Shalom! Welcome! Come on in, make yourself at home, have a browse. I'd be interested to hear your comments. And please do come again!

Four months ago I opened a parcel that came in the post and found to my surprise and delight that a friend had sent me a book about time management.

The fact that four months later my bookmark is still on page 44 probably proves that I need to read this book :-)

The book is called Do It Tomorrow - a title which greatly appeals to my inner procrastinator. (The tendency to put things off seems to run in our family. My brother once told me he kept planning to found the International Procrastinators Society, but guess what - he hadn't got round to it yet.)

The author, Mark Forster, clearly has a rather different worldview than I have, so we had to agree to disagree quite early on (well, I disagreed, he doesn't know about it) about his theory that the inner struggle we have which causes us to sometimes not do the things we have decided to do is all to do with different parts of our brain - I'm sorry, but there is a lot more going on in me than just brain functions! I see it most of the time as a struggle between my inner adult and my inner child, but some of the time it's a struggle between my godly side and my sinful nature. But whichever way you look at it, I think it's clear to all of us that we do have an internal struggle going on, we do decide to do X and then go and do Y instead. We make new year's resolutions and break them by February; we decide to go on a diet but we eat cake; we decide to quit drinking and go to the pub for "just one drink"; we decide to quit smoking and... and so on and so forth... good intentions are not enough - we all know that much.

But having read the first couple of chapters I have picked up some useful ideas, and one that I have found particularly useful is his suggestion that we look for ways of making it easier for ourselves to do the right thing than the wrong thing. So for instance on Monday evening I prepared everything that I needed for my assignment and put it on my desk next to the computer, which meant that on Tuesday when I came to my desk, it was easy to get on with that work. This also connects with his suggestion that we say to ourselves things like, "I'm not really going to write that report now, but I'll just get the file out" - because the part of us that doesn't want to do it is not likely to feel so threatened by this, whereas when we say, "I've really got to get on with this work" that part of us rebels. It may sound simplistic but I've found this method actually helps.

The title Do It Tomorrow refers to his suggestion for gaining more control of our lives - the idea is that we decide each day what our To Do List for the next day is, and we close that list; so when works comes in today it goes on the list for tomorrow, it doesn't get done today - for today I've already got my To Do List and that list is closed, which makes it more manageable. Of course there are always things that come up and can't be put off, but the aim is to keep those down to a minimum - that's what he suggests, but I think he's talking from the point of view of certain types of occupation where you can make such choices. To take an extreme example, I can't see how a woman who is keeping house and looking after a baby can put these things into practice. And also from my point of view as someone who has given her life over to God, I have got to take into account that sometimes (often!) those unforeseen interruptions are actually important, they can be opportunities to serve God, to be of help to people - my calling is to be someone who has time for people, so I can't say, sorry, I can't listen to you right now because I have work to do. My work, my purpose in life, my reason for existing, includes responding positively to interruptions. What Mark Forster sees as "random" events which we have to resist, I see as deliberate actions on God's part which I have the duty to respond well to. My To Do List can't come just from my own limited human thinking - it has to be open to what my ultimate boss says.

Which also connects with another problem I have with some of what he says, and this is a problem I have with much that has been written or said about time management - for some people it's easy to define what is or isn't "work"; for some of us it isn't so cut and dried. I once attended a time management seminar run by a very nice guy in my church - I wonder, are there any women who are time management experts? It's just that listening to that guy I felt like he was coming from a completely different planet, he was talking from the point of view of someone who goes to an office and does his job during clearly specified working hours, and then he goes home and has leisure time - good for him, but in my current lifestyle I can't relate to that at all. And that guy's suggestion that we keep a record of how we use our time - well, try recording how many minutes it took to do the washing up or to load the washing machine, not to mention the time you took putting laundry away on your way to the bathroom, or how long you spent cleaning the washbasin whilst you were there anyway... Is there a book about time management for women, or does everyone assume that we are already such great experts at juggling a zillion different tasks that we don't need it?

Well, this is what I have to say so far, based on 43 pages out of 203. I don't expect I'll get much further whilst this course is going on, but am very grateful that I got to read those first two chapters before the course started as these tips have been extremely helpful for getting my coursework done! (Disagreeing with the author doesn't mean I can't use the good bits!)