That is a question I get constantly, from nearly everyone I know. I have a family (a toddler, another baby on the way, and two dogs), I run a small business at home, I blog, I do freelance design and illustration (and a bit of technical writing from time to time), I work full time, commute an average of 3 hours a day, and write about two or three books a year (that’s an average, because it often takes me more than a year to plan, draft, revise, re-write a book until it’s finished, but if you read this blog regularly you know that I like to work on several projects at different levels of completion at a time so I can rotate through tasks).

There really is no great secret to how you get a lot done in a week. In fact, I give you all the “secrets” in my post called I just don’t have the time. One thing that I did not mention, however, because I thought it went without saying, is that you need to make a schedule, at least at first, before your routine becomes second-nature.

So the last time I was asked how I found the time, I promised the person I would write what I do all day, every day, so you can see how I utilize my time. That’s what I’ll be doing all week. Every day, I’m going to write a post about what I did all day, and post it here, so you can see how I use dead time constructively, multi-task efficiently (which means, not all the time, and I choose the things I multi-task and those that would be a bad idea.

As I’m doing this, it occurs to me that while a lot of people might learn very well by example only, it’s been my experience as a teacher that most people need a more fleshed out method presented to them. So at the end of this series of posts, I will make one post that gives you a full-fledged, self-diagnosing method for making the best schedule that works for you, that’s not just saying “write a schedule”. Hope it helps.

Here is what Monday looks like.

Here is what Tuesday looks like.

Here is what Wednesday looks like.

Thursday and Friday were lumped together.

And here is the weekend!

Some of you have asked if this represents a typical week for me, and I can say yes, it does. I have business meetings almost every week, I work full time, and though I have weeks that are less jam-packed than this, I have weeks that are far busier, too, so this one was a good average.