Everyday I fight against millions of potentially distracting pieces of information. My time is precious - I'm juggling entirely too many things to give in to procrastination - yet some days I loose the battle.
I don't want to loose the war, so I had to arm myself with a schedule and learn to focus on less.
I had to - it was either that or completely loose my mind.
What makes it work for me is that I try NOT to allow myself to participate in time draining activities such as compulsively checking email, reading my feeds, lollygagging on Twitter or blog hopping without a purpose.
I've got set tasks that I need to complete each week and there's no time to spare. Even if I do well one week, if I don't remain disciplined, everything could totally unravel the next week.
I'm going to present you with my schedule - but don't just copy this and try to live by it without personalizing it. Instead, take a look at it, and then think about how you could tweak it to fit your needs. If you don't personalize and simply try to copy it, it will only feel totally unnatural for you - and you will abandon it.
On top of that, just to let you know, I consider this a tentative schedule. There are some days when other pressing things pop up. On other days, my schedule may change for various reasons and to be honest - some days I just don't feel like adhering to it. I'm a human being not a robot and I can't program myself to be the same every day. But I can try and that's the whole point.
So here's how I manage my time:
7:00a-8:00p (sometimes runs over 10 or 15 minutes)
- Create today's To-Do list
- Scan email for urgent matters. If there are none, don't reply or delete, just keep it moving.
- Visit TheInfoPreneur forum for Reciprocal tweets
- Schedule tweets for the day
- Stumble some posts
- Submit to BlogEngage and vote for a few posts
- Schedule posts for Tues. and Wed (if possible)
- Start some drafts of new post OR add an idea to Blog Post Idea List
10:00-10:15 (may run over 5 minutes or so)
- Read Problogger and comment
- Read CopyBlogger and comment
- Read TheInfoPreneur and comment
- Post some tweets
11:30-12:15 (some days I don't get to all of these)
- Check email/respond
- Respond to Blog Comments
- Read 2-4 Blog Posts to gather links for Monday's Link List
- Post some tweets
- Stumble some posts
- Work on blog post drafts/start a new post/add to idea list
- Work on weekly newsletter or other on-going project
2:00-2:15
- Scan email for urgent matters - no replies
- Post and respond to some tweets
4:30-5:00
- Check email/respond
- Respond to blog comments
- Post and respond to some tweets
7:00p-8:30p (this is not an everyday item)
- Consulting activities
- Blog planning
You may notice that there are gaps between my schedule. That's because I'm also a technical writer and that's what I do most of the day. Some evenings and weekends I consult with local business owners - so that last entry is not an everyday item, but I still try to keep a regular time set aside to attend to those tasks.
Also note: to increase productivity, I really try not to do anything that is not on this schedule during those scheduled times. I don't always succeed, sometimes I end up reading more than the planned 2-4 blog posts, sometimes I read less. Did you notice earlier that I said this was a tentative schedule?
So how do you operate? How could you tweak this schedule to work for you?
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