Your Time Table

Do you feel like you have no time available? Can you account for how you spend all your time? An interesting (and enlightening) exercise to do is to create your own time table. Creating your time table often shows you where time may be wasted and where you may actually have extra time to work with.

In order to create your time table, create a table with days in columns and then time blocks as rows. Color in each cell that represents time you spend sleeping, working, traveling or other activities that you do regularly and can place in time.

What you will notice once you have done this is that there are probably still many empty gaps where you are spending time, but can you account for how that time is spent? Are you using this time productively or is it wasted? Once you know where these times are you can take particular note of what you are actually doing during these hours and write these down.

You know have a time table which shows you where you are most likely to be wasting time and where you can probably improve on the use of your time. This of course does not include the fact that you could be more productive at work or in other time blocks that are accounted for, but it does show areas where there is no set activity.

Although it is not necessary to fill every minute of every day with productivity activity, and rest and relaxation are necessary. It is still important not to let this time get out of hand, the time you take to rest and relax should be planned and controlled so that you do not waste valuable time in front of the TV or doing other non-productive activities when you should be doing more productive work.

Creating a personal time table can help to point out those specific times of day, and of the week, when you do not have any set activity and where you are most likely to be wasting your time. Take note of the activities that you do during these hours and see whether this time could be better spent elsewhere. This is not to suggest that every minute of every day needs to be filled but simply that we need to be aware of how we are spending our time in order to improve productivity.