I don’t know about you but I am a sucker for organization books and time management books.  Somehow I think that they will change my life and make it so wonderful that it won’t take any effort from me. Okay, I know that I am not a princess and that nothing will make my life that simple but a girl can dream.

Graphic by Cieleke Graat

I have been feeling particularly discombobulated. There is so much that I want to do and I just have not been able to get on a schedule that seemed to work.  I was bouncing from one thing to the other but not feeling very satisfied. I was not writing as much as I wanted to and my time was like a giant black hole.

At the first of the year, I knew that I had to change.  I wanted to be more productive. I was ready. I think that being ready is an important ingredient in being able to make changes. Maybe I just was not as ready before. Whatever the problem was, I knew that I needed to overcome it.

I read a review of a time management book that seemed interesting. I went to Amazon, the easiest place to start looking. Right now, I can’t remember the title of that book. But while I was reading about that book, another book caught my eye. The book is Manage Your Day-To-Day.It has the sub-title Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind. This sounded like the title for me.  I took a further look into the book.

The book has four chapters and each of these chapters has several essays written by creative professionals. For example, the first chapter is – Building a Rock-Solid Routine and features the following essays:

Laying the Groundwork for an Effective Routine by Mark McGuinness

Harnessing the Power of Frequency by Gretchen Rubin

Q&A Honing your Creative Practice with Seth Grodin

Building Renewal into Your Workday by Tony Schwartz

Making Room for Solitude by Leo Babauta

At the end of each Chapter there is a summary titled Key Takeaways. I really liked that it had a summary of each chapter.  I thought it really added to the suggestions.

After looking though all the information about the book and noticing that it was $3.99 as a kindle book, I bought the book. I am very glad that I read this book. It gave me several insights and ideas. It does follow a lot of the suggestions that I have read elsewhere about avoiding checking email and social media sites frequently during the day.  I do think that this is one of my problems. The urge to keep up with email is hard to resist.

I have found this book to be really beneficial. I feel like I have been more organized and ready to get more accomplished starting out this year.

Thanks for reading!