Nathan Key

The time you have on this earth is more valuable than anything else you have in your possession. Manage it just as well (or better) than you manage your wealth.

Make Two Lists

List One: The first list should be a ranking list, 1-20 *whatever number, regarding where actually want to spend your time. Don’t worry about obligations. Just write what you’d actually LIKE to do with your time.

Mine might look something like this:

1. Exercising Faith Practices
2. Hanging with my Family
3. Writing/Blogging
4. Ministry to other Christians
5. Hanging with Friends
6. Learning, Researching, Schooling
7. Work (yes, I actually like working)
8. Gaming
9. Watching LOST and The Office (maybe a movie?)
10. Exercise

List Two: On the next list, outline things that you HAVE to do. These are obligations that you can’t avoid. Don’t forget about things like commuting, sleeping, eating, etc.

Mine might look something like this:

1. Sleep (at least 8 hours)
2. Work (at least 8 hours)
3. Commute (at least 1.5 hours)
4. Putting Ethan to Bed (at least .5 hour)
5. Eating Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner (1 hour)
6. General Readiness like showering and cleaning, etc (.75 hour)

Plan Your Calendar

After you make these two lists, put the activities from List Two on the calendar first. They’re the unavoidable ones so you may as well deal with them.

Then, before you put ANYTHING from List One onto your calendar, try to find a couple spaced throughout the week/month where you can partition some free time. This is simply because you never want to completely fill up your calendar. If you do, two problems will occur- firstly you’ll never have any time that you can share with someone if something comes up, and secondly you’ll always be running up against deadlines or moving toward the next event and, let’s face it, that’s no way to spend life.

Next, begin running through List One and add in activities based on what you thought was most important. If you run out of space in your day before you run out of things that are important you have two choices- you can either scratch them off your list- or you can reprioritize List One so that those things you really wanted to do make it into your schedule.

What If I Run Out Of Room?

Welcome to the real world. There will NEVER be enough time in the day/week/month to do everything. That’s why you were suppose to rank the things that you REALLY wanted to do and put them in first. Anything that falls into Non-essential or Non-priority needs to be something you’re willing to sacrifice.

So, when you run out of room in your calendar and you still have things left over. It’s time to cross them off your list. And when new things come up that you’d like to be a part of- you need to make a decision: Is this new thing worth more to me than something else on my calendar. If it is, cut out one of those other priorities and add the new one. But if it’s not, be willing to say no.

After all, you can’t do everything.

Be OK with it.