Creating More Time in Your Day

Throughout much of my adult life, I considered myself one of the biggest victims of the Superwoman Syndrome. I completed two college degrees while working full-time and raising two children. This might have been enough to undertake, but I didn’t stop there. It was as if I wanted to show the world and myself that I could do it all – and do it perfectly. I made great meals and kept a spotless house. After finishing the dinner dishes and putting the children to bed each evening, I scrubbed the kitchen floor (on my hands and knees) before doing my schoolwork. People would comment that my basement floor was so clean that they thought they could eat off of it. Weekends were my time to catch up with the things I was not able to accomplish during the week. I often felt guilty for not doing more.

One of the reasons that I was able to be so productive was that I made lists of the things that I needed to do. By following the lists, I didn’t need to take the time to think about what to do next. I enumerated the tasks on paper as they came into my head, but I didn’t spend much time prioritizing the lists. Since I thought that I had to get all of these things done, the priority didn’t seem very important. I would normally start at the beginning of the list and work my way to the end. However, the lists were usually so long that I rarely got all the way to the end. The remaining items would just be transferred to the next list.

One Friday evening, I made a list of the things I wanted to accomplish that weekend. One of the items on my list was to call my grandmother. She was my only living grandparent, and I loved her dearly. She was of Italian descent and one of the best cooks I had ever known. She would often call me at work to tell me that she had made spaghetti sauce and meatballs and that I should stop by after work to take this meal home with me. When I was sick, she would call every day to see how I was feeling. She cared very deeply for each of her children and grandchildren. She gave of herself and expected nothing in return. As I thought of her on this particular Friday evening, I reminded myself that I hadn’t talked with her in a while. On my list, I wrote, “Call Grandma.” With all of the many things on my list, I never got to this item.

I had a late meeting on Monday night, so I added my item to call Grandma to my Tuesday night list. Grandma died suddenly of congestive heart failure on Tuesday. I had never made the phone call. After all these years, I still often dream about making that call to my grandmother. I had always said that my family was my priority, but I didn’t live my life that way. What a difficult lesson for me on the need to live my priorities!

It was at the time that I lost my grandmother that I realized that I needed to do something to create more time in my day to do the things that were important to me.

Because of the importance of the subject, much has been written and taught on time management, life management, and self-management. However, most people, especially high-achievers, still feel the pressure of too much to do in too little time. There are many reasons for this, one of which is the need for better prioritization.

Many of us complain about interruptions in the course of the day that rob us of time we had planned to spend on the things that are important to us; however, we allow these interruptions to have power over us. We might also say that we have our priorities straight and then demonstrate otherwise through our actions.

The following exercise will help you determine how you spend your time. For the next two days, keep a list of your activities in either fifteen-minute or 30-minute segments, whichever works best for you. When you are interrupted, list the nature of the interruption along with the amount of time that it took. At the end of the second day, you will see how you have spent your time and the approximate amount of time you have spent on each activity.

When you have finished the time recording, prepare four sheets of paper by labeling the first “Urgent/Important,” the second “Important/Not Urgent,” the third “Urgent/Not Important,” and the fourth “Not Urgent/Not Important.” Now transfer your activities from your time recording, along with the time allocations for each, to the appropriate sheets of paper. When you have completed this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are all the items on the first sheet (Urgent/Important) really important? If not, take time now to transfer these items to the appropriate sheets.
• Are all of the items on the second sheet (Important/Not Urgent) really important? If not, take time now to transfer these items to the appropriate sheets.
• How much of my time am I spending on the activities that are really important to me?
• If I am not spending the majority of my time on the items that are important to me, what can I change in my life in order to do this? This might involve scheduling non-interruptible time for important activities, learning to say no, delegating tasks to others, or just eliminating activities that are not that important to you.

Whether or not you have clearly defined your personal mission statement, you can still determine your priorities. The following steps have worked for many successful people, and they will work for you.

Determine your true values.
If you were asked to develop a list of your values right now, would they be your honest values, or would they be a list of values you think you should have? Keep this question in mind as you engage in this exercise. Start by making a list of items that you value most in life.

Prioritize your value list.
At this point, your list may be quite lengthy. Since long lists make it very difficult for us to prioritize our activities, I recommend narrowing this list down to no more than your top seven values. You can start by combining the values that are similar and then determining those seven values that are indeed most important to you. Although these values are all important to you, it also helps to list them in order of most important to least important.

Plan and prioritize your activities.
Victor Hugo said, “He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.”You might have a big project that is important but not urgent. In many cases, you will not be able to complete this project in a day. It might require several days, weeks, or even months. In this case, you can divide this project into manageable segments and develop milestones for the segments. This offers several benefits:

• The project will not seem as overwhelming as it might have if you were to try to tackle it entirely at once.
• It is easier to concentrate on smaller tasks. The old saying that it is “easiest to eat an elephant one bite at a time” is true.
• By getting part of the project done on a daily basis, you are in a better position to complete the project on time.
• You are working on something that you classify as important.

Make time for your highest priorities.
How often have you heard someone say, “I just do not have enough time”? The truth is that they have the exact same amount of time as you and I do. The difference is in how they choose to spend or control their time and their tasks. To gain more control, it helps to ask ourselves, “Is this what I want or need to be doing right now?” If not, the prioritized action list will help to get back on track.

By using these methods, I have been able to create the time in my day to do what is most important. I’ve also discovered that I have more time to do the things I enjoy most.

By the way, I still make lists. These list get things out of my head and onto paper, allowing me to use my head for other things. The difference is that I now prioritize my lists according to my values and priorities.