How does your schedule look? How many times do we get asked that question in a week? And what is our go to answer? “I’ll have to check.” We are so busy with working and living that we can’t even keep track of how our hours, days and even weeks are planned out.

Our lives seem to be dictated by schedules, we have calendars on our smart phones, wall calendars with children’s activities on them, desk blotters with dates and appointments on them, and some even carry a spiral bound planner with them too. Have you ever walked through the planner section of Office Depot?  There are literally dozens of different types of planners, scheduler, calendars, and myriad ways of trying to keep track of time. The best explanation that I can devise is that because time is such a precious commodity, that we will do everything within our power to conserve, manage, and save time. Here is the cold and bitter truth about time…once it is gone, you will never get it back. We can always make more money, but even the richest man in the world cannot make a single second of time. The best that we can possibly do is to make a careful decision on how we will spend what little precious time we have.

Are you busy? Are you available? Can you come in early? Can we meet later? Can we reschedule? Can we cancel?  The list is never ending. Author Stephan Covey says, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Another anonymous quote says, “Life is too unpredictable to live by a schedule.” We can’t have it both ways, or can we? I believe that if we don’t control our schedule, our schedule will control us.

You have heard that time is the great equalizer, no one has more than anyone else. Regardless of your income, your age, or your health, we all have the same number of hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a year. Each second, 84,600 every day, is all anyone will ever be able to have available, so each tick of the clock is precious and needs to be used to the best of our abilities.

In this section I hope to share with you some ideas and hopefully introduce some new tools that you will find useful in taming this monster we call our schedule.