Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Scaffolding our Days
Last week I wrote about blocking out time and bundling tasks. To help you build on those habits, I want to take a step back and talk about the bigger picture of our days.
Everyone has a different story: Some people work 9 to 5; some people work from home; some people do a bit of each, and some people are home raising children. Despite all this variety, there are elements that stay the same. Everyone wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night. If you are trying to give structure your days, the time you wake up and go to bed are the bookends of that day, and if you keep them the same day in and day out, it’s easier to establish a routine.
Once you have these times set, you can build on with the other fixed pieces, such as the time you start work, or a regular yoga class or carpool. Then you can see what time is left, which is the time you have to work with to get things done, whether the things you are trying to accomplish are as mundane as calling the orthodontist or as grand as writing a novel. And you are more likely to accomplish them if you have decided when you are going to do them and put them in your calendar.
If you combine last week’s challenge to bundle small tasks with this week’s challenge to build a structure, you will start to see your calendar as a game of strategy. Usually, seeing how you spend your time makes it easier to realize where you can be more efficient. A mom in my neighborhood realized that she was spending that hour that her daughter was taking ballet just staring at her phone. So she started taking a tap dance class—turning an otherwise wasted hour into a fun, healthy activity for herself. (It also opened up an hour she was trying to cram in elsewhere to go to fit in a workout). Think about what you want to add into your life, and then look at your calendar and see what you need to shift to fit it in.
Having a schedule and sticking to it isn’t about killing spontaneity, it’s about structuring your time wisely so that you can do all the things you want to do.