168....

Confession... I love time management books.  I love looking at planners.  I love dreaming about getting all the stuff done - all of it!

So anyone else who is totally into this sort of stuff knows the relevance of the number 168.  It is the numbers of hours each and every single one of us has in a week.  As long as you are living and breathing, this is it - 168 hours.  Time is like that.  It will not increase no matter how hard we try to add extra.

This makes it precious.  I have found myself trying to explain how precious time is to my kids.  I think they missed the concept totally.  It is a lesson that is learned with time and is most relevant when you've seen someone not get their 168 hours...

So, you would think with my love of all things planning, that I would have it together.  Nope!  Not even close!  I read the books.  I think "Wow!  Applying this would be life changing!"  And then when it is time to follow through, I tend to default to how I've always done things.  I am not living the drean and I am not getting all the stuff done!

As a work from home mom, I have so much flexibility in my schedule.  I am sure many of you would covet this flexibility.  There are so many blessings with having this type of lifestyle.  My favourite is that with minimal fuss I can drop everything if need be.  This has allowed me the opportunity to be there for my family in ways that far too many moms have not had the chance.

This flexibility also has a darker side...  There is the illusion of lots of time but it is often poorly used.  I am always finding myself believing that I can add something to my to do list because I have time.  My family is forever adding things on the fly because I have time.  My life on the most part completely lacks structure and often any sense of urgency, which can lead to time not being treated as precious.

I have tried to impose a set structure on my life but I have not seen a great deal of success.  Each day looks totally different so it is hard to build a routine.  I find that I believe that I will have time later to do many things, to find that later is not really a time in my day.   This has been a constant struggle in my life.  The lack of ability to manage my own time well shows up in how well my requirements are progressing.  I wake up most mornings ready to conquer the world, to nail my requirements only to find that I ran out of time at the end of the day.  This is not an uncommon struggle for many of you.  My concern is that there are too many days where I get to the end of the day and I try to reflect back.  I know I was busy all day but often can't pinpoint what I was actually busy doing.

Here is where the rubber meets the road...  It is hard to change something until you face the reality of what you are trying to change.  I do not always know what that reality is since I get to the end of the day and I often have no idea where the day went.  Many time management people focus on how we can't really manage time but we need to shift the focus to actually managing ourselves and the people in our lives.  I am apparently not terribly mindful of where my precious minutes are being used up.

So...  I am going to start doing a time audit on myself to see just where the minutes are slipping away to during this next week.  I've got a tracking sheet in my planner and I am ready to find out just where the time is going.  Really, I am off to practice the two questions that we talk about all the time...  Where am I?  What am I doing?  Then record the answers.

Numbers as of May 7/18
Push ups      4,424/ 50 000
Sit ups         4,475/ 50 000
Kempo           92/ 1000
WuDang Sword 180/ 1000
Distance     416.3/1609
Kicks       839/ 50 000
Sparring     248/ 1000
AoK         232/1000
Gratitude  231/1000
Journal      75/355
Piano    12.5 hours/ 80 hours
Reading   6/24 books
Geocaches  13/120 finds