“Am I doing this right?” is a question I often find myself asking. By ‘this’, I mean life. More specifically: time. Am I using my time wisely? Am I doing what I ‘should’ be doing? Am I wasting my time, and thus my life?
I thought these were likely unanswerable questions until I came across Sarah Stewart, a time management coach based in Glasgow who offers a ‘time audit’ service. In an hour-long video call, she goes through exactly where your time is going and helps to set you up to consciously curate your days.
I had a chat with Stewart for a feature on eradicating my time guilt, which you can read in the November 2023 issue of Stylist magazine, but the conversation ended up being so beneficial that I couldn’t fit in everything I learned. So, I’ve recapped six of the biggest lessons from the session – and the ensuing ‘tester’ week of the ideal time-blocked, colour-coded schedule that Stewart created for me, along with the changes I’m making as a result.
I’m embracing the concept of ‘seasons’
Before digging into the specifics of my day, Stewart brought up the concept of ‘seasons’.
“We need to make sure we know what’s important in this season of life,” she explained, encouraging me to decide what I want to focus on for the next few months. The key message of this? We can’t do everything, at least not all at once. Instead, it’s best to get specific about what’s important for now, knowing that you can have a different priority in a different ‘season’.
What that looks like for me right now is realising that my focus is on writing fiction… so it can’t also be on maximising my fitness, learning a new language and writing a non-fiction book. One focus at a time, one focus for a season, with the knowledge that once one season is over, I can move on to a new one with a new focus.
I’m giving up always being early
Before our call, Stewart asked me to fill out a detailed questionnaire listing out what I do day-to-day in my usual schedule. As part of this, I wrote that I cycle into the office twice a week, and the journey takes 40 minutes. When I then looked at the schedule Stewart had created for me, I spotted that it told me to leave for work at 8am… a full half an hour later than I was setting off before.
Seeing this laid out plainly on screen made me realise where I’d been going so wrong. For the past year, I’ve berated myself for not waking up earlier and working on fiction before work… but every in-office day, rather than writing for 20 minutes, I’d been leaving the house at 7.30am, arriving at work far earlier than my 9am start. Why? No clue. Stewart reminded me that if fiction really is a priority, I need to be conscious about making time for it – and to stop giving up that time in pursuit of being needlessly early.
I started leaving my house at 8am. I still arrived at work on time, and I still got all my work done by the end of the day. There was legitimately no need for me to be getting to work half an hour or more early each day, so I’ve ditched that habit from now on.
I’m not waking up at 5am
In pursuit of productivity and optimisation, I’ve been blasted the message that successful people wake up at 5am from all angles – TikTok, podcasts, books, the lot. I tried waking up at 5am and found myself snoozing well past my multiple alarms, then starting the day off already feeling like a failure.
Stewart’s schedule for me started at 6am, with a matcha in bed and some reading. The schedule managed to pack in everything I wanted to accomplish in a week without the need for a 5am start and an immediate launch into productivity. So I’ve quit the aim of waking up before the crack of dawn – I’ve realised there’s no need for it.
I’m doing something else before scrolling
“People will come home from work and will have given zero thought to what they’re going to do for the six-hour block between then and bedtime,” Stewart notes. “Because we’re not giving that time thought, it just slips away. You fall into the effortless stuff: watching TV, scrolling on your phone – both of which are fine if this is what you had planned to do. But often, it’s time we’re not paying attention to; it’s routine, and we’re on autopilot.”
I am very much one of the people Stewart mentions. But in the time audit call, she said something that’s managed to finally break my automatic scrolling habit: before slipping into an effortless, mindless activity like scrolling, do something effort ful.
“Even if it’s only saying to yourself, OK, I’m going to read for five minutes before I switch on the TV,” she noted. “It’s not saying that you can’t watch TV or scroll on your phone, but it’s all about the intention behind it. If you start with something effortful, you tend to find once you get going, you get into it, and it’s just that initial hurdle of getting started.”
In short, from now on I’ll be interrupting the automatic flow of collapsing on the sofa and scrolling through TikTok. I’ll do something else first, whether it’s reading a book or writing some notes, even if it’s just for five minutes. I’ve noticed Stewart was spot on when she said I’d get into it quickly – every time I’ve done this, I’ve held off on scrolling for at least an hour, and felt much more fulfilled by the time I’ve spent as a result.
I’m time-blocking
Time-blocking is a simple concept that can make such a huge difference. It’s exactly what it sounds like: assigning every task to a specific block of time.
The schedule Stewart created for me breaks the days down into half-hour chunks. At first, I worried this would feel too rigid, but that hasn’t been the case. Instead, slotting my to-do list into dedicated half-hour chunks has made me feel far more in control of my time. My stress levels have dropped and I don’t feel so overwhelmed, because I can see, clearly mapped out, where everything I need to do fits into my week.
I’ll be continuing to time-block both at work and outside of it, with allotted time for everything from washing up to reading magazines, because, as Parkinson’s law states, tasks expand to fill the time you give them.
I’m consciously scheduling in downtime
“Creating a thoughtful plan for your downtime is going to be key,” Stewart told me at the beginning of our call, and she was so right. Before doing the time audit, I often felt like my weekends and evenings disappeared into hours spent lazing on the sofa and doing nothing of worth. And I felt guilty and ashamed for it all.
While doing Stewart’s plan, though, I had multiple windows dedicated expressly for relaxing, whether that was in the form of a ‘leisurely, mindful breakfast’ or reading a book in the garden. Consciously marking out this time, and thus declaring it as important and needed, instantly eradicated any guilt I felt for time spent not being ‘productive’.
The time audit and the resulting schedule made me understand that rest and relaxation are crucial parts of the balanced, purposeful life I want to lead. So, I need to make time for it.
“I believe that rest is important, and this should be intentionally woven into our schedule,” Stewart says. “By planning our time in advance, particularly if we can time-block and colour-code our calendar, we can see at a glance if we have ‘balance’ across the days. It’s never going to be a true balance of work/life, but you might find harmony… and what is important in this season/period/week of your life?”
Images: Getty