Chapter 6 – Mastering Time and Space

I suggest you begin by making a list of all the things that take up significant amounts of time in your week. It’s good to use a spreadsheet program if you have one; you’ll want to add columns after the task names. Don’t try analyzing it all on the spot. At this point, if you don’t have a couple hours now, then look at some activity you can skip just this once, to make time to review and make decisions. This is a powerful Order spell and lays the groundwork for much of the more advanced tasks, so take your time on this and enjoy it. Once you can open up a window of time, you’ll be able to go deeper without feeling as anxious or guilty.

When you have made your list, add one column named Importance, one column named Urgency, one column named Time Used and one column named Flexible. In the Importance column, rate each activity as A, B or C. In the Urgency Column rate each as High, Med or Low. In the Time Used indicate approximate hours and use decimals when appropriate. The Flexible column is intended to distinguish tasks between fixed times and ones that can be done more quickly as desired. For example, family movie night is fixed according to the length of the movie. Making dinner, however, can take as little as ten minutes or as much as three hours depending on what you choose to cook.

The diagram on the following page will illustrate what I mean. You may also download an Excel copy at my facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/846270103358218.

I created this chart to approximate a typical schedule of a single adult. If this is prepared in a spreadsheet format, the rows can be sorted by any column so that you can lump the flexible and/or nonurgent items together. This will help you decide, if you are feeling too busy or out of control, which items you wish to spend less time on. I did not realize, until I had completed this exercise, how much time was unaccounted for! If your results are the same, you’ll want to rethink how you spend your week. It may even be useful for you to spend time one week, at the end of the day, to log your daily activities and then do the math once the week is over to give you a more complete picture.

Once you have performed this exercise, you will probably be able to find enough flexibility in your schedule to work in weekly planning and budgeting. You will discover that taking these steps helps you to intelligently make decisions which will both save you time and money going forward. Take a deep breath; a better future awaits!

Order Mages use spell books, and the stereotypical ones are very large, leather bound, and usually quite dusty! I have several, figuratively speaking, but my primary one is quite small and wire bound. It is my daily planner. Using a daily planner and staying organized is a key component of living an orderly life, but by itself is not nearly enough. Once your weekly tasks are scheduled, you should be able to plan a time slot for further reflection.  One danger I urge you to avoid is to settle on a five-minute planning time just throwing the obvious few tasks into your calendar. Anything that is so near to your consciousness that you can drum it up so easily is something you won’t forget to do even if you don’t plan ahead. Take your time when filling out your calendar and have fun with it. Cast a spell. Perform a ritual. Do it thoroughly. A good idea is to brainstorm for the first ten minutes writing down everything you would like to do. Then, group them for efficiency. For example, if you need to go to the bank, buy groceries, hit the post office and fill your gas tank, see if you can plan to do them all at once. If so, you’ll save time and gas! Then add one more item, a fun item as a reward for being so efficient.

There is a caveat to bring up here (wizards love latin words!). It can be very tempting to get the urgent tasks done in the upcoming week, and allow the nonurgent items to wait until the following week. If you do this regularly, you’ll never get the nonurgent done because next week will have additional urgencies to prioritize. I suggest that you focus on the urgent items in the first half of the week. Then when you have finished what MUST get done, turn and do the LEAST urgent items toward the end of the week. The semi-urgent items can become the urgent items a week later.

Now, the next time you are able to set aside enough time to go beyond your short-term weekly commitments, sit down and start listing the longer term goals which you probably have been procrastinating on. Common examples are a doctor’s appointment, an oil change, a car wash, hiring a contractor for that little repair job, calling your Aunt Mary and cleaning out your basement. Take your time with that list. You can probably rattle off three or four items off the top of your head, but think a bit more deeply. It’s not as much use to schedule four tasks when you can schedule eight. Many are not very time consuming and I suggest you schedule those first. Once you see yourself succeeding at getting more done, the larger, more intimidating tasks will not seem so difficult.

Here is where the fun begins. When you do this exercise, you’re peering into the future! This is a divination tool with a higher rate of success than any I’ve heard of. When you do your weekly planning, based on what you know by personal experience, there is a high probability that your week will turn out largely as you expect. This is another benefit of the orderly world we live in. In fact, the more orderly your life becomes, the more accurate your predictions of your future will be. Of course, your vision will never be perfect. “Ever in motion is the future,” as Yoda said in The Empire Strikes Back. If the great Jedi master could admit to imperfect prediction, then, as an Order Mage, good company you are in!

