The Value of Schedules & Routines

I remember as a kid when I had infinite free time during the summer.  I also remember getting infinitely nothing done during that same summer, and many other summers just like it.  While this was fun (I did get a lot of reading and game playing in after all), it didn't exactly speak to accomplishing any larger goals in life.  I have come to believe that for most human beings, outside of those mythical "always motivated, always happy" Unicorn people, the following is true:

"Given infinite free unstructured time, one will infinitely accomplish nothing."

 This is not to say I hate free time - quite the opposite is true in fact.  I love and adore my free time!  But I have found I need to add structure to my life so that I know when I am taking my free time, it is because I have accomplished all of the other things I have set out to do.  This way I can enjoy my free time with a clean conscious, knowing that there isn't a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, neglected kids, an unwritten chapter (or blog post!), or a pile of bills lurking behind me, shaking their head in bitter disappointment while I goof off.

So, what to do?  The answer is easy, you get yourself a schedule.  And in that schedule, you make sure to build in some free time.  You organize your time.  There have been a ton of different approaches to this subject, some quite popular, but for me I have found that simple is often better.  I don't want to get bogged down reading a book, then initiating a twenty-one step program just to remind myself to write in the morning, and pick the girls up on time.  There was a time I was trying out the various Weekly Planners, of which there were some small cults built around in the late 90s (ala Franklin-Covey and others).  I found that I would be great for a week, then after two or three it would lay untouched in the bottom of my bag.  The problem I found with those systems is that they required too much upkeep.  Everyday you had too refer to the planner, check your 12 Habits for Effective People List, drink the Cool-Aid, and do your Pilates.

My approach is a little different, and a lot simpler.  I thought long and hard about what are the things I needed to actually keep on my radar and track, and how I should be organizing my time.  I realized that almost everything fell neatly into two large categories.

1. Weekly Routines:  The stuff that happens every week, whether you want it to or not.  Dropping the kids off at school, Game Night, Dance Practice, and so on.
2. Calendar Events:  Non-periodic events that are important to the whole family.  Spouse trips, friends visiting from out of town, special events, deadlines for large projects.

Once I realized this, it got a lot easier to figure out how to best manage my time.  I went with what I am calling the Standard Template Time Schedule (STTS), which is basically a weekly schedule for me to deviate from when needed.  Version one, carefully crafted from artisan colored pencils, looks like this:

As you can see, I have blocked out large sections of time for the routine activities I have committed to doing in my life.  I wanted to paint the canvas of my time with a broad brush at first, and then refine later.  The Post-It notes are for the pick up times for my daughters, as my eldest has a pretty wacky schedule that changes from semester to semester.  I purposefully left the weekends blank, as this is often when we go on trips, have events, or simply have free time.  

Is this schedule perfect?  Is this organizational approach revolutionary?  Most likely no on both counts, but I can tell you that it is simple enough to work, and easy to modify and improve.  Those to qualities give me confidence that by version four or five, we will be ready to ship this to customers.  ;)

Next post I will talk about how I incorporate STTS with my Sprint Buckets.  Its all very technical, I can assure you.