Keeping On Schedule
August 3, 2018

My best friend keeps a daily schedule in which he breaks down each 24-hour
period into thirty-minute chunks. He even blocks out sections for "sleep" and
"work." I remember being a bit amused the first time he pulled his schedule out,
and saying something like, "Wow, that's tightly packed." I also remember him
replying that he'd never get anything done without it. At the time, though, I
thought that half-hour blocks was cutting life a little too fine.

But now I'm beginning to wonder. For one, my friend is incredibly productive,
able to manage multiple, simultaneous irons in the fire. And I recently began
re-reading W. Clement Stone's "The Success System That Never Fails." In it,
Stone mentions Frank Bettger, a salesman whose productivity skyrocketed after he
started keeping meticulous records on how he spent his time. This allowed him to
see where (and when) he was wasting his time, and to cut those activities out.

Like a lot of people, I sit down every Sunday evening and schedule the coming
week out in a "Monday--clean, Tuesday--laundry, Wednesday--shopping," sort of
way. But I've never gone beyond that level, since any task outside of writing
has to be done in the afternoon. But as I mentioned in my last post, I'd been
having problems spending too much time on the internet and planned to limit
myself to a single hour per day.

Such a defined limit, mixed with what I'd read in Stone's book and my friend's
meticulous schedules, has moved me to try a daily schedule for myself. So far,
it's been ad-hoc: an index card each day to keep track of half-hour blocks
between 9am and 6pm. And right now, I'm merely noting down what I'm doing,
rather than scheduling in advance, because I don't yet know how I'm actually
using my time--something I feel I should know before I begin making changes.
(I'm also hoping that, as it did with my eating habits, the act of observation
will naturally cause me to improve my behavior.)

So I'm going to roll this new experiment into the already ongoing attempt to
limit my internet use. I'll report on the combined results in a month.

(c) 2018 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com