Wouldn’t it be great if you could just write out a weekly schedule and then everything would work the way you wanted it to?  I mean, you put in all the work planning, right?  Spent all your time color-coding your calendar entries (at least I did), got it all in to your PDA, and tomorrow, the big day arrives.  You’ve planned your work, now it’s time to work your plan, right?

I recall once reading a saying to the effect of the best laid plans are great until the first shot is fired.  The same is true of your schedule.  Why?  Because you’re not a robot, or a computer.  Just because you set your alarm for 4am doesn’t mean you’ll get up.  You’re moody, your energy levels are constantly going up and down, other people are pressuring you with their priorities, and new issues keep coming up in the middle of the week, and you have to figure out what to do with them.

In some cases, nothing happened except you underestimated the time it takes to complete the task, and that’s now spilling in to the rest of the schedule.  In other cases, a great opportunity presents itself and you have a small window of time to take advantage of it.

So what do you do?

After the last article, you may have thought, “Wow, I don’t have that kind of time, I have so much stuff to do I could never do all the other things I want to do.”

This article will show you how to prioritize all the other stuff to do in life and get it done while still doing all the activities you want to do.

In order to fight my own demons of dysfunctional and disorganized living, I turned to life management literature during my senior year of college to provide answers.

After trying a variety of systems and failing many times, I was finally able to put together a hybrid approach that takes the best of what I’ve learned from each system and combine them in a meaningful way. With this system, I’m able to practice Islam and fulfill my life’s dreams.

What follows below is my approach to time management. As with any system, there may be parts that work for you and others which don’t. I tweak my own system as needed, and if you like this, you can take as much as you like and tweak to your heart’s content and desire.