One exercise that is very popular in Skillkick's Time Management Training is the 24 hour pie-charts for time management.It is a really useful exercise to look at how you spend each hour of your day. It doesn't take long to discover there is little slack and you migth find that you get bogged down from time to time.
Firstly, take some coloured pencils, crayons or felt tips.
Draw a circle and divide into 24 segments, representing 24 hours of the day. You can list the hours if you wish or draw a table.
Monitor how you spend 24 hours of a day and colour in the segements accordingly. Pick a colour to represent an activity.
Don’t forget to draw your key to show what each colour represents ; then repeat the process to design your ideal. How would you ideally like to be spending your work day and the rest of the hours that make up your day?
Compare the two and start to make some small changes to change the way you spend your time to be more like your ideal. You could get up early during the week to gain 1 hour every morning, plus 1-2 hours every evening by cutting down on watching TV. If you have children, perhaps you could take turns to take your children out for a half day at the weekend to get a 4-hour block of time for doing whatever you like. Could you share babysitting with a friend so that alternate weeks gives you a free day?
Review your time chart and think about how you can make changes. I make time charts on a regular basis, to monitor how my time is being spent and make changes accordingly. Sometimes, I find myself drifting into spending too much time on one thing and not on another and it helps me find balance. I find it a really useful exercise.
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