Chime in here if you want to work on your time management, to get some extra time back in your life for the holidays!

Here's my grid, to help you see where your time is going -

Time Management Grid

Fill that out just for a day or two. See where the time is escaping to.

That lets you then take on the next step.

Put the main items into four categories -



Your aim is to organize your life so things are NOT urgent - and they're important. You want to reduce as much as possible the urgent, non-important things you do.

That is, you want your schedule to have as much leeway as you can. So few "must do now" tasks. And for those few which are urgent - they should be important.

Let us know what your challenges are, and we'll help!

I am currently tracking my email load, because that always seems to take up several hours each day. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I track the messages by category. It's helping me a lot to see where the mail falls and what areas I can reduce or eliminate through unsubscribing, auto-sorting, and auto-responding to.

Another area that takes up time are my daily social networking posts. These fall into the category of important and not urgent (in the sense that I can do them at any time during the day). I organize them with a laminated card system -

Laminated Cards to Organize Social Networking

This works *extremely* well for me. It takes maybe 2 minutes to do a given post set on all the different networks. It reaps immense rewards in terms of user interaction and traffic. The key is you do have to aim to do it daily, to keep up interest. And you want to think about how to word your post so it draws attention and conversation.

In the urgent-important category, finances are very tight for me. So I'm on a heavy push to list all the unused books, CDs, DVDs, games, etc. that I can before the holidays. People are buying right now. They won't be buying much in January. So if you have excess items to sell, now is the time to do it. It's a narrow window right now, and worth making time for.

Thanks for sharing your ideas on time management with us! We're in the holiday season, and time management needs to be a priority.

I'm battling several health issues right now; between doctor appointments, tests, and procedures I don't have much time to just enjoy and have fun with the holiday season. I'm also having a hard time getting work done--which is highly frustrating.

You suggested we should track (for a couple of days) how we spend our time, then sit down and categorize what needs to be done when, etc. The grid you shared will be a great help! I'm going to sit down and create a schedule. Work, holidays and health issues can be combined into a more balanced and enjoyable schedule!