As to the method, there are various computer programs which enable planning using an online calendar. I cannot recommend any, as I am still addicted to the black wire-bound daily planner! Whatever works best for you is obviously the optimal choice. I suspect that after experiencing the benefits of the first week with all your reminders and daily goals in place, you will want to keep your weekly habit of planning permanently. I will add this side note, though. I find that unless there is a pressing matter and I can’t avoid it, it works better for me to leave Sundays unscheduled. The opportunity of having a day to relax after a productive week is better for my mental health than trying to keep going incessantly.

Once you have begun to do weekly planning, you should experience the benefits almost immediately. One royal benefit is that, when you have planned time to relax, you can truly relax! Knowing that anything that needs to get done is already scheduled, you can lose that uneasy feeling of I should really be doing something productive! This is a wonderful benefit. However, angst and guilt don’t always go away so easily. For example, you might have ten to-do items on a day’s list, but only accomplish seven of them. Don’t feel bad – without a list at all you might have only done five. Anyway, in order to prevent the other three from slipping through the cracks, you need to sit down at the end of the day and move the unfinished tasks to a future day. This will close the loop, leaving fewer tasks forgotten. Enjoy the feeling of productivity and control that this gives you!

You will gain a similar benefit from entering monthly, seasonal and annual tasks to your planning medium. Paying monthly bills, quarterly estimated taxes, registration renewals, oil changes, seasonal yard tasks, remembering birthdays and anniversaries are all items which can ideally be included in your planner. The more the merrier, in a case like this!

So much for your mastery of Time. That is only one dimension of your existence. You also have the power to master Space - your personal space. If you are like many, your home and desk are cluttered with papers and other things you will never need, as well as dust that is not good for your lungs. Organizing your space is almost as important as organizing your time. How much time do you spend looking for things simply because they were not in a designated spot to begin with? The nice thing about ordering your property is that you only have to do this once, then make sure everything gets put away by the end of the day. This may include cleaning out your car. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to say, “excuse the mess,” every time you have a passenger? A good rule of thumb is this: have items that are frequently used close at hand, and store things you don’t use often in labeled boxes or drawers. If you can take a day off and organize your things, you will be glad you did a hundred times later on. As they used to say, “a stitch in time saves nine.”

Another key to space management is making the often hard choice to discard items that you will never need. It is usually possible to add another file cabinet or drawer to your home, and used ones are quite affordable. However, the other side of the equation, removing unneeded junk, is equally beneficial. You may have arrived at your first college dorm with only a suitcase, but by now you may have a basement full of stuff that might never be touched except by your heirs! The more you can discard or give away, the freer you will be. You’ll have more storage space for items of actual value and your living space need no longer be so cluttered.  Now, to transfer this from abstract principle to concrete reality, you need to do two things. First, set aside a day to clean up, throw out or put away everything that you do not use on a daily basis. I like to set aside January 1^st for this task. It is a nice quiet day for me when I can work at home uninterrupted.

Secondly, make it a daily or at least weekly task to go through your junk mail and any other items that have accumulated. If this is not a habit it will not stick. Put it on your calendar, make it a recurring event and do it. You’ll be glad you did! Junk mail accumulation is rampant in my neighborhood, and I suspect just about everywhere else as well. If you can recycle it, please do, but if not, throw it out! Furthermore, it is a good eco-friendly practice to get on the phone or visit the website of the junk mailers and ask to be removed from the mailing lists in the first place. Again, a stitch in time saves nine. You will save yourself dozens of junk mailings in the future as well as save a few trees over time.

Even if you work the powerful magic of cleaning out all the junk in your possession, you may still find space to be a tight commodity. One often-overlooked asset is wall space. Shelves and hanging bars may be mounted on walls or on the inside of doors to provide places for numerous items. Many of these items can be found very cheaply at discount stores.

Kitchen space is in a class all by itself. There is so much to deal with I have always let my partner decide where everything goes! One thing I can recommend, however, is that it is a great idea to have a variety of sized plastic storage containers. You should find quite a range of them on the shelves of your local supermarket. Not only do they make food storage easy and space-saving, they can also be used over and over again and reduce the problem of disposable plastic bags ending up polluting the environment.