Another guy with a time management problem

[redmond007]

Just wanted to get you guys' advice on my time management problem. My schedule is really tight, as I try to fit a lot of things into every day. My typical weekday schedule is something like:

6:30am - wake up, get ready, commute to work
7:30am-3:30pm - work
3:30pm-4:30pm - commute home
4:30pm-6:00pm - work out at the gym
6:00pm-7:30pm - shower, eat dinner
7:30pm-9:30pm - practice guitar
9:30pm-11:30pm - either overtime at work, financial research and organizing my finances
11:30 - go to bed

Sometimes 'overtime, financial research' happens between 7:30-9:30, and I practice guitar before I sleep, but this is my general plan.

As you can see, there is not a lot of room for down time. The only downtime I get is an hour and a half for 'showering, eating dinner', and a lot of that is spent showering, cooking and doing dishes. I also have a live in girlfriend, so sometimes I have to spend time with her or help around the house doing extra chores - so as you can see it is very easy for me to get off track and skip some activity during the day. Sometimes I skip stuff and think that I can make it up over the weekend, but things happen over the weekend, and I never can seem to catch up. I don't work out every day - but when I have an extra hour because I'm not working out that day, I tend to use that time to unwind a little.

I'm trying to think of how to make this schedule more flexible and liveable. It doesn't help to be so ambitious and overload your day with so many things to do when it is so easy to burn out, and then nothing gets done and you fall behind even more.

But what can I cut? Working a little overtime at work (I am a programmer, and like to squeeze in a little work at home so I'm ahead at work), and doing financial research/organizing my finances are important to me - as it is one of my main objectives in life to be good at my job, and to eventually be financially independent. It is also hard for me to cut working out and practicing guitar - as staying in shape, and being good at guitar are also very important goals of mine that I would not want to give up.

Maybe I'm lazy - I have the same time every day as other people who have accomplished much more than me in life. It doesn't feel like I'm lazy though. Any advice on how to handle my schedule given my goals? I've been trying to work this schedule for almost a year now and I've only made limited progress.

[redmond007]

A couple of additions to the above post:

-I work out about 5 days a week for an hour a day.
-I practice guitar 2 hours a day. This is not an average length of time for good musicians, anyone who plays an instrument would agree.
-I have to work out at a certain time or else the gym closes.
-I have to practice guitar earlier at night or else my girlfriend and neighbors complain.
-I sometimes try cutting down on sleep, but I need at least 7 hours or I'm not as sharp I find.

[RobinMessage]

Hi redmond,

That's an impressive amount of stuff you do, good work!

Just wondered, since you spend 2 hours a day doing it, how do you commute? Any chance of improving it, either by making it shorter, or using the time productively?

Also, could you do the same amount of exercise in less time by not going to the gym?

Cheers,
Robin

[Adrian]

You have one of two options:

• Cut out activities you are already doing to make more time; or,
• Make the time you spend on your current activities shorter.

If you took 30 minutes from your guitar practice and tacked it onto dinner and unwinding, you might feel less stressed - right now you're packing your weekdays with so much stuff that you literally have no time to unwind. You can cut corners here and there (like find a faster way to get to work?) but nothing will add up to major time unless you take it from other activities.

(As an odd suggestion, have you ever thought about practicing guitar every other day instead of every day? Some people make more progress by practicing on and off like that vs. every single day; it's like a form of the spacing effect.)

[Kaspian]

That does not look like the schedule of a lazy person! What I see is that in order to do ordinary household things (laundry, cleaning, etc) or spend time with your girlfriend, you have to skip something. Even having 30-60 unscheduled minutes per day might make the whole thing go much smoother.

The commute: I see that commuting in the morning takes less time than the afternoon. If your username is any indication of where you work and you're crossing the bridge as part of your commute, what about going to work even earlier so that you can come home 30-60 minutes sooner? My experience is that the bridge is usually clear at 2:45-3pm, but gets worse rather quickly after that. (And if I'm wrong about where you live and work, it still might help.) You might save yourself ~30 minutes if you could avoid the traffic. Or - move closer to work.

The gym: If the gym is not close to where you live, you could try going to the gym on the way home rather than going home and then back out again. Other options: find a gym with later hours (or that's open 24 hours) so that you have more schedule flexibility or find a way to exercise that you can do from home, such as running or bicycling. Wait! You could ride a bike to work!

Practicing: As a brass player, practicing more that 2-3 hours per day is a recipe for injury, not improvement, so I am not convinced that 2 hours of guitar per day limits you as much as you think it does. I believe that efficient, focused practice is MUCH more effective than lots of hours. I have learned some potent practice processes in the last few years, which I'd be happy to share if you're interested.

[redmond007]

Originally Posted by RobinMessage

Hi redmond,

That's an impressive amount of stuff you do, good work!

Just wondered, since you spend 2 hours a day doing it, how do you commute? Any chance of improving it, either by making it shorter, or using the time productively?

Also, could you do the same amount of exercise in less time by not going to the gym?

Cheers,
Robin

Thank you! Well, my commute is half hour there and back, sometimes it takes longer depending on traffic, I give myself about a half hour to an hour leeway due to the unpredictability of the traffic.

I could probably exercise outside of the gym but it is very difficult to work out outside in Chicago this time of year due to the weather.

[redmond007]

Originally Posted by Adrian

You have one of two options:

• Cut out activities you are already doing to make more time; or,
• Make the time you spend on your current activities shorter.

