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Where Do You Put Your Time?
In my early 20s, I decided to stop scheduling my entire life in planners or on calendars. They reminded me of the sparkly diaries and cat calendars of my childhood, and I didn’t like the feeling of over-managing the things I did. Flexibility was important to me — and so was being a post-grad hippie-wannabe, stepping into the world for the first time, naively deciding to just “let life happen.”
Now that I’m 30, I’ve come full circle. It’s true that life does sometimes just happen — zero planning, zero preparation involved. Those are the moments I’ve gotten the most memory mileage out of, and you can’t replace that kind of gift from the universe.
But what about the rest of your minutes and hours? Do you just decide to tackle your studies and your bills and your housework and your trips without some form of a plan? The lists, mental and written, of things you want to do in life that you’ve tossed into the Some Day column?
Over the past year, I’ve been slowly working back around the time management molehill, towards a now obvious realization: It’s precisely because my time is so valuable and scarce that I do need to schedule it.
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t believe in booking yourself solid from buzzing alarm to head hitting the pillow. That may work or be necessary for people who are drowning in daily commitments, but…
