I use a diary to keep track of my time. It’s an A5 notebook where I write down everything I need to do every day. And not just writing projects. I include everything I want to do. But nearly every day I discover that things take longer than I thought. Even things I’ve done before many times can often take longer than expected.
And do you know what? It drives me crazy.
The worst thing about it is that if I don’t get everything done, I feel like a failure. I sit there in the evening, diary open, rolling things over to the next day while wondering where all the time went. I begin every day with good intentions, but by midday I’m struggling to keep up.
So now I’ve figured it out. Plan how long it’s going to take to do each thing, then double it. Other things always come up that need doing, like an email that needs a quick response, or a phone call I wasn’t expecting or there’s an issue with a piece of software that needs updating.
Just a couple of days ago, I needed to quickly print a couple of pages, but my computer kept saying that it couldn’t communicate with the printer. I kept retrying it and trying different things, but it wouldn’t print. It took me almost 30 minutes to figure out that the printer software needed updating because of a recent computer update.
So, a job that should have taken 5 seconds ended up taking almost half an hour. This is why a time buffer is needed for everything.
And it starts with knowing how long things actually take, and then you can buffer in extra time.
It’s the only way I know to be able to get everything done, and sometimes even have enough time left for fun.
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