I love this method of time management. I've already spoken some about the purpose and setting it up in this post, but now I will go more in depth and walk you through how I set mine up for tomorrow, May 20, 2015.
You're going to want to print out your template. I'm using the 24 hour template found here. But if you would like one that had the times set from 6 to 12 (for a total of 18 hours), you can find that one here.
As you can see I have already filled in the starting and ending times. I like to put the hours as if it were a clock. The one that is nearest the date is 3 a.m. The one in the middle is 3 p.m. and the one on the outer rim is 3 a.m. (technically of the following day but that's around the time my actual day ends). I also put in the date in the middle but you don't have to do it this way. You could place it on the top, the side, the bottom, wherever. It is totally and completely up to you.
Do you see how much it resembles a clock now? Now you can go ahead and fill in the rest of the hours. Remember that the times are moving ahead in a spiral. In mine, the inner most spiral is the morning, the middle spiral is the afternoon and the outermost spiral is the night/dawn.
We are ready to begin filling out the Spiraldex. From 3 a.m. on Monday, the 20th of May, 2015, I will be sleeping (at least, that's the plan) and I will not be waking up until 7 in the morning. I will be using a light blue as the designated color for sleep time on my Spiraldex. From 7 to 9 in the morning, I will be getting myself and everything I need ready. I've decided that orange will be the designated color of getting ready on my Spiraldex. So, it'll all look something like this:
The next bit of my day is dedicated to travel. I commute from my casa (house) to my school. It takes me about 45 minutes to an hour on a really good day but delays often happen on the MTA, so I plan for an hour and 15 minutes. This is where my ruler comes in handy. My commute should start from 9 in the morning until 10:15 in the morning. The first dot in the space that has the 10 hour, is 10:15. I line up the 10:15 on the outer spiral with the 10:15 of the inner spiral so that I make a straight line. It'll look like this:
Now, I'm ready to fill in the space. I've chosen a teal/turquoise color as the color to designate travel.
I did the same for the 10:30 to 12:45 section for my class. I lined up the 12:45 of the outer spiral with the 12:45 of the inner spiral and drew the line in the section I wanted. Then, I was ready to finish filling that section of my class in.
The segment after class is travel. I will be traveling to work. An hour and 15 minutes is more than enough for me to get to work. In other words, I'll be getting to work at 2 p.m. The rest of the sections up until 9 p.m. will be work. I will use red to designate work time. It ends up looking like this:
Are you getting the hang of this? Great! If you notice, I've also been listing the different activities I'm designating on the bottom right corner of my Spiraldex. I use this as a key. Each activity is written in its respective color.
Let's keep it moving. The next section I need to allot time for is travel. From 9 p.m.to 10:15 p.m. (an hour and 15 minutes) I will be travelling home. From 10:15 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. I will be eating and relaxing. A nice cool blue should be good for designating that momentous occasion in my day. From 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., I will be studying. The rest of the time (1 a.m. to 2 a.m.), I will sleeping until the following morning.
The end result:
Yay! We did it! See? It wasn't so bad. If yours is not perfect, it is more than alright. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. I would not want you to miss out on a perfectly amazing method of time management because you simply gave up.
Feel accomplished! Bash in the glory of your accomplishment! If you need extra help, t his post will be here for you whenever you need it. You can also contact me through any of the methods listed in the Contact Me section of my blog, or simply leave a comment.
