If you find that, having gone through your revised timetable, you have no spare time at all, or that you are having trouble fitting everything in, then you need to take some serious action. Having too much to do, with no time for relaxation, leads to increased stress over a prolonged period this will eventually have a detrimental effect on your health, quality of life and overall well-being.
Start by going through your timetable and highlighting the tasks that other people could easily perform for you. If you are spending too much time looking after other people or doing all the housework yourself, for example, ask other people to give you a hand. Make a rota, if necessary, and allocate household chores to different people. If the people around you sincerely care about you and your well-being, you should find them ready and willing to lend a hand. If you meet with any resistance, however, it will be telling you something loud and clear: people are taking advantage of you! Don’t let them. People who treat you like this are telling you that they respect your time less than their own. So be firm and don’t let them get away with it.
The same goes for your work. If you are overworked and stressed out on a regular basis, you need to tackle your employer about it, or delegate tasks to others if you are self-employed, before things get out of hand. Make sure you start and finish work on time – if you regularly find that you have to work overtime because there are not enough working hours in your day to fit everything in, you are overworked! You must take steps to change the situation, or else the quality of your life – and possibly your health – will be affected.
You will find it much harder to get your finances into shape if you haven’t got the time to spend sorting them out. Remember that time is money, and you need all the time you can find right now.
While you are reorganising your time, this is a good opportunity to tackle all the one-off jobs you have been meaning to do but haven’t managed to get around to doing yet. Take a large sheet of paper and make a list. Include everything, even small things such as oiling a squeaky gate or phoning a friend. The simple act of transferring them from your mind to the paper should be a relief because now you can stop trying to remember them all. If the list looks longer than you expected, don’t be put off. It will soon get shorter.
1. Query £20 bank charge
2. Send back faulty radio
3. Mend hole in curtain
4. Fix bicycle chain
5. Repair garden gate
6. Phone Sonia
7. Phone David
8. Book theatre tickets
9. De-clutter spare room
10. Decorate hallway
11. Book holiday
When your list is complete, assess each task and decide if doing it is in fact worthwhile or necessary. If you have any doubts about it or believe that it is not really worth doing, then don’t waste any further time on it. Simply delete it. Alternatively, if you decide that it does need to be done and that someone else could do it for you, then delegate it to that person. When you have done this, reorganise the remaining tasks in order of priority by giving each one a number. Allocate number 1 to the most urgent job, number 2 to the next urgent, 3 to the next, and so on, until you have worked your way through the list.
Now go back to your timetable. Make sure you have allocated a regular time each week to do these tasks. You don’t need to allow a large chunk of time to do them all in one go: simply allocate, say, two hours each week, and do as many of these jobs as you can in that two-hour slot. Work through the tasks in numerical order, starting with the most urgent, and cross them off as you complete them. Whichever tasks are left at the end of the two hours should be carried forward to the next block of two hours the following week. If you have a job that requires a longer period of time, such as redecorating a room, you will need to allow some separate time for this. The main thing to remember is that your two-hour slot should be used to clear up all those small, niggly jobs that have been hanging around for a long time. Make it a habit to spend two hours each week catching up on them and you will start to feel more in control of your time and your life in general.
