Tips to Organize Your Schedule

Time Management is a tricky topic due to the fact that a lot of people have their variations of it. I'm going to tell you about mine. Working two full time jobs meant that I had to get good at time management fast. And I never did. Now that I'm only working one job part time (remotely of course) I've had time to sit down and actually think about it. But it wasn't until my mentor (who happens to be my supervisor) sat me down and walked me through this method that I really took it and ran with it.

Check it out, and please let me know what you think of it!

Step 1. Make your Roadmap (10-15 mins)

If you're more of a visual learner/thinker like me, you probably have a planner or a task list of some kind. I'm going to introduce you to the Passion Planner. For those of you who have heard of this Planner before, you can skip to Step 2.

A Passion Planner looks like a regular agenda at first. It has your week to week scheduling. Adding on both a personal to do list and a work to do list makes it an organizational dream. But the Passion Planner takes it a step further. Instead of just thinking about your daily and weekly goals, the Passion Planner takes it a step further.

Using a series of short exercises (like ten minutes at most) the planner asks you to think about the next three years. It gives you space in the planner to write out a roadmap. What you'd like to accomplish, goals to work towards, where you think you'll be career wise, so on and so forth. It then asks you to incorporate these goals into your weekly and monthly tasks and focuses.

Personally, I think it's an amazing way to not only keep your long term goals in mind but to actively work towards said goals.

Now if you don't want to buy this specific type of planner (and if you do just google it) any agenda will do! Write out your Roadmap on a separate sheet and add them to your weekly task list as you please!

Keep in mind that this planner is entirely what you make of it. There's no reason why you can't adapt this into a structure of your own and make it work for you.

Step 2. Write it Out (Weekly)

The best part of the Passion Planner (for me at least) is that the weekly layouts are done by day and by time (half hour increments). Seeing as time management is such a tedious task regularly, having this type of layout makes it just a bit easier to maneuver through your weekly chaos.

I personally set about half an hour each Saturday to look through the next two weeks for upcoming media tasks I need to remember, as well as events I might've missed. Once I add in weekly staff, committee, and project meetings my schedule looks full!

Which moves us on to Step 3

Step 3. The Number/Color System

It's pretty simple. You label each task with one of the following numbers.

#1 - Urgent, call it a Crisis

#2 - Not Urgent, but IMPORTANT

#3 - Not Important, can be pushed off

#4 - Distractions, a waste of time

Assign a highlighter color to each number if you'd like to make it more visually appealing.

This system is meant to make it easier for you to eliminate numbers 3 & 4, and limit the amount of number 1(s) you have. The goal should ultimately be to have solely number 2(s) on your weekly and monthly task list.

Once you complete a task remove it from your list! Whether this is erasing it entirely, to scratching a pen over the task, to a neat line through the wording. It's an immensely satisfying thing to do.

And those are the steps that I take each week to make my work and schedule that much easier to follow and complete. Like I said before this is the way I've found most beneficial. This won't work for everyone.

So this is my challenge for you.

Try this method for three weeks straight. Write down any questions you have about this method as you go along, and send them to me at the end of the three weeks if you haven't managed to get answers to them already. Let me know what you've found useful, useless, or confusing. I want your feedback!