• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Self Help Daily

Inspirational and Self Help Blog with a Save the World Complex...

  • Home
    • Tour Self Help Daily
    • Self Help Daily’s Archives
    • Privacy
      • Affiliate Disclosure
  • Inspirational Quotes
  • Self Help
    • Positive Thought
    • Health
    • Mental Fitness
    • Relationships
    • Self Growth
  • How to Be Happy
  • Book Reviews
You are here: Home / Self Help / General / Time Management Tips: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Time Management Tips: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

November 18, 2009 by Joi 4 Comments

Book links are usually affiliate links. This means I earn a small percentage when you click through and buy the book. This costs you nothing extra - it simply allows me to keep my cats in the lifestyle they're accustomed to.

As you’ll notice (if you look at the dates on my posts on Self Help Daily), I’ve been in the boxing ring with time management lately – and losing.  At the end of the day, sometimes I feel like someone needs to stitch me up.  The clock (time management’s lackey) insists on giving me just 24 hours a day.  More Time!, I demand. Take what you have!, it deadpans, without so much as glancing in my direction.  Always the same old response.

I won’t bother you with the details of my busyness (I’ll just say that I don’t have a daily to do list, I have to do lists).   Running a web publishing business from home while being a wife, mother, AND working on my first book leaves me craving more hours in the day the way I crave more coffee in my cup and more chocolate chips in my cookies.  It certainly doesn’t leave me feeling like a time management ninja or the queen of time management tips.

Normally, the writing, editing, typing, designing, cooking, cleaning, shopping, baking, and reading fall into their respective places pretty well – but lately things have just been whackadoodle (Kentuckian for nuts).  A lot of it has to do with the upcoming holidays.  I’m even having trouble concentrating on one of the things I love the most online – wordpress plugins (plugins are life).  As wicked cool as they are, they just can’t compete with trying out new Christmas cookie and Thanksgiving pie recipes, decorating with Christmas loveliness, or shopping for my beloved family’s gifts. There should be a whole set of time management tips geared just for the holidays?

My cooking blog is also exploding, quite honestly – there are countless review requests, recipe requests, and so forth.  Seriously, some of my blogs could keep three people busy, let alone one.

So much to do!  Even when you love what you’re doing, sometimes you can feel overwhelmed when you’re up against the clock.  It won’t even give an inch, no matter how much I plead or blackmail.

To manage time effectively and stand a chance of adhering to time management tips, we should continually shine the spotlight on our activities – hold them accountable for themselves.  A few questions to periodically ask ourselves:

  • How did I spend my time today? Did I balance work with play? Am I a well-rounded individual who doesn’t  allow herself/himself to become all about either work or play?
  • What activities did I choose to engage in?  Some activities are a given (work, cooking, cleaning, laundry), others we choose. There’s a difference… and part of the answer lies right here.
  • How much time did I spend on each activity? Could some of this time have been cut?  Cut time leads to found time – it leads to the extra time we all crave at the end of the day.
  • What were the results of these activities? Is there anything to show?  Did the time produce an outcome that I can feel good about?  Was the time spent “quality time” with a loved one? Did I accomplish something?  Did I get somewhere?
  • Was my mind stretched or challenged by any of these activities? Did I give my mind junk food or healthy nourishment?  Do I read about the same things or do the same activities over and over? Am I creating mental fitness or tearing it down?
  • Were any of the activities I engaged in within the last 24 hours relaxing? Here’s a funny thing about relaxation that I learned from my husband.  He works full-time outside the home.  He also runs two websites for his company and oversees two of the websites in our web publishing business.  In addition, he’s looking at a couple of other online ventures.  At the end of the day, after supper, he generally heads off to our home office to research, read, write, take part in web conferences, create, and so on.  Once I told him that I was worried about him working too much.  I told him that working all day and then coming home just to work more couldn’t possibly be good for him – I wondered where the relaxation was.  He got a really quizzical look on his face (as he sat at his computer surrounded by books, with about 6 different windows open), and said, “This is relaxing.”  He actually unwinds at the end of a day’s work with… you got it.. work.  Of course, he does have a television in the office and if UK basketball, Andy Griffith, or St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball is on – his computer chair takes full advantage of it’s swivel!

