Unschedule your life
October 27, 2007
The concept of unscheduling essentially means making sure you have time to do what you want to do: don’t schedule work, schedule free time.
I’ve used a concept similar to this at work. I’ve found that when I get particularly bogged down with projects I have to schedule time to, well, work. I’ll block off chunks of my day with, “Work on print ads for X client”. If I don’t do this I tend to get bombarded with meeting requests leaving only a half hour or so between meetings and that’s hardly enough time to dig into an assignment.
The same idea applies to free time. If you want to make sure you have some, you have to schedule it like you would anything else and stick to it. You wouldn’t cancel an appointment with you boss. Don’t cheat yourself out of your personal time.
It took me a while to realize that when someone asked me to do something during time I’d schedule for something personal, I wasn’t being dishonest by saying, “I’m not available during that time.” In fact, I was doing myself (and my family) a disservice by not sticking to my (un)schedule.
What do you think? Will you consider unscheduling your time? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments.
LivSimpl
