Book/ References on time management/organization

[MegaCarp]

Okay gents/ladies,

I know I've been asking 'overhaul' questions lately, but here's a big one because its the biggest struggle I have. Time management has been my enemy for a long time. I have used time management to make excuse for not exercising, cooking proper meals, or even meeting devotion times or 'scheduling' fun.

As a second spear to this is organization, as I realize how much time I lose looking for things or collecting things all about because they've been strewn 'to and fro'. I also wonder if proper organization allows for better performance in regards to health, temperament, and overall well being.

So if any of you know good references/books, let me know. I'm just trying to get myself on total track.

[Raincloak]

As with food, a good way to start changing your habits is by spending a week or so measuring what you actually do with your time right now. Try breaking the day into half-hour increments (9:00-9:30 am, 9:31-10:00 am, etc.) and logging what you did with each half hour (if you did more than one thing in that half hour, write that down). Obviously, you don't have to write every half hour when you're sleeping, but note the time you went to bed and the time you got up.

If you spend a lot of time on the computer, you can download software that will track how much time you spend on various applications. You might be surprised.

Give this a try and see what you learn. Then you can worry about managing what you've got

[Sanjh]

I'm a fan of Cal Newport's Red Book. http://www.calnewport.com/books/howtobecome.html

It's college student oriented, and heavily based on that fact, but it has a good system for time management that can generalized fairly well.

[tasty`]

I'm a fan of Cal Newport's Red Book. http://www.calnewport.com/books/howtobecome.html

It's college student oriented, and heavily based on that fact, but it has a good system for time management that can generalized fairly well.

yea great book, as a college student(i am one) the time management system is awesome, I can see how the autopilot system he suggests would be useful for those outside of college as well.

check out his blog he has a lot of time management tips that are great

http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/04/07/monday-master-class-how-to-reduce-stress-and-get-more-done-by-building-an-autopilot-schedule/

thats the auto-pilot schedule^

[Oogiem]

OTime management has been my enemy for a long time. I have used time management to make excuse for not exercising, cooking proper meals, or even meeting devotion times or 'scheduling' fun.

I'll put a plug in for GTD, the David Allen way to handling what you do and how you manage your time and life as a whole. Not strictly "time management" It's more whole life management. You can join GTD Connect for a free trial, lots of forums and help there. The difference for me is that the splitting of things to do into reasonable contexts where I can actually get them done makes the lists more manageable. For me my huge gains came when I included all the fun things as well as all my work things and maintenance stuff as well.

Managing your time well is only useful if you are using your time to to the things that matter to you. The higher levels of GTD help you figure out that higher purpose and longer term stuff as well as how to handle the nitty gritty of just getting stuff done day to day in a relaxed and efficient fashion.

I'm OogieM over on GTD forums as well.

Books are Getting Things Done, Making it all Work and Ready For Anything all by David Allen. I've learned more each time I re-read them.