Dear LPG, 

I am one of those people who always seems to need more hours in the day.   Now that I look back to all the anticipation of this extra time that I was going to have having reached the retirement milestone, I find it surprising because I always thought that retirement was the time of life when those who experienced their version of its effects got to understand the ultimate meaning of rest. But now that I am well into mine, we either have too much or too little time on our hands in reality.   

It did not take much time after my last day at work to work out that even with all the time that I did not spend there, I still needed to do a bit of short-term planning if I was going to fit all the things I wanted to get done into my new schedule.  There was chaos for a while, but my then seven-year-old granddaughter gave me one of those cheap, very colourful, but invaluable presents I never knew I needed and which put so much into perspective for me.  

My busy daily agenda suddenly became guided by the skill of my writing hand and the many Post-it notes I was given that day. I started leaving little notes for myself, and things were suddenly much more straightforward.    

I have gone down the time-planning route before, and diaries are good. Still, you have to remember to open them and separate the things you need to do from the ones you have done; no matter how big the wall calendar, I don’t seem to be able to fit separate notes for all the things I need to do into the little square allotted to each day.    I have a mobile phone, and I have just managed to find the electronic diary app, but that is a master class that I have not graduated from, and it will be a while before I can trust that what I put into it will stay where I put it.

So, I have got myself a particularly big calendar, and I find that sticking what I have to do in the appropriate daily squares works well. If you have to change the planned time, you can re-stick without all those rubbings and crossings out. The whole thing stays much neater and easier to read.  

 
Using different colours to indicate the priority of the tasks helps. I have one colour for things I need to be done immediately, another for ongoing tasks that you must do regularly, and yet another for things that have to be done but not immediately, etc.

A word of warning, though: Don’t duplicate them. That can lead to a new kind of time-schedule chaos, so throw any that you find two of away (because there are bound to be a few, and they will just confuse you). Finally, once you have achieved what it says on the label, throw them away, or you will get overrun with them.

I am getting better at using electronics, and though I have not yet mastered my online diary, the principle is similar in as much as when you change your mind about what day you are going to be able to fit a particular task in, moving it does not leave a messy mark behind.  The problem is that I still need to correct things. I have a long way to go before I can be sure about putting what I want, where I want it to be electronically, in the same way I can with the Post-it notes and the wall.  I also have to admit that when deciding to write this post. I got LPG to listen to what I had to say, and they made this message electronic for me.

I hope that it helps some readers with their scheduling problems…

DT, Catford.

DT has found a few organisational Post-it note tutorials.  If we adopt the goals mentioned, they might just work for the older schedule seekers…

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