Friday, November 6, 2009

Unfortunately, they invented this thing called time...

  It's the first day of the term at YTI career institute here in York Pennsylvania where I'm taking a Computer System Specialist course.  Back to the hustle and bustle of a normal routine.  The problem is, I still haven't caught up with all the things that need to be done by the end of the week.
  Since technology began to boom in the early 1900's, it has become more necissary to develop time management tools and organization techniques.  GTD, or Getting Things Done is one of the many systems that has come about as a result of this need.  ZTD is a great system that fixes some of the 'problems' with GTD and offers another solution.  I have tried many times to find something that works for me, but the closest I ever came was a micro time management system that called for breaking down tasks into their smallest parts.  The inventor of this system would say 'I need to clean out my closet'.  They would then put on their schedule for a particular day "open the closet door".  Another day would be "take all the shoes out of the closet".  This may be a little extreme, even for me!  These tools and ideas did however give me good insight and got me started in learning how to really get organized.
  One morning after a long 3rd shift at work, I drove down to the riverbank to watch the sunrise.  As I sat there surrounded in the magnificent beauty that God created, I prayed and asked Him to grant me the wisdom and skill of organization.  I was reminded of the way that Solomon asked God for wisdom to rule his kingdom.  Then and there I knew that in time God would grant me that request.  Last night I worked the next step toward developing the system of organization that works best for me.
  Several months ago I decided I needed to develop my own system, so I made a spreadsheet online with the day broken into 5 minute segments.  Then during the times that I had to be productive I would write the list of things and estimate how long they would each take.  This might have worked except that the spreadsheet was terribly long, and there was no way you could get it all printed.
  This problem was not enough to get me to throw away the idea, because other than the fact that it was huge and hard to easily glance at, it worked!  Last night instead of going to that website to make up a schedule for the day, I made another spreadsheet and put it up on dropbox so I could see it from other computers.  The spreadsheet had only the task, the estimated duration of the task, and an empty slot for what time it was completed.  I decided this morning after using it that I should change it and make that empty slot have the estimated time of completion, which would act as a guide that I could reference to see if I'm ahead of schedule or not.

  The key to time management is to figure out what works for you.  Like I said there are hundreds of systems out there, so look around.  As time progresses I will most likely build on to this concept of mine of time management and I'll let you know what more I come up with.  Also as usual, comments are welcome!

3 comments:

veronica elise said...

I hope the system works out for you! I always find that if I don't set a time limit on something, it takes way longer than need be.

Anonymous said...

Gotta rush... Can't read the whole post, but I just had a closer look at the image, and I'm on your Facebook updates! So funny... "Anna Ep has ceased to exist... she just went 'poof' and disappeared in the air" Hahaha!
But that was AGES ago, that screenshot is old... :P

The Reluctant Dragon said...

Awesome. SOunds like neat stuff.

I don't really have a brain when it comes to computers. =(