One of my many, thought-invading worries is the use of my time. I still want to do so many different things, and I am constantly confounded by Time and Motivation. The latter seems to be easier to deal with: Breaking things down, doing a little bit at a time and rewarding myself for accomplishing tasks seems to help combat my motivation. Dealing with time management, however, is significantly different.

I have: three different calendar apps, alarms, email reminders, friends and family calling and reminding me and my white sheet at work. These are either methods to keep track of time, plan my time or remind me of time I have planned. This is neither efficient nor a guarantee that I will remember any one particular thing to do. Therefore, it is time to rethink scheduling and try something different.

I cannot eliminate the calendar apps. They are a part of a number of services I belong to, and even if I don’t use them, they show up in side bars or in other panels that I look at. Theoretically, I can combine these calendars into one perfect SUPER calendar. This has been on my “To do List” since I started using Google Calendar. I need to streamline this so I can stop worrying about which calendar is the right one.

While this will help with tracking some of my daily events, it won’t help with my to-do lists. Again, I have far too many options at hand. My iPhone has an app, my mac has an app, Google has an app…. I also have dozens of sticky notes, documents and scribblings on scrap paper that are my attempts to stay ahead of the game. Again, there is a better way.

Right now, I have the time–and the motivation–to develop a new system to keep myself organized. That’s easy. The trick is going to be to stick with the system when I no longer have the time.