Confession: I am the queen of overextending myself. Well, maybe co-queen. A couple other folks I know are pretty darn good at this themselves. *g

But no more! I have a plan to de-clutter my schedule. It begins with a little analysis:

In any given day, here is a random sampling of to-do items on my plate (I bet many of the items listed are on yours, too!):

* Accounting/Taxes
* Blogging
* Cleaning
* Conference calls and client meetings
* Cooking
* Critiquing
* Dishes
* Dispensing web site advice/help to friends/coworkers
* Driving to/from events/errands/meetings
* Eating
* Errands
* Exercise
* Fetching Mail/Newspaper
* Invoicing Clients
* Laundry
* Paying Bills
* Phone calls to/from friends/family
* Phone calls to/from new/existing clients
* Plotstorming
* Practicing Spanish
* Reading Email
* Responding to Email
* Revision
* Scrapbooking
* Sleeping
* Studying Italian/Greek
* Studying Craft (of writing)
* Updating (many) “project” web sites
* Updating (many) “volunteer” web sites
* Updating (many) client web sites
* Updating my web site
* Writing

Thanks to the glory of alphabetical order, Writing is at the bottom of the list. Even without alphabetical order, it’s easy for Writing to fall to the bottom of the list–unless you plan to do otherwise, and stick with your plan.

There are two schemes that work best for me:
1) Get up early, even if waking up early sucks, and write.
2) Get everything else done during the week, even if no free time sucks, and spend the entire weekend on the WIP

Depending on what’s going on client-wise and personal life-wise, I try to do one or the other (or a combo) of those plans.

Some weeks, however–like this week and last week–seem to have a time deficit like no other.

I have exactly 6 hours of “free” time while the kids are in school. This is the only uninterrupted time available to do what is normally 8-10 hours of client work. So, I’m currently on Plan #2 above. This past weekend, my mostly-free day was Saturday. However, a good half of it got eaten in client work, errands, and other shenanigans. What to do?

Enter: New Theory

The link above takes you to a blog discussing the Einstein Principle, which basically says we’re most productive when splitting our biggest chunks of time between a small number of projects, not tiny chunks of time scattered across an endless list of projects. Makes sense, right? But do we put that common sense in action? (/erica glances at her list above and cringes)

My fave quote from the above link:
Imagine if Einstein maintained a blog, wrote a book, joined a bunch of clubs at ETH, and tried to master rowing at the same time he was working on General Relativity? We’d still be living in the age of Newton.

Bwa. But true.

The Mavens and I were recently discussing how our writing productivity has a direct negative correlation (okay, I’m the one who labeled it this way) with our blogcrastination and emailage. And not that long ago, I was chastising one of my local CPs b/c she overextends herself w/ activities, cooking clubs, personal trainers, etc, on top of a crazy hectic job, etc. (/erica glances at her list again, flushes, and looks away, shifty-eyed)

Here’s the basic idea: Until you whittle down your to-do list, add no new projects. I repeat:

ADD NO NEW PROJECTS!

As Lacey well knows, I struggle with this one. I want to do everything. But that way lies madness.

Once you manage to corral your wayword sign-me-up tendencies, the next step is to whittle your list into categories. I’m deviating from the instructions at the link above (which has an alternate awesome idea) and deciding what on my list truly has to happen soon, what truly has to happen eventually, and what never really needs to happen–it just sounded cool.

My next plan is to divide these items into 3 lists, and throw away list #3.

Tackle list #1 first. Get all the easy stuff out of the way. That’ll probably cut the list in half right there. Keep going until this list is done. Only then go to:

List #2. Get all the easy stuff out of the way, then order by importance/deadline.

Eventually, my primary list will boil down to something like:
* Interact with family
* Interact with friends
* Take care of myself (eat/sleep/exercise)
* Take care of bills/clients/taxes
* Follow my heart’s desire (ex: write!)

My secondary list will boil down to something like:
* Organize [enter random time-sucking thing to organize here]
* Update [my blog/my website/oil in car/air in tires/groceries]

My maybe-I-will, maybe-I-won’t tertiary list may go:
* Help with [enter random thing I'm asked to help with]
* Study XYZ language (writing comes first!)
* Spend time doing [enter random hobby here] (writing comes first!)

Only when I’m caught up with lists #1 and #2 should I consider adding a shiny new project. No matter how shiny and new. Tough, but efficient… we’ll see how it goes!

YOUR TURN: Do you spend a lot of time lounging around the pool/tv/bar doing nothing? Or are you at the other end of the spectrum, spending every waking moment taking care of everybody’s everything, except the things that matter to you? Or somewhere in between? How do you prioritize? How should you prioritize? What helps you to stay on track?