Lord knows we spend a lot of time in transit. One week I figured I’d see if I really spend as much time in the car as I thought – what a shocker! 2 1/2 hours in the car a day! Granted, I live in Los Angeles, so I hope you don’t have quite that much. But still, we’re all buzzing from one side of town to the other – school here, dance class there, grocery store over there. No doubt we’re always busy, but how can we plan our day to run just slightly more elegantly?
If we spend just 10 minutes a night (there’s that 10 minutes again) to think about the next day, it can go more smoothly AND make us feel more in control and less like a chauffeur.
This is what I mean –
- Client meeting on the east side until noon and you don’t have to be back to the west side until 12:45? Stop into the recreation center on the east side to find out about the painting classes you’ve got on your goal list.
- Client is always late for meetings. Stay off the PDA and instead read the prospectus for the mutual fund you’re considering investing in.
- You drop off your son at soccer which is not far from the mall? Take 20 minutes to get a new battery for the watch that’s been sitting in the bottom of your purse for weeks.
- You sit in the back of your daughter’s ballet class every week, staring catatonically at the little tutu’d cuties. On occasion, you’ll use the time to clean out your purse. Why not complete the school questionnaire so you don’t have to do that kind of “busy work” during precious alone time later that you can put to better use.
Maximize the use of your calendar to schedule these things. Instead of writing just “Client Meeting 9-11”, write “Client meeting 9-11; pack prospectus and recreation center address and checkbook”. Rather than “Jack’s soccer 4:30-6”, say “Jack’s soccer 4:30-6; pack watch to be repaired”.
If you keep a calendar that pretty clearly shows length of times of events (down to 15-minute increments, ideally), and gives you space to add extra stuff (like “pack prospectus” and “bring questionnaire”), great. If not, I think you’ll find it really valuable to get one. The more room you have to write things down so you don’t have to keep them in your head, the better.