Setting Routines in Time Management

Every Thursday morning my neighbor mows his lawn. He has a beautiful home. The house and its embellishments are perfection. The flowerbeds and hedges are meticulously cared for. (He mows his lawn on a diagonal for heaven's sake.) He has a sprinkler system, gadgets and tools and a mower that looks like a baby Hummer. Every Thursday morning he's out there doing his routine and loving every second of it.

I'm not much of a routine gal. But I have to tell you, I enjoy Thursday mornings. There is something comforting in hearing those blades whirling around doing their job every week like clockwork. I've grown accustomed to the sounds of it.

Some of my readers here at ArtLOOK may have noticed that I have been trying to find new ways of best dealing with time management. My best girlfriend (who is also a designer) and I have been discussing ways in which to be able to fit more activities into our day. Not the usual activities of house cleaning, laundry, design work, freelance writing, business administration etc. We want new things. We want to find a way to fit the things we WANT TO DO, maybe even feel we HAVE TO DO...into our already overstuffed day.

Laura tells me this is accomplished via ROUTINE! (Oh no... say it ain't so!) "Well.." she says, "If you want to fit a new activity into your lifestyle you have to consider that activity a priority AND you have to set a routine or timeframe when you actually DO IT." For instance, I want to learn more about color. "So," Laura tells me, "let's say every morning you wake up at 6am, make coffee and take an hour to relax and learn about color while drinking your coffee." HEY...that could work! By the end of the week, I'd have 7 hours of color education under my belt. Amazing!

We discussed the work of Dave Werner. I can't imagine how that 25 year old guy did all that design work...AND had time to conceptualize those great projects. But my thinking is he did many of those projects while in school. School = routine.

I hate to admit it, and I'll never be a routine type of person, but I think there must be something to this notion of setting a routine. I'm not about to start accounting for every hour of every day but... who knows, maybe I'll start mowing my lawn on Monday and learning about color every morning at 6am.

Comments

[Dan]

I love it - very insightful. One of the things I don't really like about my current gig as a student is that I'll have a definite, set-in-stone schedule for my classes. That means less freedom, etc. But it also forces me to really prioritize and set time aside for the important things. I'm pretty sure I'll end up more productive than otherwise.

So, paradoxically, the schedule is something I also like and appreciate.

A little dynamic tension is good for creativity, no?

[David B. Bohl at SlowDownFAST.com]

Lisa,

Oh no! Do you mean that the D-word (Discipline) might be useful in our lives? Certainly nobody wants to hear that.

No doubt that routines can help us accomplish our goals. I've found that one of the best ways to achieve anything is to turn our goals into habits. Routines help us to do this, even if they don't seem at the time to be the most effective uses of our time.

David

[elysa]

I might be able to hack the concept of Routine IF I don't have to magically become a morning person. I'd be much more likely to study color at midnight every night than I would at 6 am (lugh!).

Here are my favorite color sites, if you are interested: http://del.icio.us/elysa/color