Are you someone who is late for almost everything? Do you often find yourself surprised that the deadline for a major task is today, even though you knew about the deadline weeks in advance? Whether you have full blown Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or just a tendency to procrastinate, you don’t need to lead a disorganized life when it comes to time management. By following the five steps outlined here, you can repair your bad relationship with time once and for all and discover the greater peace that comes from leading a simpler, more organized life.
Step 1: Schedule everything
ADHD expert, Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D. says:
I schedule every hour of my week, including dinner dates with my wife and vacation itineraries. That may sound lame, but we’re having a blast hitting every ride at Disneyworld, while less organized people are waiting in line to ride Dumbo. (2014, p. 139)
If you want to master your time management, then get a physical or digital planner, fill in every inch of it for the week ahead, and become “married” to it.
Step 2: Schedule a time to schedule
In the book Getting Things Done, author David Allen (2001) suggests that we schedule time at least once per week to revisit our project list and to process our work inbox. I add that we need to also tend to our planner at least once per week.
Lots of people report to me that they have tried planning in the past, only to do a great job for a short time before losing the new practice. I have discovered that the secret to forming a new scheduling habit is to schedule a time to schedule. I recommend scheduling a time slot towards the end of every week for scheduling the following week and making this time slot unmovable.
Step 3: Ask the three “magic” questions all day long
Some of us procrastinate by doing leisure activities when we should be working. Others tend to work on the easiest tasks instead of the longer, boring ones, which might be more important to get done. Whatever your form of self-sabotage in this area is, following Crenshaw’s (2016) advice in an article he wrote for ADDitude Magazine may help you to improve. In the article, he recommends that teens with ADD ask themselves these three questions many times per day:
- What am I doing?
- What do I “mean” to be doing?
- Why does it matter?
Crenshaw’s advice is not only for teens, it is invaluable advice for anyone who wants to improve his or her time management skills. I recommend changing the middle question to: “What did I schedule for myself to do now?” Being “married” to your planner means that when you find yourself just about to click on something in your Facebook feed, you first check your planner, to see if that was what you had scheduled to do at that moment in the day.
Step 4: Overestimate how long everything takes
In his book Essentialism, author Greg McKeown (2014) suggests that we schedule procrastination. He says that this can be accomplished by estimating how long something takes and then multiplying it by a particular percentage or constant. To simplify things, I recommend that you just overestimate how long everything takes by a significant amount. Add an extra 15 minutes for shorter tasks and at least an hour for longer ones. We don’t plan to go to the bathroom, yet nature calls at any time during the day that it feels like. This is only one example of the inevitable “something” that will throw your whole day off unless you provide buffers in your schedule for every task for the entire day.
Step 5: Only commit after checking your planner
Don’t commit to anything without first checking your planner. It is a good idea to think of yourself as someone who has the inability to remember things, one who is utterly dependent on his or her planner. If you are randomly asked, “Would you like to play tennis this Saturday at 9am?”, even if you “feel” certain that you have Saturday completely free, don’t say “yes” unless you have your planner with you so that you can first check it and then write in the new entry for the tennis date right then and there, if you don’t already have a commitment scheduled at that time.
Conclusion
Improving your time management skills doesn’t have to be complicated. By putting into place the five easy steps outlined here, you can transform your flakiness into dependability today and experience the peace that comes from leading a simpler, more organized life.
Please let me know your thoughts about this article in the comments below. Do you think you can follow the five steps outlined here? If you have failed in past attempts to get better at managing your time, what step were you missing?
References
Allen, D. (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. New York: Penguin.
Crenshaw, W. (2014). I Always Want to be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD. USA: Family Psychological Press.
Crenshaw, W. (2016, Fall). Want the Secret to Motivating Teens? Start with These Three Questions. ADDitude: Inside the ADHD Mind. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from ADDitude Magazine: https://www.additudemag.com/motivating-a-teenager-with-adhd/.
McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. UK: Virgin.
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