Time Management — How not to do it
Day 14 / 365
When you set out to build any new habits in your life, you will inevitably run into issues with Time and Discipline. No matter how easy or tough the task is, you will either find yourself short of time to do them or just feeling too lazy to even bother.
I am starting to realize that bad Time Management is becoming the bottleneck in whatever I am trying to fix in my life. I used to be quite good at it when I was younger, but I’ve changed and life has changed as well. I don't know how to fix it right now, but I have tried several things I learned in the past and they didn’t work. So I thought I should at least document those.
The first thing I tried to do was simply create a Time Table. I planned out what my perfect day would look like. When I should get up? when I should go to sleep? How many hours each day I should dedicate to work? It’s funny, when you plan out your day like this it seems that you have all the time in the world.
But in practice, it didn’t work. Time Tables are hard to follow anyways, but it was tougher, especially for me. I work as a freelancer, and I work on multiple projects at once. I never have a fixed amount of stuff I have got to do on any particular day. Planning ahead is just useless.
On top of that, if you have a rigid timetable, and you oversleep a few hours one day, the whole day is then fucked. I think this strategy works for people who have something external enforcing the timetable on them. For instance, if you have an office job and always have to get up by a certain time. But it turned out to be useless for me.
But hey, I am an engineer at heart, and I will always be problem-solving. So I am looking for a new strategy that would work for this new phase of my life. The goal is simple, to make sure I am able to use my time as efficiently as possible and I am able to get enough rest and free time as well.