J.K. Coi

Have you ever heard of the expression "time management"? In a busy law practice, time management is essential, and without it I would be out of a job, and needing to rely on the pathetic skills developed in university while working as a retail sales clerk.

Deadlines grab you by the throat, even before you've had a chance to breathe, and without my trusty daytimer, I'd be lost. Ahhh, my daytimer...truly a thing of beauty. There are many ways to keep track of appointments and deadlines in any office. Many people these days use a computer scheduler, and I've tried it, but I prefer my daytimer. It's situated on my desk in such a spot as to be constantly accessible and visual, and I found that the computer program couldn't be visual when I was on the computer in other programs, working diligently.

However, it isn't enough to simply input your deadlines into a daytimer, you've got to have a system, so that at a quick glance, you can immediately tell the types of things you're looking at for your day. For example, my personal reminders are entered in red ink (that way I am daily reminded about my pathetic social life), while work-related reminders are in blue, and deadlines are entered in green. Additonally, when something gets marked off as being completed, it is highlighted in yellow, while deadlines that get adjourned, postponed, or cancelled, are highlighted in orange. By the end of the year, you can leaf through my book and it looks a little bit like a colouring book, but it's very effective.

It's too bad that type of thing doesn't work at home also. But you just can't put your home life into a daytimer, especially with a 3 year old. Schedules too often get changed. Plans are made, unmade, and then made again, and your list of deadlines (or in this case-shopping, chores, and soccer practices, etc.) would be 50 pages long just for one day. Not to mention that while my daytimer has a place of importance on my desk which makes it easy to reach any time of the day, at home it'd be lost in ten minutes (I'd find it 3 days later in a laundry basket, underneath a pile of clothes that had been washed 5 days before that).

Normally, my paranoid, neurotic nature would scream at this disorganization, but it's amazing how much I really don't care as much about the "schedule" at home, as long as we are all having fun together...and isn't that what home is all about.

Kristina