A few nights ago, I wanted to make a huge pasta supper – with mozzarella garlic bread and the works.  I decided to create a pasta sampler type meal, so I made some pasta with a marinara basil sauce, some with a browned butter mushroom sauce, and one pasta had three different cheeses.  To keep each sauce from burning (while keeping it warm), and to ensure that my pasta was al dente, I had to rearrange the pans often on the burners.  After the mushrooms sauteed in the butter sauce, it needed to make room for the marinara sauce… when the pasta was perfect, it had to get out of the way for the cheese sauce – and so on.

Personally, I’ve found that we have to approach our daily activities  in a similar way – sometimes, something simply has to take a back burner.  You don’t have to let it go completely, of course, you just have to say, “You sit right here, I’ll be back for you in a minute.”  Whether it’s a preference to update your blogs daily, a rigid exercise routine, frequent tweets, or a favorite television show.  Sometimes you have to realize that you can’t do everything and do it well – something has to get off of the front burner for a few days.

If I were to give all of my attention to the browned butter mushroom sauce while ignoring the pasta – the meal would have been ruined. And pointless!

Take a look at your daily activities and see if there’s anything you’re overcooking on one burner while under-cooking on another.  After all, in every sense of the word we pretty much dine at the table of our own creation.  Good, bad, underdone, creative, delicious, bland, forgettable, remarkable, outstanding – we have no one to blame or credit but ourselves.

Filed Under: General, Must Reads, Self Help, Time Management Tagged With: time management

Previous Post: « Thursday Throwback: The Wisdom of Confucius
Next Post: Your Life is Like a Book »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Howard Miller says

    October 21, 2010 at 7:40 am

    Am always very busy with my grandfather clock store in Florida. I asked myself the time management questions as suggested by you. Thank you so much, it seems I have much more time now!

  2. Navya says

    January 25, 2011 at 12:25 am

    Hi Joi,

    I liked the post. You are certainly an All rounder!! You have given a wonderful suggestion atlast…….. Time Management is totally in our hands, as you said Joe…………

  3. joi says

    January 28, 2011 at 10:03 am

    Navya,
    Sometimes I’m not sure if it could be called being an All rounder or just half nuts – but thanks, I like your wording much better! Time management is something that (for obvious reasons) is often on my mind. It’s a constant learning process – much of which takes place through trial and error!

Trackbacks

  1. The Skinny on Time Management by Jim Randel: A Review says:
    July 16, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    […] You’ll learn how to Live on 24 Hours a Day. […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

❖ Self Help Blog ❖

Cat on Pine Mountain , Kentucky

Welcome to Self Help Daily, a blog devoted to helping you get the most from life by getting the most from yourself!

Read the story behind the picture above in How to Live in the Moment.

Self Help Blog Updates

  • Great Alternatives for Alcohol that Aren’t Soda
  • Tips to Help Single Parents Achieve Financial Freedom
  • Battling Stress: When to Get Help With Essay and How to Do It”
  • Checklist for Your Mental Health During Covid-19
  • 5 Incentives for Career Inspiration
  • Essential Guide to Farxiga Coupon and its Use for Patients
  • Try to Have a Sleep-Filled Lifestyle
  • Why Hitting Rock Bottom Can Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You


Featured Quote Graphics

Don't Quit Quote Graphic

Dr. Seuss Quote About Being Who You Are

Booker T. Washington Quote About Hate

Wayne Dyer Quote About Karma

Quote About Habits

Footer

Inspirational Quotes

  • Abraham Lincoln Quotes
  • Billy Graham Quotes
  • Booker T. Washington Quotes
  • Dale Carnegie Quotes
  • Maya Angelou Quotes
  • Mark Twain Quotes
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
  • Norman Vincent Peale Quotes

More Inspirational Quotes

❖ Self Help Daily Updates



Overcoming Empty Nest Syndrome

One of the questions I hear the most from my readers is, "How can I cope with empty nest syndrome?" I'll try to deal with this sensitive subject as often as possible. If you have any suggestions, I hope you'll contribute to the conversations!

  • Coping With Empty Nest Syndrome
  • Don't Just Cope in an Empty Nest, Thrive!
  • How to Be Happy in an Empty Nest
  • Overcoming Empty Nest Syndrome
Copyright Self Help Daily 2019