Two Scheduling Methods for Better Time-Management

It doesn’t matter whether you are an early bird fuelled with energy at 05:00, or a midnight oil burner who hustles well into the early morning hours — if productivity and personal development matter to you, then so should time.

To get serious with daily objectives, it is critical that you formulate a plan of action. Given our current global pandemic, days can merge together and before long, weeks have gone by. I mean, we’re already at the end of January 2021!?

I want to share with you two scheduling techniques that I have found to be highly effective, and they may just work for you, too. The first was shown to me by my undergraduate tutor, and the latter, more recent method, from my mum.

Both can be just as effective — it just depends on your personal work style. Let’s begin with the more stringent way.

The Day-Before Routine

This method requires you to sit down the night before and jot down your daily objectives for the day ahead. But to go a little further, break down the day into hourly slots and really refine what you need to be doing.

When I was struggling to churn out my undergrad dissertation, I felt lost on where to begin the 10,000-word project. My tutor then made me dissect the paper into sections, and to continue doing so until one dissertation became a handful of chapters, which then were multiple subtitles until they were only 1,500-word paragraphs.

From there, it was much more manageable to identify what that sub-text was about and how to tackle it.

The planning wasn’t something like ‘read [selected article] at 09:00’. That’s too vague and doesn’t offer a sense of direction afterwards.

Instead, it was ‘read chapter 2 and find 3 opposing arguments on X’. This was then linked to my broader dissertation plan for reference.

In the latter outline, I knew exactly what I needed to do and keep my approach focused. I have since continued this method in my professional work. Here is an example of a day:

0600

Revise Korean vocab sheet 1

0700

Get ready and commute to work

0800

Work

1600

Finish work — commute home

1630

Shower

1700

Continue on article draft

1830

Study Korean chapter 26

1930

Study break

2000

Read financial book on ETFs and Dividends

2100

Study break

The Pros

This method works great if you work well with pressure and not wanting to think about what you need to be doing next. With various extra-curricular activities going on, such as language learning and increasing financial literacy, this proved to be a great way for me to anchor my priorities, ensuring each gets appropriate attention within a day.

It also gets the day going without faffing around preparing. If Korean was the first thing on the list at 0600, I knew I could lay out all the notebooks on my desk so that I can begin right away, coffee in hand.

Cons

However, this method can also have the drawback of not being flexible. With each task tightly lined up next to one another, it assumes every day is predictable. But road traffic may have delayed my commute home, or a quick catch-up with housemates began to make me feel anxious that I was eating into the time-slots.

Almost like classes back in school, I had the mental equivalent of running across campus just to make it on time.

Plan-as-you-go

More recently, I have implemented this method as an experiment. Rather than writing your next day objectives in stone the night before, you note the completed task as you go. My mum found this approach highly compatible with her work schedule as she has to often handle multiple commitments at one go.

For example, if you wake up at 0600 and feel like reading a book, make a note of when you started and finished. Keep doing this throughout the day. It’s a great way to make that initial audit of your time as you’re simply recording what you do.

I would still recommend breaking the day down into hours as I think an hour-period provides sufficient time for effective learning without losing your focus.

Pros

Besides giving a realistic assessment of your daily activities, which you can then amend and restructure if you’re unsatisfied with how much time you reallyspend on Netflix, this approach solves the anxious feeling prone in the first method.

It also draws on the similar rewarding factor some parents used to encourage kids to read — placing a small sweet or chocolate to enjoy once a certain page on a book is completed. As soon as you finish a task, mark it off in your planner and gradually see your day filled with meaningful tasks you have accomplished.

Additionally, if your work hours are unpredictable, say, a combination of day and night shifts, this method can be highly versatile to the present day. You can simply mould your objectives around the commitments you have.

Cons

This method certainly requires greater focus than the first. It doesn’t hold you accountable to tasks as they do not exist until you make them. This means it’s very easy to go off track because you know 1800 isn’t telling you what NEEDS to be done.

On top of that, you also need to know what your broad goals are. For me, becoming proficient in Korean is one of my top priorities, but if I have the next hour free to study, I need to be decisive in determining what area I need to put time into. Going with the flow on an activity that encapsulates so many different areas, such as reading and writing, and listening and speaking, can lead to ineffective learning.

Conclusion

Your goals matter to you and time is the currency you pay to get there. It is essential then, that you get serious with time-management and know exactly where you are putting those hours in day-to-day.

Structuring time, therefore, comes hand-in-hand. If you do not have some method to guide you, wasted hours will soon accumulate into days and weeks.

Even if the world continues to be placed on pause for the time-being, it doesn’t mean you cannot take action with what’s going on with yourself.

I hope one of the above methods work for you. If you have any personal ways and recommendations, please share with me below!

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Previously published on medium

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