Assess your schedule to curb stress

If you're over-scheduled, maybe you need to consider how you spend your day.
Oct. 24 was Take Back Your Time Day. I would have written about it sooner, but I ran out of time.
I used the same excuse several years ago when I recognized Get Organized Week several weeks after it happened. I hope I can do better with Stop Procrastinating Day.
Take Back Your Time Day isn't exactly a holiday. It's a national day of recognition supported by a variety of groups concerned with our penchant for over-scheduling ourselves.
Positioned nine weeks before the end of the year, the date is meant to remind us that we work an average of 350 more hours per year (approximately nine workweeks) than people in Western Europe.
While I always find the cross-cultural comparisons interesting, I know of too many people who voluntarily work overtime to assume that an evil boss stands behind every overworker.
Not counting the people who can barely make rent, many of us choose to over-schedule ourselves for reasons that range from ambition to a lack of boundaries to an effort to escape from other situations.
Remember the study of office women in the late 1990s that showed a preference for the relative calm of their workplaces over the disarray of their home lives? Women quoted in the study stayed longer at work to delay returning to a messy house and quarreling kids.
Assessing your schedule
Whatever the reasons -- psychological or financial -- for over-scheduling, it's a good idea to stop the roller-coaster now and then, and decide if you're happy with your use of time. Here are some steps you can take:
U Start by making a list. What would you like to do more often? What long-term goals have you put off starting? Do you crave time in each day simply to relax? If you have trouble making a list, slip a small notebook into your pocket. Each time something pops up that you can't get to, jot it down.
If the page is still blank after a week or two, skip to the next step.
U Now make a second list. What are you doing in a typical day that you'd rather not? What seems to take twice as much time as it should? Answers might include household maintenance chores such as cooking, cleaning and shopping. To make this step more accurate, keep that notebook handy and track your use of time over a week.
U Has work popped up on either of your lists yet? If not, make a separate list for work. What special projects have you not been able to start? What kinds of training or conferences seem impossible to schedule?
Conversely, what parts of your job appear to consume more time than they should?
U Now to solve the problem. Looking at all your lists together: do you see any patterns? For instance, if your irritations center on your job or your house, those are where change is needed. Similarly, if your goals seem to fall into one category -- say to get more training or finish a degree -- then you know your next step: to clear the schedule and start a training program.
Making changes
What if there's no clear pattern and you're not sure how to control your time? Start by freeing up 15 minutes a day. It doesn't matter if you just stare into space with the extra time. Even that simple act could inspire you to greater things.
To find the 15 minutes, go back to your time-wasters list. Can you split up the kid-hauling tasks with another parent at least once a week? Can you double up on an errand or skip it altogether? What if you fixed dinner with what you have at home instead of stopping for takeout?
At work, ask yourself if some of the tasks you've taken on are necessary or even noticed by anyone. Does typing the minutes after a meeting make them more useful than simply photocopying your handwritten outline? Which meetings can you afford to skip, and which reports can you scan instead of reading fully?
The idea isn't to do your job poorly but to identify the essence of your job and first do those parts well. Everything else is extra.
However you solve this time crunch, remember that it is yours to solve. If you think that somebody else is stealing your time, be it boss or child, it's either because you're letting that happen or because you've made a choice that calls for that compromise at this time in your life. So, either change the situation or accept it with grace. It's your call to make.
XAmy Lindgren, the owner of a career-consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn., can be reached at alindgren@pioneerpress.com.