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What happens when you are driving and suddenly you are stopped by big orange cones and a detour sign? You have to leave your path for a while before you get to where you’re going. It isn’t the end of the world, and you do eventually arrive.
During our day, we get several detour signs that take us in a different direction with our day. A phone call, an unexpected request, a sick child, and a broken foot are all things that can take us suddenly on the scenic route. These are a normal part of living, and though being organized obviously helps us not feel as frazzled when we go off course, we can’t organize the unexpected. But there are other roadblocks, ones we create ourselves or know about in advance, that we can work on.
Let’s go back to our driving scenario. What if you were on your way to meet a friend for lunch, but your friend, who headed in that direction earlier, texted you before you ever left your house. She let you know that there was a road closed and a required detour. This time, you could plan ahead a different route to take, and your new route took you near the dry cleaners, so you decided to go ahead and drop off clothes on your way to lunch. Your inefficient detour became an opportunity for multi-tasking and making a different part of your day easier. You saved time from having to drive that way twice as well.
There are things we do that create mental speed bumps and roadblocks. The act of doing these things is not such a big deal, but whenever they happen, they force a detour on our time. Paying a bill, writing a birthday card, making a hair or other appointment, and things like that. When we group these time roadblocks and speed bumps together, it saves a lot of the time we were wasting in transition.
This is why I developed what I call my weekly Home Management Session. (I always abbreviate it in my weekly planning as my H.M. Session.) It sounds so official, but really, I just sit down at my little kitchen desk nook and take care of a whole bunch of tasks that I group together to make the rest of my week flow better.
I wrote all about the H.M. Session in a post I wrote last summer called {Change Your Life with: Weekly H.M. Session.} I suggest reading that post for a specific run down of what happens in a Home Management Session.
Last month my first planner I released contains a Home Management Section. {See the Home Management Section of the Home Management Planner.}
This simple idea is one of the ways productive people use their time efficiently and seem to get so much done. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, but there is so much we can learn about making the most of that time.
From my home to yours,
Mary