While I can judge time fairly well when I am attentive to time passing, I tend to lose track of time when involved in something, as well as being a procrastinator. (Are you?) I have figured out ways to deal with this over the years.
I check my email once a day in the late afternoon. The exception to this rule is when I am expecting an email and it is not there or if I send out an email - new or as a reply - and expect an answer. I have several email accounts. Most of them start with my initials and then have something special to the reason for the account. I have a main account for my family and my accounting clients and my friends. I have one for each organization I belong to. I have one that I use for accounting for the various government notices I need to get. (Have I mentioned that I am an accountant, but not a CPA?) I have one that I use for my husband so we can send each other things. I have one for the crafts business my husband and I have. I also have one that is without one of my initials which can confuse people by sound, so I use this one if I have to give my email by telephone so there is no confusion. I also have an email for my online groups and such and one which I give to and contact stores and such with to keep same from my other email. Separately, as they are not technically my emails - I have one for a client who does not use a computer and has things which need to be done online that I do for her, and one each for 2 organizations I am involved in for the organizations themselves which I check for the group. Yes, that is a lot of emails. I use a software program which will check all of them at once. Any junk mail is deleted at once when I check my email. If I am traveling I will check email by going to the website of my email provider and I will only check the ones I need to check . Similarly using this system, if I have limited time I can just check the relevant email addresses and save time or just recheck the email addresses I am looking for an email from. So email time is fairly limited and organized.
I don’t have Facebook (which I have almost no presence on) or yahoo groups or other social media emailed to me. I go to the sites at my chosen times and check the sites then. This way I don’t find the entire afternoon was used up following something when I should have been doing something else. I like cartoons, for example, and read several strips online. I go Monday night and read the strips at their websites rather than receiving them daily which would waste needed time. Of course sometimes Monday is Tuesday if something is happening on Monday and I don’t have time or sometimes they continue into Tuesday, occasionally even Wednesday, if I run slow on reading them. But I choose the time I will spend online on all of this and when I will spend that time so that I do not lose my focus to do other things.
When I am working at tasks, such as my afternoons working on the computer, I often forget to check the time - yes, it is right in front of me on the computer, but I still forget. I also forget to do little things like make needed phone calls, take out chopped turkey to defrost for dinner as well as stuff I don’t want to do - the laundry, the garbage, etc. I use my computer and my cell phone to help me with this. I have a calendar program which syncs with my cell phone (more or less, but I will wax ecstatic over my software and how I juggle things to make it sync in some later post). I set reminders to remind me when it is time to do something. I have a reminder which goes off at 6:45 pm to remind me to start getting ready to shut down and go make dinner. I then back up what I have been working on and my calendar and sync my calendar with my cell, at least in theory. In real life, I usually reset the alarm for 7pm and then possibly even 7:15 pm. I have an alarm set to go off weekly on the day we usually have burgers for dinner to remind me to defrost the meat for same. I have a weekly reminder to do the laundry, one to take the garbage out, one to change the towels, one to change the bedding, etc. No, I don’t have alarms go off for everything just things which are time sensitive during the day. Something like “Laundry” it is enough it is listed for the day as I will see it and remember. One of my reminders, set for daily, is “Check blogsite” to see if any of you have left me comments which need to be moderated and, hopefully, posted (I really would like some more of these - feel free to comment), as well as one to remind me to post. Does everything get done because it is scheduled to be done - of course not. Sometimes it is done on a different day, sometimes I just delete the reminder as I have a reason for not doing whatever it is which is scheduled.
It is not a perfect system, but it helps remind me of what I have to do and prod me to do it. What do you do to keep on schedule and stop procrastinating?
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