Diagnosing Your Time Management Habits

Welcome to the first post in our #ptmclass – the free productivity and time management (PTM) workshop that I’m co-hosting with Kayla Blogs and Dani Dearest! For the month of October, Kayla, Dani, and I will be improving our productivity and time management together and help you do the same. This week is our “prep week,” where we set you up for success by talking about taking stock, getting inspired, and setting goals. Today is all about that first step – figuring out where your starting line is.

They say the first step to getting better is admitting you have a problem.

Well, I have a time-management problem.

Sometimes I do too much. Sometimes I do too little. Sometimes I try to cram a week’s worth of assignments into three days, and sometimes I spend all week working on a four-page paper that I could crank out in two hours. The point is, I could do better.

So what do you do after you admit you have a problem? You take stock.

You wouldn’t start a fitness regimen without weighing yourself, or seeing how long you can hold a plank. In the same way, you should enter any kind of self-improvement program with an understanding of where you are. Since the focus of our workshop is improving productivity and time management, we need to understand how we spend our time in order to get started. So we’re setting you up with a worksheet to track your time. If you want to join us, your homework is to download it and fill it out.

This week, write down how you really spend your time. Did you watch Netflix between classes? Did you spend your evening hanging out with friends, only to work until 3:00 AM to finish your paper in time? Write it all down. There’s no judgement here, and you won’t “turn this in” to anyone but yourself. We just want you to be your best, and in order to do that, you need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

What are you going to do with this information? Well, after we get inspired with Kayla on Wednesday and set some goals with Dani on Friday, we’ll be comparing how we spent our week to how we would like to spend our week. This assessment will come in handy all month long, so make sure you do your best to be accurate and honest when you fill it out.

Summary: You can only improve if you know where you’re starting. Prep week is about just that.

Homework: You can download the worksheet here: Sara Laughed PTM Diagnosis.

Next up: On Wednesday, Kayla will be talking with us about how to get inspired for a great month. Visit her post here!