A Love Hate Relationship

Fortunately, time management is something I’m very good at. I’m very good at planning things out. I enjoy drawing up schedules, and when I make a schedule I stick to it. The major decorations in my room are schedules, calendars, and day planners, and every aspect of every day is written on every last one of them.

This is the schedule of a typical week for me, and you can find it in various forms in about five places around my room.

However, as you may have noticed my schedule only has four colors on it: school, work, family, and everything else. I have managed to manage myself straight out of a personal life. I may get everything done that I need to get done, but that’s about it.

I’ll make the schedule. I’ll follow it to the letter, but just because I like having a schedule and am good at making them doesn’t mean I like its contents. May be one day my writing time won’t be in the same boxes as breakfast and dinner and I won’t have to schedule family dinners just so I don’t forget my brother exists. But for now I do, and that’s what I hate about effective time management.

- Aaron

Me+Time Management=FAIL!

I have 3 words for you: Me+time management=Big. Fat. FAIL!

Take my blog posts, for example: My post day for this blog is every Tuesday. Do I ever post on time?

Rarely.

Like this afternoon, I knew I had to do a post today and I almost took advantage of the fact that it was still early in the day and wrote my post so that I would get it done on time, but did that end up happening? Obviously not, because, like what usually happens, is I think about completing the task for a second, but then immediately after that I get sidetracked by something else, like blog surfing, lol.

So, since I get easily sidetracked and distracted, things that I know I should be doing get put on the back burner for things that I would rather be doing. It's a vicious cycle and affects every aspect of my life, like exercising, homework, and, of course, writing.

I know writing should be categorized in the Things I'd Rather Be Doing category, but for months now its felt like such a chore, an obligation, and I hate that. Lately, I've been trying to make it more of a priority by starting word wars, making schedules and even forcing myself to get out of the house and go to my favorite coffee shop to write, but even that was difficult.

So I think, where writing is concerned, I can't make it a priority until I learn to love it again, or else every time I make time to write and manage my time correctly, it'll still feel like pulling teeth and that's the last thing I want to have happen. As for figuring out how to manage my time for everything else...wish me luck! :P

How about you? Are you good at time management and balancing writing with life's other demands? Any tips? Lemme know in the comments!

~Ella