Not A New Toy...

... rather, learning how to use an old one.



I've been on a course today, learning about various time management skills. We covered several techniques, some of which I'd heard about before (SMART goals, for example - which all my 101 will have to be) - and some of which I hadn't - such as the timeline method I'm about to describe.

Now, I signed up to TimeToast somewhen last month, after the lovely Ms Alex recommended it on her (now sadly defunct) 101 strategy blog. I marked out my 1001 days on it, and I added ten-day increments, and then I didn't really know what to do, at least until I started the challenge and had things to add. Now I know how to use it as a planning tool.

Let's take as an example my potential goal 'Walk Offa's Dyke or across England'. Let's say for the sake of argument (because it's looking the most likely) that I choose to walk the coast-to-coast route described by Alfred Wainwright.

The first thing to do is to visualise the completed goal: what will it look like? Answer: it will look like me, standing barefoot in the sea at Robin Hood Bay, leaving a pair of very muddy boots on the beach.

Now comes the slightly counter-intuitive part: mentally, one has to work backwards from the completed goal in order to find out how to get there forwards. If I were planning how to get to the lighthouse, I wouldn't start on the cliff, I'd start at the farthest Needle. If I think about the sunlight that's illuminating the earth now, I have to bear in mind that it started from the sun, eight minutes ago.

So I want to get to Robin Hood Bay. Fine. The question is, when do I want to do this? Let's say 30th April 2012. It's an arbitrary date, yes. Currently my rationale is as follows: I most enjoy walking in the spring, I'd like to do it sooner rather than later, but I don't think that I'll be fit enough or organised enough to do the walk in 2011. It doesn't matter that it's arbitrary; I can tweak it later.

I put a pin marked 'arrive Robin Hood Bay' in the timeline at 30th April 2012

What do I have to do to finish the walk? I have to start the walk. How long will it take me? Let's say three weeks - ish. I'll have to tweak that, too, but it's a start.

I put a pin marked 'St Bees: start walking' in the timeline at 9th April 2012

How did I get to St Bees? I travelled. It's a fair way north, so I would want to stay overnight, and perhaps I might want a day's rest before starting the walk. Working backwards, these three pins go in:

'travel to St Bees': 7th April 2012
'purchase train tickets': 1st February 2012
'book accommodation at St Bees': 25th January 2012

And I go on working backwards like that, until I finally find myself in late August 2011, walking 10km in a day, and preparing to check my kit. I've made myself a plan, and I've now got a reasonably good idea of how long it's going to take me to prepare for and accomplish the goal.

Finally, I ask myself whether this plan is dependent upon any other person helping me out or joining in, and, if it is, I make very sure to check their availability.

And where does TimeToast come into it? It's just a virtual timeline into which one can stick virtual pins. Here's the Coast to Coast timeline, if you want to have a look. It's not finished. I'll need to do some more research, and there will be more steps to be added. I just don't yet know what they are.

Does it work? I don't know, yet. It looks as if it very well might. I'll let you know.