Where does the day go?

2 January 2007

Today was the one day this week where I planned to get a lot of stuff done. I have client appointments each day the rest of the week and while they’re just half-day appointments, I find it’s hard to be ultra-productive the second half of the day. I had big plans for getting so much accomplished in the broad expanse of time available today.

I don’t know what happened. Here it is almost the end of the day and two of the major things on my list aren’t done. I did get my book reviews in (I’m the book review columnist for Dog World magazine). I did do some client and prospective client phone follow up. I opened all the mail that came in while I was away for the holidays. I had a lovely chat with an old friend in England. I walked each of my dogs plus I walked to the home of Kirby’s best friend, Riley, to bring him to our house to play. And then I walked him home and played with his new kitten.

And now I have to call it a day so I can go to my knitting group. I realize that if I were really worried about not getting my office cleaned up and not getting a writing project finished I wouldn’t go to my knitting group. Or I wouldn’t have taken time out for my dogs. But those things aren’t negotiable.

I guess it’s all about expectations. Following Mark Forster’s “Do It Tomorrow” philosophy (I blogged about it here) I really want to create “will do” lists with tasks that I actually accomplish each day. I’m discovering that it takes some skill to know how much can get finished in a day. I must work on honing that skill.

As I face a very busy month with clients, I really need to get a handle on time management. It’s one of my biggest goals for the year. I want to busy and sane at the same time. I’ll keep you posted!

Tagged with: mark forster, priorities, time management