How Using 168 Can Eliminate Your Time Management Stress

How often do you feel that your day is jammed packed?  Each minute is filled with an activity.  At the end of the day your “to-do” list still has at least 10 items on it.  You fall into bed thinking – tomorrow will be better  – it HAS to be!

Many of my clients come to me trying to figure out how fit more “stuff” into their schedule.  They are busy, busy, busy all day long – yet still aren’t able to work on their “high priority” tasks.  Plus, they are feeling more and more and more anxious, stressed and uncomfortable as the week goes on.

The solution – use 168.

• Make a list of every area  you want to spend time on each week.
  • Work
  • Travel
  • Eating
  • Physical Activity
  • Relaxation
  • Family
  • Big Goals / Projects
  • Sleeping
  • Volunteer
  • Spiritual
  • More
  • More
  • More
  • More
  • More
• Now assign the number of hours you want to devote to each area each week.
• Add up these estimates
• Subtract this number from 168 (the number of hours in a week).

What did you find?  Many of my clients find that their number is MUCH higher than 168 – so once they subtract, they have a negative number!  No wonder they “can’t get everything done”.  Until we master the time space continuum (Ok – I’m a Big Bang Theory junkie – and I’m not sure I used that correctly!!!) we must confine our activities to 168 hours each week.

If your number is above 168, you have a number of options (delegating, deleting, splitting categories up for every-other week attention . . .) to make the numbers “work”.  Regardless of the process you use, you MUST go back to each category and adjust the number of hours you want to devote to the category until you can equal 168.

Start today by creating a realistic view of your week!  I promise the “I’m so busy, uneasy, anxious” feeling with start to disappear.

NOTE:  Since I first wrote this post, a motivated and brilliant entrepreneur blogged about his journey on the 168 path.  For more information on  how 168 helped this particular professional excel on  his time management, check out Gabe Arnold’s post.

It’ your turn!  Is your number over or under 168?  What do you do when you start to feel your days become “jam packed”?

Looking for a resource?

When you need to achieve long lasting changes you need a fresh perspective and an experienced coach.

I’ve created the Magic 168 Action Guide to help walk you through this process.  It’s my gift to you – because this “I’m so busy feeling” is NO FUN!  This guide gives you a framework for the steps I outlined above so you can easily take action toward successfully planning your week. You can do this!