing oneself in a moment essentially extends that moment, then focusing on a single task at a time must mean greater efficiency (as opposed to my previous line of "multi-tasking is best" thinking). I like efficiency.

If you were a fly on my wall any day prior to today, you would have seen constantly open tabs on my laptop for Facebook and email. You would have seen that I generally accomplished quite a bit in a day, but that I almost always responded to emails and Facebook posts within minutes... and while not quite as bad as the Mom with a muffin, I regularly interrupted one task to do another "while I was thinking about it."

The concept of "chunking" my time is not new, the action is. I know that doing something for one afternoon does not mean I've created a new habit, but it's a start and I'm telling the cyber-world about it so that I have some accountability.

What have I learned so far?

1. 20 minutes is just not long enough for most tasks. I quickly upped that time to 30 minutes. We'll see how that goes, and I think that some tasks (quilting and responding to email, for example) will just require additional consecutive time slots. However, for a woman's brain (the first 2:15 minutes explain it) that is adjusting to this new method, I think I will stick to 30 minute segments so that I can take care of some of those thoughts that pop up without causing the electrical currents to short circuit.

2. I need to have a notepad handy at all times so I can make note of the things that come up that would have previously distracted me.

So, here's to creating new and improved habits, to finding ways to make them work for me and to making the most of the time I've been given.

1 comment:

  1. Great post Melanie! I actually teach on this topic and how to effectively use social media in 60 minutes PER DAY. People would be shocked at how long most tasks take if they tracked it. Good for you!

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