Fit to Ride: Ask a rabbit – time management for dummies

Horsepeople tend to stretch their schedules pretty thin, and exercise is often one of the first things to get bumped. Pi the Fitness Rabbit is back with some tips for organizing your time.

From Pi:

Hey there, Horse Nation.  Pi here.  I’m here to ask for your help staging an intervention.  As of lately my mother (Horse Nation’s fitness columnist Biz Stamm) has displayed very poor time management skills and it’s beginning to affect me!  Just a few months ago I was one of the Horse Nation celebrity rabbits.  People sent me email, looked at my pictures.  I even had my own meme for crying out loud!!

Well after the great laptop disaster of 2012 and  a sizable increase in the size of Mom’s lesson program, she hasn’t been able to find the time to write about me… and fitness for riders. I fear that I’m fading into obscurity.  Something must be done.

For those of you that don’t know, I’m a bit of a time management expert.  On a daily basis I carefully balance my time between eating, mad bunny dashing, binkying, snoozing, and snuggling.  Mom could really use my help, and I figure other people could benefit from my expertise as well.  So if you’d like to learn the secret to an organized life just follow these three, easy steps.

I like to start off by making a blank template that I can use to organize my time.  If you have a spreadsheet program like Excel, or Numbers, they are ideal for this sort of thing.

Here is an example that you can copy and paste if you’d like.

Next you need make a list of your regularly occurring activities in order of priority.

For example:

1. Things you need to do to pay the bills (AKA the daily grind)
2. Caring for animals that depend on you for survival (and the only reason this is #2 is because we can’t survive if you can’t afford to buy us food)
3. Family obligations
4. Getting your sweat on!
5. Leisure activities/hobbies/R&R
6. Miscellaneous activities.

Lastly, starting with list item number one, fill in the time slots you need for each activity.  I recommend color coding for clarity, and because it looks pretty. If you run out space before you reach the end of the list, you know you’re stretching yourself too thin and may need to consider giving up an activity.

Now in order for your fancy, new, color-coded schedule to mean diddly squat, you need to treat each activity like it’s an appointment.  You wouldn’t flake on the dentist just because you didn’t feel like going. Right?  Well your exercise sessions and chill time are no less important.  It might feel really difficult to stick to the schedule at first, but if at first you don’t succeed, hang your head in shame   try, try again.

Lastly, if you find yourself needing a bit of motivation in terms of exercise, time management, or life in general, hop on over to the Fit 2 Ride forum on Facebook.  This is a great place to share success, commiserate over failure, and connect with other horse-crazy fitness buffs. Mom will also be posting interesting articles, and pictures of yours truly.  Hope to see you there!

P.S.  I recently turned 5 so be sure to head over to the forum to wish me a happy birthday!