If you took 30 minutes from your guitar practice and tacked it onto dinner and unwinding, you might feel less stressed - right now you're packing your weekdays with so much stuff that you literally have no time to unwind. You can cut corners here and there (like find a faster way to get to work?) but nothing will add up to major time unless you take it from other activities.

(As an odd suggestion, have you ever thought about practicing guitar every other day instead of every day? Some people make more progress by practicing on and off like that vs. every single day; it's like a form of the spacing effect.)

Thanks, I've been playing for a number of years and have been experimenting with different practice schedules. Every other day does not suit me. I have thought about the guitar dilemna and I've decided to cut it down to an hour a day, and try to practice a little extra on the weekends. Music is so important to me - this is about as much as I'd be willing to cut my practice time.

[redmond007]

Originally Posted by Kaspian

That does not look like the schedule of a lazy person! What I see is that in order to do ordinary household things (laundry, cleaning, etc) or spend time with your girlfriend, you have to skip something. Even having 30-60 unscheduled minutes per day might make the whole thing go much smoother.

The commute: I see that commuting in the morning takes less time than the afternoon. If your username is any indication of where you work and you're crossing the bridge as part of your commute, what about going to work even earlier so that you can come home 30-60 minutes sooner? My experience is that the bridge is usually clear at 2:45-3pm, but gets worse rather quickly after that. (And if I'm wrong about where you live and work, it still might help.) You might save yourself ~30 minutes if you could avoid the traffic. Or - move closer to work.

The gym: If the gym is not close to where you live, you could try going to the gym on the way home rather than going home and then back out again. Other options: find a gym with later hours (or that's open 24 hours) so that you have more schedule flexibility or find a way to exercise that you can do from home, such as running or bicycling. Wait! You could ride a bike to work!

Practicing: As a brass player, practicing more that 2-3 hours per day is a recipe for injury, not improvement, so I am not convinced that 2 hours of guitar per day limits you as much as you think it does. I believe that efficient, focused practice is MUCH more effective than lots of hours. I have learned some potent practice processes in the last few years, which I'd be happy to share if you're interested.

I am not from Washing state! nice guess though. The reason the morning commute is a little longer is because I figure in the time it takes for me to take a shower and get ready. I have been tweaking my commute the past 2 years - and I've timed my work schedule so that I avoid all the big traffic around rush hour - I believe I've trimmed my commute down as much as currently possible given my job.

The gym is a block from my house, I usually walk to the gym and walk home - and that winds up being my warm up and cool down for cardio. A lot of times I go home and change for the gym, and then I wind up wasting some time - up to an hour or so - at home before I go to the gym, either surfing the web after work, or eating something, or watching tv. I could possibly avoid the time wasting between work and gym by bringing my gym clothes and going straight to the gym after work. I have tried this before but there are problems - the time to change at work also takes up time, and I don't like to leave my stuff in the lockers at the gym as I've seen some lockers get broken in to.

I have played around with a lot of different practice schedules, I'd love to hear some of yours. As I wrote above, I think I'm going to cut my practicing down to an hour a day on the weekdays, then try to practice a little more on the weekends, although I hate to do it.

[redmond007]

I've done some reading about my time management problem - one thing I'm not doing is setting a 'top 3 goals' for the day. What I will try is setting a top 3 goals for the day, then try to get them done before anything else, and definitely do not let the day lapse without taking care of the top 3 goals. This way, if I do not get everything done, I will at least get my top 3 goals done. I think historically my problem has been that practicing guitar and working out are not extremely important - but if you skip too many days in a row then you believe to regress in your progress, so you need to do them at least a little bit every day.

[beautyscientist]

It is amazing how many things we all do that are simply not necessary.

Every Sunday I faithfully iron my clothes. I usually watch the tv while I am doing it, especially if there is an old Columbo on.

I could easily pay someone to do it but it is a habit.

Anything like that in your schedule?

[silicon toad2000]

Love your work

find something you love doing and find a job that involves it. This way you don't need downtime from your work, your work is your downtime.

[ken nubo]

Hey redmond007,

I think having sex qualifies as exercise, doesn't it? You can try cutting the time to commute to the gym and work out at home to save ya some time.

[redmond007]

haha. i think i actually looked it up but having sex does not really burn that many calories compared to high intensity cardio. you have to maintain 80% cardio training heart rate for more than 20 minutes, which is pretty vigorous.

[fwade]

I think that the problem you might be having is two-fold:

At the ground-floor level, you schedule is too tightly packed with no time in between items to allow for the inevitable screw-ups to happen each day. Also, there is no down-time or personal time scheduled -- it's a schedule that puts working (or "important stuff") over living in each moment.

There is no higher mode to be in than aligned to some purpose that we claim for ourselves, and when that's missing we can never seem able to enough.

I think you might lots of actions happening without enough of an answer to the question: "Why?" -- Why am in this job?

With enough of a "Why" it becomes esier to be productive, im my experience.

I think that you must accept, ultimately, that whatever you accomplish each day is what you are meant to accomplish, and that the continuous thoughts you are having about your performance can be safely acknowledged, questioned and then left alone.

[maxdof]

Hi,

First I would advice not to plan daily, but weekly
Starting a new habit...

You may consider becoming a Fourth Generation planner
Starting a new habit...

You may consider help yourself with GTD
How do you prioritize your different tasks?

Good luck

Max