This post is part of a series focusing on Time Management for Teens, Students, and High Schoolers. Get the complete online course here or order the book here!
Life Rhythms and Time Management
Maybe it’s because I studied as a musician, but I like to think about the idea of “Rhythms” when it comes to time management.
We will revisit these ideas in the future and use them as a framework for a discussion of high school so get out your pen and paper and be sure to take some notes!
The primary rhythms I observe are hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
Your life is made up of these cycles, so master the rhythms and you could even say that you’ll master LIFE!
Hourly Rhythms of Your Life
First, let’s look at the hourly rhythm level.
Did you know that MOST humans, even the most brilliant and focused, have a very hard time staying on a challenging task for more than 90 minutes at a time?
It’s true - it is REALLY hard, and usually counterproductive, to try and do the same thing for more than an hour and a half straight.
What do you do about this? It’s simple.
A stretch or snack break for 5 to 15 minutes each hour or so is generally all you need in most cases and you can sit back down and get back to work.
The idea is to TOTALLY FORGET what you were just working on and do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT like going for a walk or playing with your family dog.
Something that makes you happy!
If you’re truly bored of your main project, you can allow yourself to change activities after the break…
But before you reach that point of giving up, try setting a clock and VOWING to work for 75 to 90 minutes without changing your focus.
Like I said, 90 minutes tends to be the longest that most humans can actually stay highly focused on a single task. Don’t beat yourself up for NOT being able to exceed that limit.
At the end of the 90 minute session you’re allowed to completely relax and forget what you were doing.
Trust me, when it comes time to sit down to keep working, it won’t be hard to remember where you were.
It’s OK To Take Hourly Breaks!
The thing is, a lot of us feel GUILTY if we take a break when we think we’re supposed to be working - almost like somebody is watching us and judging us for taking a break.
At any age, bosses, parents, peers, and teachers can make us feel guilty for relaxing.
Heck, we can often make OURSELVES feel guilty for relaxing when we’re stressed about a project we need to finish.
But, I’m giving you PERMISSION to take a break, and in fact I’m ASKING you to take a break, after a good 90-minute stretch of work and do something that makes you happy.
The key is to do the work FIRST before allowing yourself the reward of the break.
In fact, rewarding yourself regularly is one of the classic tricks of time management!
Coffee works for me - when I finish my 90-minute work session and the timer goes off, I love to pour myself a fresh cup of coffee and take a very physical a stretch break or a quick walk outside.
I also have a few other tricks up my sleeve like quick exercise routines, listening to music and my favorite, playing with the little stray cat that lives outside my house 🙂
The key is, I’ve developed my own ideal work rhythm over time, by treating it almost like a personal science project and researching what works, and what doesn’t work, by keeping a productivity journal on myself each day.
But, you need to find what works for you!
It’s another area where daily journaling can help you discover what helps you quickly relax and regain your energy when you take breaks from work on the hourly or 90-minute level.
Daily Rhythms of Time Management
Then, when we move up to the DAILY level, it’s mainly a question of how we string together our hours.
How do YOU structure your daily rhythm?
Do you plan out your day with a to-do list so as the sun arcs overhead, you can compare your progress through the day to something measurable?
Or, do you simply ensure that you’re not wasting time and strive to fill each hour of your day with purpose, fighting towards your primary personal goals in life?
OR… do you not really plan your days, AND not really have a primary goal in life to work towards?
The first two cases are fine - you can either make a to-do list each day…
Even if you DON’T know your “true north” or your main goal in life, you can use your planning skills to continually make each day of your life better than the last day.
That’s the power of organization and planning.
OR you can just know EXACTLY what you want to do with your life…
Because then you hardly even NEED a to-do list because most of the time, with a single goal fixed in your mind, you’ll just KNOW if what you’re doing at the moment is useful towards that goal or not.
That’s the power of clarity.
