I think this is going to be the last post for my series regarding spring cleaning. This time I will discuss spring cleaning of our schedules. There are many ways we can review our schedules to do some spring cleaning. The best method to do this is to start with the biggest items in our schedule. For many of us, work is the biggest item in our schedules and take the most of our time. That is one we most likely won’t be able to do much about. If you are in a position to take a job that requires less time or retire, then this may be a viable option. For the rest of us, we will look for the next biggest items to cut and go from there. If we are tracking our time closely, we can get a very clear picture. However, if you are not and just have a more general picture of your schedule, it should still be easy to tell what requires the most time. Even activities that appear we can’t do anything about, it is still worth a shot to review them. This should be done every so often, so spring time is a perfect time to visit this, especially after cleaning your physical space, your digital space, and your mind. Here are a few ideas of how we can free up space in our calendar.
- Focus on what is most frequent. Instead of going from biggest to smallest, focus on what we do the most. Very often too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. Also, too much of anything is a good thing. Unless your life is perfectly balanced, there is very likely to be some areas that are in excess and needs to be trimmed.
- Focus on what is either absent or is too little. On the other end of the spectrum, there is something that we want or need to do. But we are not doing it. This could be like going to the gym, reading, reflecting, learning, etc. We all have something we should be doing more. This is what we are freeing up time from the excess to do.
- Rate activities by importance. Make a list of categories and sort by importance. Then go through each category and analyze if sufficient time is being given to each of them. This can be very helpful and provides a good balance between both the first and second points. I would recommend this one the most for an ongoing basis.
It is very helpful to keep your scheudle free of clutter. A cluttered schedule will stress you out and keep you off track. A cluttered schedule will cause you to miss apointments and deadlines just like you would lose something in a messy room or forget something in a cluttered mind. Let us now focus on keeping our schedule clutter free as this will make us much more productive.
