Time management and its big brother Project Management are key to any business but they also apply to families and other groups too. Directly related to both, scheduling has become a four letter word in our house.
In any week we may have to juggle: meetings with clients, meetings with other freelancers, medical appointments, birthday parties, gaming sessions, Purpose Party check-ins, vehicle maintenance, business mixers, parent-teacher consultations, classes, plus the usual household management tasks (cooking/laundry/housework).
This past week we’ve had the added circus of dealing with financial institutions and credit agencies after my employer, thanks to a lack of both physical security and also data encryption, put the personal and financial information of approximately 11,000 people into the hands of thieves following a break-in.1
People ask me, “How do you do so much?” My answer is almost always a variation on, “Juggling; I keep several balls in the air at any given time.”
In reality, they aren’t all nice standard juggling balls with even weight and the same texture. Instead, some manifest as cats (who really don’t like to be thrown) and some as chainsaws (that have to be caught just so, in order to avoid injury). Others morph while in the air, presenting suddenly as bricks that require the juggler to adjust their balance or as feathers that simply blow off course and disappear. Once in a while a ball gets out of sync and either falls/drops or must be batted away.
Once I look at it through the visual I just painted, I can’t believe I get anything done, and yet I do. Here’s how:
1. Goals. — again, I come back to the Purpose Party. Once I set some long-term Big Goals, prioritizing got a little easier; saying “no” to stuff that wasn’t going to get me closer to my goal also got easier. If I find myself making excuses, I have to examine whether the task/event is important. My motto has become, “If it’s important, you’ll find a way. If it isn’t, you’ll find an excuse.”
2. Calendar(s) — I use Google Calendar but separate my events into multiple calendar feeds: one for personal stuff, one for Those DeWolfes Creative stuff, one for Kiddo’s events/appointments. I also import my UVic appointments, and committed Meetup.com events. Mike has access to add events, too. Knowing what’s on the horizon makes it easier to manage what-happens-next.
3. Automation — sometimes, tech can be an amazing help. From setting the dishwasher to run overnight to scheduling social media and blog posts, when timing matters, it’s nice to have some microchips at one’s beck and call.
4. Productive Procrastination — sometimes, I can’t (for whatever reason) focus on the task at hand, I will go do something else and about 70% of the time, it is something else on The List — whether that’s filing papers, washing dishes, writing a future blog post or article, or knitting a few rows of a project. Anything on The List is keeping the balls, chainsaws and cats in the air.
5. Balance — while tricky, I have been aiming for a better balance between the mental and the physical and also between the solitary and the social. As an introvert, I do struggle with the social engagements but being mindful of the need for balance keeps me “honest.” Gardening and walking help me balance the physical with the mental, as does crafting. I may not break out in a sweat when I knit but it exercises different muscles and different parts of my brain.
6. Support — I cannot stress enough how important it is that Mike knows and supports my goals, reminds me as deadlines approach or when my balance is significantly off, and doesn’t give me (too much) grief when I procrastinate, productively or otherwise.
That’s how I get things done but sometimes things go off the rails, thanks to those bricks, and fumbled chainsaws. Trying to schedule more than a couple of people (cats!) is usually a good way to throw things off; and that’s when one more thing can be of use:
7. Flexibility — I still need a lot of work with this one, but it is a big part of what has been helping to get stuff done in the last year; being able to change direction, roll with it, pick up the fumbled chainsaw and get the balls back in the air.
1Read Mike’s thoughts on the situation — they’re not far from my own — or read an early CTV news account.