BUT, in the THIRD case (having no plan and no clarity), then you’re really just ADRIFT because you don’t know where you want to go OR how to get there.
Daily Rhythm Is The Most Important Rhythm
That’s why If I had to pick the “most important” rhythm for effective time management, I think I would pick the daily rhythm.
After all, what are weeks, months, and years but big piles of days?
And, you can always lose or waste an hour here or there and things will turn out fine - but waste a whole DAY and you will often find that your WEEK is now way behind schedule and over-stressed.
I mean, tell me I’m wrong?! If you’ve ever wasted a whole DAY by accident, or slept so late that you didn’t get anything done all day at all, you KNOW it tends to mess up your whole week because you’re behind schedule.
And if you have a stressed-out WEEK, that means a whopping 25% of your whole MONTH was stressed out!
So you really can’t let the days get away from you because that will reverberate and cause pain in your schedule for quite a while.
Now at the same time, I’ll say that a PLANNED, INTENTIONAL day off per week is VERY important for your mental health and sanity –
But the difference is your day off is PLANNED, but a wasted day is NOT planned - it just comes out of nowhere and messes up your whole week.
So again, you can either plan your 24-hour days with an organized to-do list, or you can know your exact number-one life purpose, which allows you to improvise around that and still be highly effective…
But if you don’t do EITHER of these things you will probably be generating a great deal of stress and procrastination for yourself in your days and weeks.
(By the way, If you think I’m wrong about anything so far, tell me in the comments section below!)
After seeing hundreds of high school students go through it, I don’t think I’m wrong about this.
Your Weekly Rhythms of Productivity
Now, your WEEKLY productivity rhythm is MOSTLY just based upon your daily rhythm.
Again, I think the DAILY is the foundational rhythm of all the bigger cycles.
However, you can use your weekly calendar to organize important tasks and chores that you don’t want to do every DAY but which must be kept up with regularly - anything from laundry to exercise.
So WEEKS in my mind are more about reminders, chores, and cutting down your stress with a SYSTEM to maintain your life, health, and cleanliness.
Use a weekly schedule to avoid having to re-invent your life constantly.
Actually pause right now, go ahead and brainstorm everything you have to do each week, and pick days for recurring tasks - like “Wednesday and Sunday are gym days” and “Monday, Thursday, and Saturday are my vocab days”.
Now make sure to WRITE DOWN your weekly plan and put it somewhere you see regularly.
Expand To Your Monthly Time-Management Rhythms
Then keep expanding the concept of rhythm into bigger and bigger time spans - let’s think now about your MONTHS.
On a monthly basis, what “chores” or “housekeeping” do you need to do every thirty days or so?
For example, I like to backup my data for my most important projects at least once per month.
That way, even if the unthinkable happens, and my house burns down or something, I’ll never lose more than three to four weeks of work (Which is still a LOT, but much better than risking the loss of a YEAR or a LIFETIME’s worth of work!!)
I also think the monthly level is perfect, for ME at least, to do deep-cleaning of my house, kitchen, bedroom, and workspace.
It’s not my FAVORITE thing to do so I can’t make myself do it every week, but WHEW when I’m done cleaning, the result is that I’m happier, more organized, I have more SPACE to live and work, and I feel more productive and peaceful.
Monthly rhythms can also be a good level for social obligations and time commitments - for example, have you spent time with your best friends this month? Have you called your grandparents?
What about maintenance needs? Anything from your bicycle to your school backpack may need attention or repairs. Keep your possessions in good condition so that they don’t fail you at a crucial moment when you need them later.
All of this relates to the BIG picture of managing your time and routines to avoid friction and wasted time.
What Monthly Routines Should You Include?
The sky’s the limit for monthly routines.
I like to think of monthly routines that enhance my DAILY routines, rather than the other way around.
For example, I deep-clean my living space once a month so that I can do better work each day. It’s NOT that I work every day in order to be able to deep-clean once a month.
