Today over at She Seeks I’m vlogging about one of my favorite time management tips. Feel free to click over and watch before coming back here to finish reading this post.

I’ll be honest. Time management is an ongoing struggle for me. It’s never been more apparent than it was a few months ago when I found myself running late to a time management seminar while choking down fast food. Ironic, huh?

In the vlog I talk about how keeping an occasional time-log can help you identify where your time is going and help you figure out what’s profitable and what’s not. This is always a good place to start. Managing time is kind of like balancing a budget. You need to figure out where you’re over spending in order to stop the problem.

Here are a few ways keeping a time-log has helped me.

1. It helped me realize how much time was going to the internet and TV. Now, I’m not going to tell you how many hours in my week were being sucked away by one of these forms of technology (it’s just flat embarrassing). But I will tell you that I had no idea until I sat down and calculated it. The DVR had unwittingly become a curse since it freely recorded shows I wasn’t home to watch. Then I would come home and stay up too late watching all of my recorded shows or I would waste a weekend catching up.

Starting now, I am limiting the number of shows I am even allowed to record and the amount of hours I spend on the internet. If you struggle with how much time you waste online, decide up front how much time you want to invest there and set a timer. When it beeps log off. Period. It’s too easy to get caught up in perusing Facebook profiles or reading blogs. Or (let’s be honest) even shopping.   

2. It made me mindful of interruptions. I learned a lot in the time management class I went to, but there was one point that was more powerful for me than the rest. Marcia Ramsland pointed out that things like emails, text messages and Facebook notifications are interruptions in my day. The downside of being so readily accessible is that people feel like they should be able to get your attention right away and have you drop whatever you are doing. I was literally wasting hours in my day checking email, replying to texts and answering my phone when I was in the middle of something else. I was never finished and always frustrated.

Now, I sit down and reply to emails once or twice a day for 30 minutes to an hour and I don’t answer email on the weekends. I reply to email when it fits in my schedule. I also don’t check every text or voice message as it comes in. I wait until I have time to read/listen and respond. If someone leaves me a message and they need something urgent and I don’t have time for a long conversation, I send a short text message with the answer they need. That way they get their info and I get my time.

If the call isn’t urgent, I return it when I have time to talk. I also don’t hesitate to send a call to voicemail if I’m in the middle of doing something else—even if it happens to be relaxing. I don’t have a lot of downtime in life and I wouldn’t have any if I always picked up my phone.

3. It caused me to evaluate what really was worth doing. I get asked to volunteer a lot of my time to many good ministries and causes. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time to do it all. When a new opportunity comes along that I would really love to take advantage of I have to sit down and analyze the fruitfulness of my existing volunteer work. Am I wasting a lot of time in meetings that don’t accomplish anything? Are some of the activities really social gatherings disguised as ministry? Is what I am contributing effective and resulting in the overall growth of the ministry?

Sometimes I’ve had to step back from an existing commitment because it was no longer working or never really did to begin with. Prayerfully (and I emphasize that) stepping down from something that is wasting your time can be a great way to find time for a new opportunity that will be much more fruitful and productive.

These are just a few ways using a time-log has helped me. How do you evaluate how effectively you are spending your time when you get too busy or feel stressed?

I would love to hear your thoughts.