How to effectively manage your time

During an exercise in one of our recent zoom meetings with our youth group from church, we were instructed to write down our schedules. The next step was to write down our values which ranged from family, spiritual life, friendship, purpose etc… Once those two steps were completed, we were tasked with comparing the schedule we wrote down against the things we claimed to value. This interesting exercise quickly exposed how much having full schedules didn’t necessarily equate to living a rich and purposeful life that was in accordance with the things we valued most.   

Having this visual helped us to realize that we have the power to be more intentional about our schedules. For most of us, family is one of our top values but quality time with them doesn’t always make it to our scheduled list of priorities. Somehow however, we fit in 2 hours of TV each day of the week. Coming to terms with this fact helps us to be more intentional about reducing television consumption to 10 hours a week, hence freeing up 4 hours that can be allocated to a weekly game night with the family. 

Outfit details:

Dress: ZARA (old) – similar here
Heels: PRETTYLITTLETHING – sold out – similar options here
Bag: KATE SPADE (ON SALE!)
Sunglasses: RAY BAN
Necklace: ADORNIA

Being aware of how we spend our time is the first step to managing it more effectively by rescheduling, restructuring and shifting as necessary. As our lives change, this process will need to consistently and constantly be tweaked. To easily maximize every hour of the day, we can start by eliminating small segments of distraction that turn into hours of busyness with no productivity to show for it. 

Case in point, Sunday evenings are usually my “let me relax before the week starts” time. To make better use of my time however, I was able to carve out the time to plan my blog posts for the month which sets me up for being able to share a blog post a day with you guys for the month of July. I didn’t magically have more time in my day, but I simply sacrificed hanging out and relaxing (and Instagram scrolling) to plan out the month and it’s so worth it. Which reminds me, let me go set a daily reminder for me to take my vitamins. I seem to always forget that… 

What changes are you implementing to make the second half of this year more productive? I encourage you all to try this exercise of comparing your schedule to your values and let’s win at time management this week.