A reader asked the following question:

“My time management problem isn’t paper or emails, it’s people. I am a mother of three very busy very active (and demanding) teenagers and I have my aged mother ALL who can demand my time.

I have days when I am bombarded with demands on my time from all of them. Some of them really are important, some are only important to that one person, some are just for entertainment.

Is there and effective way to get them to understand that I am only one person? Is there in efficient way to set up my time so that they each have their time?”

That is a very good question, and a challenge that many people probably face. There are a couple of ideas that you can put into practice to make some changes:

You won’t find time for yourself, you have to make time for yourself - I’m assuming that you ask this question because you want to have some “me” time to take care of yourself, pursue your interests, or simply relax. I would have asked to clarify, but I didn’t have your contact information, so if that’s not the case, please ask again.

We sometimes think, “Oh… right now it’s pretty busy, but I’ll find the time to do those things someday.” From my experience, someday never comes. If you want to have time for yourself, you have to make it instead of hoping that you’ll somehow find it.

So, how do you go about doing that?

You are constantly teaching people how to interact with you - In Life Strategies, Dr. Phil McGraw says that we are all constantly teaching people how to interact with us. If you don’t like the way people are treating you, you have to start teaching them something new. You can’t expect things to change unless you make a change first.

What you need to do is renegotiate the agreements that you’ve made with your family about the way you spend your time.

I know that introducing a change like this can be difficult, especially when you are dealing with kids and teenagers, so how do you go about doing this without creating a rebellion?

When I was little, we used to listen to an album of Aesop’s fables. One of the stories that I vividly remember was the story of the camel in the sandstorm. It goes something like this…

“A man and his camel were making a trip across the desert and had settled down in a camp for the night. The man was sleeping in a tent and the camel slept outside.

Then, a furious sandstorm swept the desert. The man was sleeping comfortably in his tent, but the camel was stuck outside in the cold and windy storm.

The camel peeked his head into the tent and pleaded with the man: “Please, it’s so cold and miserable out here. Won’t you please let me put my nose in the tent so I don’t have to breathe in all this sand? You’ll hardly notice I’m there.”

The man, feeling sorry for the plight of the camel, agrees to let him stick his nose in the tent. Half an hour later, the camel speaks again. “Master, I can breathe so much better now, but my ears are so full of sand, won’t you please let me put my ears in the tent?”

The man sees little harm so he agrees and the camel puts his head in the tent.

And so the story goes… inch by inch the camel puts his left foot in the tent, then his right foot, then his knees, then his shoulders… Eventually the camel makes it all the way into the tent and pushes the man out.”

While the moral of the story is “give’em an inch and they’ll take a yard,” you can also see it in a more positive light: small gradual changes are much easier to accept.

When you start renegotiating your agreements with your kids, you can use this idea to make the transition easier for everyone to accept.

Relationship expert John Gray says that men like to retreat into their “cave” to spend time by themselves and do things they enjoy. I think you can use something like the “cave” concept to explain that you need some time to take care of yourself and do your own thing. If you don’t like the term “cave” for your special place, you can call it something else, like your “retreat,” “hideout,” “study,” or “sanctuary.”

Combining these two ideas, you would say to your kids that you want to have some time each day to go into your hideout and do your own thing. Start by requesting a 10 minute block of time each day.

It would be helpful if you could turn it into a routine by using the same time each day. That way, they’ll get used to the idea and know when to expect you to be in your hideout. It can also be helpful to give them advance warning, something like “I’m going to go to my hideout in 10 minutes, just wanted to let you know.”

If you want to have some fun with it, you could create a special sign or symbol that you can put up during your time slot as a reminder that you are in your hideout.

Try to pick a good time of the day to do this, when they are naturally busy doing their own stuff and the chance of them needing your attention is small. For even better results, involve them in the decision for the time slot to use. That way they’ll own part of the decision.

As you describe the concept, let them know that you would like them to respect your time while you are on your hideout and only interrupt you if it is something really important that can’t wait until you are done. If they interrupt you with something that is not important, tell them something like “What, you can’t wait ten minutes?”

As you take your ten minutes each day for a couple of weeks, you will be starting to renegotiating the terms of your relationship in a way that is easy for everyone to accept and get used to.

After a couple of weeks, follow the lead of the camel and start taking another inch by increasing the time you spend in your hideout by 5 more minutes.

Keep it that way for another couple of weeks so they get used to the new routine, and then take another 5 minute inch.

Unlike the camel in the story, you are not going to be mean and push anyone out of the tent. Just keep increasing your “me” time until you have a reasonable time slot for yourself during the day that everyone can live with.

Depending on your schedule, you may eventually want to split it into two smaller time slots: for example, one in early afternoon/morning and one in the early evening.

Create a family time chart - A time chart is a planning tool that helps you allocate different activities to different time slots during the day. Having a family time chart will help everyone realize how much time you are already spending helping them during the day and clearly spell out when your “me” time slot will occur.

You can learn more about time charts in this article.

What do you think, does this seem like an approach that would work?

Do you have a time management/productivity related question for me? You can submit them here.