And I back up my data each month so that I don’t worry all day about the possibility of losing it… it’s NOT that I work all day just so I can back up my data at the end of the month!
See what I mean? I think our MONTHLY routines should mostly focus on stuff that empowers your DAILY routine.
After all there are only 12 months per year, but 365 days.
So personally I still think your daily routine has the highest impact.
But oftentimes, good DAILY time management is simple - it’s just about NOT losing or wasting time for your 16 waking hours.
In contrast, the MONTHLY level demands even FAR more planning and organization on your written calendar since it’s easier to loose track of your long-term progress and obligations over 30 days.
Use monthly calendars, backups, and deep-cleaning routines to keep your schoolwork, your workspace, your life, and your mind uncluttered - to reduce waste and improve efficiency.
Make Time For Monthly Mini-Vacations
Monthly rhythms can also include what I call “BIG” weekends (or “mini-vacations”), like making sure you do something REALLY fun and cool once a month to rejuvenate yourself and remind yourself why you’re working so hard.
For me, the best “BIG” weekends are when I try to go on an all-day motorcycle ride at least once per month - just to get out there and find some great roads and forget about emails, work, and cell phones for a whole day.
In fact my rule is that I can NOT check my cell phone or email while I’m out on a motorcycle day.
It’s too big of a thing to do EVERY weekend, cause I’ve gotta plan and get packed and make sure everything is OK back home, plus it takes away a whole productive work day - but getting out for a big ride once a MONTH is a perfect rhythm for me.
Monthly rhythms can often be some of the EASIEST things to forget about or push to a later date because very rarely do they seem like “urgent priorities.”
So, I want you to pause right now and take time to brainstorm up to TEN things that you want to include in your routine every MONTH.
Make sure to include a mix of productivity towards your main goals and your supporting goals, as well as a few points for cleaning, organization, backing up your data, and having some fun each month too.
This All Culminates In Your Yearly Rhythms
Finally we have the YEARLY level.
This is my personal FAVORITE because this is where your LIFE goals come in again from the daily level.
See the thing is, you can only do SO MUCH in a single day. But the REAL big progress comes on the YEARLY level.
For example, I remember spending a year writing free educational articles for my website in order to build traffic and attention from potential customers.
I struggled so much at first with the daily effort of writing the articles, until a year passed and I saw the progress our site had made compared to our beginnings - an incredible 500% or FIVE-TIMES increase in website traffic and customers.
Once I saw that, I got super-inspired for the NEXT year’s traffic growth.
And then the daily work of writing got a little easier, because instead of thinking about how tired I’d be after three hundred and sixty-five days of blog writing, I was thinking instead about the ONE exciting year of progress we just had and how cool next year was going to be if we kept it up.
So what’s the focus of your year, this year?
Knowing this will give you clarity when you need it during the day.
Take Time To Plan Your Rhythms Now
Take a moment to pause and think about your number-one goal for the next twelve months.
Pause for a moment and think; write down your answer, and then SHARE it in the comments section below the article.
I think the ideal situation is to have, if possible, JUST ONE yearly goal.
This way it’s VERY easy to measure your progress towards that one goal.
It’s cliché, but I love to use New Year’s Eve to set my goalposts for the coming year!
That’s what I mean by yearly time-management rhythms.
Reviewing The Rhythms of Time Management
We all should strive to manage our time on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly level.
The key to establishing a rhythm that works for you is to follow KNOW the number-one thing you want in life, the number-one thing you want from your year.
In general, your DAILY rhythm is your most important rhythm, so plan and use your days wisely.
In the end, our life and legacy is simply determined by what we choose to do each day.
By understanding how the five rhythms are similar, yet different; connected, yet separate - we can begin to grasp how each level can best be used to manage our own time and to support our primary desires in life.
Now head to the comments and share your number-one goal for the next 12 months.
See you again in the next post!
Make this year your most productive year ever! Get the complete Time Management Online Course or order the book on Amazon today.