Before covering time management (in the next post), I would like to stress that a quick and easy way to find time would be to cut some of my activities out. Well, I am not talking about “me” time, here. As already mentioned several times, this one had shrunk dramatically lately; there is not much left to trim (except for some sleep time, but that would be a bad idea). I am not referring to my job-related work either. Of course, I would like to keep what belongs to my job at work, and equally important, during normal work hours. However, I am at a step in my career when this is simply not possible; my work hours have nothing “normal” about them (i.e. not the typical 8-hour workday). Instead, what I could do is to reduce my “CogitActive” time even further.
“Wait a second. You want to reduce your ‘CogitActive’ time to save time in order to have CogitActive back on track. What a nonsense!”
No, what I have in mind has to do with this blog – an outgrowth of CogitActive in reality (see Where to start?)! More specifically, I could change my posting schedule. An old chestnut, right! Keeping up with the demand of a weekly publication schedule (i.e. every Thursday for this blog) is quite challenging indeed. One option could be to post fortnightly instead. This would significantly ease my workload.
An even more drastic approach would be to stop posting altogether. When I walked into this podcasting adventure, I didn’t plan on having a blog (among many other things, to be honest). In fact, in Why a podcast?, I explained why I chose podcasting as a content-delivery medium over blogging or vlogging. I also acknowledged – back then – that I was not a natural-born blogger. Unfortunately, this statement remains accurate 176 posts later. Besides, writing in a foreign language is not easy, and what is more a time-consuming, task. I am neither a natural-born blogger nor a native English speaker, for that matter.
Therefore, in keeping with prioritization (a key topic that will be covered in my next post about time management techniques), I could stop working on this blog to free some time and use this how-needed extra time to work on my podcast instead. However, this would be an admission of failure. Moreover, as already alluded to once, even though I am running out of time, I am not short of writing material.
To sum up, either option would allow me to save a substantial amount of time. However how tempting they might be, I don’t want to go that way (either way, in fact). I worked so hard to keep up with my weekly publication schedule that I am nowhere close to giving up now. Therefore, I have no other choice but to optimize my time and be as productive as possible; hence, my inquiry about time management.
I wanted to provide reassurance that CogitActive remains fully committed to serving you with the highest levels of quality.Alexandre Seillier
Next week: Time management