Time Management Experiment

Today's post is a little interruption from the crafty goodness I've had on the blog this week. I hope I've given you crafty inspiration to get your creative juices flowing and you can't wait to start making things. For me, when I get creative, I get really creative. There are a hundred possible projects and ideas going through my mind. And this usually happens when I have no time to work on these projects. It's been this way my whole life - I'm the most creative at the busiest times. And these times can get overwhelming real fast because I want to get it all done, and done well.

Lately that's exactly what I've been feeling - overwhelmed. The school year is in full swing and I have so much more work than last year and so much more ambition. So, not only are the teachers asking more of me, I myself am asking more of me this year. And that's the way it should be, really, but thinking about all the work ahead of me, I feel intimidated and a little lost. On top of that, my creative juices are flowing like crazy, ideas are streaming constantly, but I feel I don't have enough time to create the projects.

Feeling overwhelmed usually leads to procrastination. At one point you just give up and do nothing thinking about all the time you don't have, all the project's you can't do, all the work that needs to be done, and so on, and so on. You just don't know where to start. Getting things done seems impossible, so you quit. Sounds familiar?

So, I've decided to take on a little experiment. I've heard and read so much about time management lately, and it got me thinking. What would happen if I organized all my tasks and made a daily plan to get them done. I just read Andi's tips about starting projects and getting things done, and it inspired me to write down all of my tasks and goals for the next month and create a plan to get them done. I used to do to-do lists all the time, but at some point I quit. My main problem was that the lists were never realistic, so in the end I just felt like a failure.

Having this in mind, I'm going to use the last 4 days of this week as a preliminary experiment on time management. I'm creating a list of all the things I want to get done and schedule them into my calendar. At the end of the week I'll see how many things I can realistically get done and can adjust my plan for next week.

I'll try to keep you in the loop on Twitter and Facebook, and of course I'll let you know how my experiment went on Sunday, the last day of the experiment right here on the blog.

Have you ever tried to plan your every day and all the tasks you have? Do you have any advice to share? Or any experiences? Let me know in the comments!