How To Create A Daily Schedule

Scheduling and staying on schedule is not an easy task.

It has been a personal challenge for me balancing my days.

My job wears many hats.

Besides being a business woman, I am also a Mother and wife.

My work days are long, and I don’t have a day off.

I go between working and being a mother, and all that it entails throughout my day.

Besides working on projects that I write for my site, I also need to promote my business.

That means spending lots of time on social media.

And we all know how many social media outlets there are.

It seems like they add a new one every couple of months!

They do have services that offer scheduling for social media, but I still like to do most of my social media organically.

But, I only have so much time in a day.

Oh, and besides this site, and projects, and social media, I also have my shop which is a big part of my business.

I need to shop for pieces that I add to my shop.

This might sound glamorous, but it’s not.

I have been in a dry spell for awhile, searching and searching for treasures and finding nothing.

But in doing all of this, I needed to find a way to stay on schedule.

I was finding myself spending too much time on social media then I had barely enough time to work on a project or write.

And before I knew it, the laundry needed to get done, or dinner needed to be prepared.

I also needed to make sure to give myself time.

I try to workout 5 days a week, and I was skipping workouts because I wasn’t finding the time in my day.

So, I bought myself a dry erase calendar.

I know, I know I am totally old school.

There are many calendar apps, and programs for your computer.

But I like to write out my schedule and view it that way.

I am probably one of the few that has one of those purse calendars.

I know, there is no science to it, but just writing down my day, and scheduling out what I needed to do has been helping me so much.

I needed to be more accountable and aware of the minutes and hours of my day.

Each day goes by faster than the last one.

And, well you know how it is.

You are reading social media, and before you know it, two hours have gone by.

This is how I decided to work my calendar.

First, I added codes to my calendar so I didn’t have to write down each task.

Here are a few samples of some of my codes:

SM=Social Media

BP=Blog Post

WO=Work Out

DT=Dinner Time

C= Clean

This is not all of the codes I created, just a few, but you get the idea.

Then once a month I schedule out each week, and write out my codes and times.

Some of my tasks are not going to be daily tasks.

And there will be days or weeks that changes will happen.

But the idea for creating a schedule is to make myself more aware of how much time I have to work on each task and how many hours I have in a day.

I am one of those people that can start working on one thing, get distracted by another, and then forget what I was doing in the first place.

So keeping a schedule and sticking to it as much as possible is really a must for me.

I really don’t think anyone can work on a schedule and stick to it, hour by hour or day by day.

But it really has been helping me stick to what needs to get done, it keeps me focused on what I need to do and what’s coming up.

If you are thinking that you need to schedule your days here is my advice.

1). Find a calendar that works for you.

If you like to write things down get a dry erase calendar or one that you can print out and dispose.

If you would rather use a program to create a calendar and print it out, there are many to choose from.

2). Don’t stress about staying exactly on schedule. I am using mine as a guide to keep myself on track with what needs to be done each day.

You’re not going to stay on schedule each day or minute by minute, but it will help you manage your time.

3). Think of codes that you can use to schedule out your day. It will make it much easier to write schedule your days, weeks and hours if you use a code, instead of writing it all out.

4). Stick with it.

If you start scheduling but your falling off track, maybe your not giving yourself enough time, or your scheduling things on the wrong days.

As you go along you may have to tweak things a little.

But keep with it, I promise things will get better.

Why is staying on schedule so important?

Well for me, it alleviates some of the stress.

Seeing what my day is , and knowing what I need to get done on a daily basis keeps me from over loading myself with too many tasks.

And it keeps my stress level much lower.

I won’t say stress free, because really, who lives a stress free life.

I don’t know anyone do you?

I’m giving you another challenge, to create a schedule calendar.

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P.S. Here’s a sneak peek at my next project.