Time structuring involves setting the time, duration and sequence of events in a day. There are several benefits to time structuring:
• By setting a schedule via time structuring, you ensure that you have the free time you need to avoid burn out in addition to working on critical activities. This prevents a 40 hour work week from creeping up to a 60 hour work week.
• You can schedule social interaction and quality time to work on relationships instead of hoping for relationships to remain strong through occasional social activities. Planning one dinner with friends per month or visits with extended family help you reconnect and recharge while preventing resentment from perceived neglect.
• Time structuring can reduce stress. By setting aside time for important activities and urgent activities, unimportant but frequent activities are constrained to specific parts of the day. Limiting emails and checking voice-mails to set times, they do not interrupt important and urgent activities. This lessens the stress of multiple perceived demands on time and attention.
• If you plan the time for a long term investment in yourself such as reading material for learning, you are more likely to do so. For example, scheduling an hour a week to review your finances reduces the risk of unpaid bills or bounced checks. Planning a 15 minute window each morning for meditation ensures that you take this time for yourself.
• Rushing around to find friends because you suddenly have free time can result in an evening alone or with strangers. Setting specific dates and times for social activities simplifies the logistics and makes it more likely all desired parties can attend.
• Planning free time ensures that you will maintain strict limits on intrusion into that free time such as pages or phone calls from work. This improves the quality of the free time. After all, you’ve already planned when you’ll be at work and when you’ll be at play.
• With time structuring, you can select activities that can server a combination of purposes. For example, combining exercise time with family time creates a family walk. Planning to read while working out on the treadmill can double the value of the time.
• The reply of “maybe later” becomes a passive refusal posing as an affirmative. By saying “maybe later”, we postpone the decision for something that may never happen. With time structuring, “maybe later” is replaced with “not now, but let me see when on my calendar”. The ability to set a date and a time improves the confidence others have in your answer of “later”.
