There’s always some give and take when it comes to finding time to practice your golf swing. Whether you want to drive to a local putting green or hit a bucket of balls, time is a factor. Of course, if you have a virtual golf simulator, you can skip the car drive and go directly to your golf drive, right there at home. Still, it isn’t easy to allot time for what’s so fun and vital: practice.
Training to budget time can be as challenging as training to hit the perfect draw, but the right time management system can better balance the most pressing needs, like time with family, work, school, golf, and maybe even a little time for sleep.
Time Management Systems
You don’t need a fancy computer-driven time management system to find time to golf; whether it’s practice at the course or getting to your golf simulator, you just need to make some notes. The first rule of time management is to write down your tasks and your goals using the Accountability Method.
The onus is on you to get your tasks in order by admitting them to yourself. Then you can set a time frame for each, starting with perhaps nine hours for work with a commute or five hours for school with homework. When you add up the essential hours, you’ll find there’s still time to squeeze in some golf practice and perhaps a trip to a favorite course. While you’re doing that, you might find that the commute to a distant course isn’t worth the time if you can play a comparable course that’s around the corner!
To expand on the accountability system, try setting your day into Time Blocks. Write down each hour of the day from when you are up and awake until you expect to be heading to bed. Then, fill in the blanks with your tasks, allowing a little wiggle room, and you’ll be able to see where you can fit in your golf time.
Another method is to mimic President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s four-square or Eisenhower Matrix. Write down your tasks and divide them into urgent and not-urgent. Then split the urgent items into the most important and least important – which gives you things that must get handled immediately and things that must get scheduled. And finally, split the not-urgent items into essential tasks (like golf practice, right?) and not-so-important stuff like social media, surfing the web, and TV.
Now you’ve got systems to find the extra time to practice golf, especially with virtual golf at hand, and to get to the course. Go forth and enjoy the freedom time management rewards.