When I first got clean one of my biggest fears was handling my finances. This was not something I did very well when drugs and alcohol consumed my life and after several rehabs and finally some time clean I was humble enough to recognize that just because I was clean I wasn’t going to become an instant financial management wizard. Who knew I was going to eventually develop a company that does this for businesses :).

The one thing that seemed obvious enough was that if I wanted some peace of mind about this I needed to have a plan. this means a budget of some sort. Sure enough as I laid out my budget, looking first at my expenses and then at my income the mere act of doing this made a difference in my stress level because even before I knew the outcome I knew I was doing something about it and that in itself was enough to bring me some peace. Then once I had finished, reviewed it a number of times to be sure it was complete and saw that with the right job I needed to make $16/hour to make it all work I was relieved because i knew it was not going to be a problem getting a job paying that much, especially with an accounting degree.

Over the years I’ve learned and this past week I learned once again that the same is true of time management. If I want to be able to relax and get excited about today, I cannot be spending my day worrying about when I am gong to get everything done. I need a plan. I need a list of tasks (commonly known as our “To Do List”) and then I need to transfer those tasks from the To Do List into my calendar so that I know clearly when each thing will get done. This is how I get the peace of mind I need so that I can relax knowing that everything has been taken into account and that everything I need to do can and will get done. As I lay this out I may find that I just do not have the time to do it all. This is when it is time to ask for help. First I should have somebody help me with the “time budget” and if that doesn’t yield a workable solution then the next step is to see which task(s) I can delegate.

So these days I plan my month every month just before the month begins. Then throughout the month I am constantly reviewing and updating the plan. This goes for the time and the financial, and between those two I really do have pretty much everything covered!

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