Photo by Dafne Cholet on Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I received un mail (an email) the other day with a simple message:

La prochaine réunion sera chez moi à 17h. Est-ce que vous êtes disponible ?
The next meeting will be at my place at 5 o’clock. Are you available?

After making sure that 17h is 5 PM and not 7 PM, I wrote back saying I was disponible and marked it down in mon agenda.

Remembering all the vocabulary for la gestion du temps (time management) can be just as hard as managing your time!

There are many words for keeping track of time and malheureusement (unfortunately), it’s easy to confuse them! It can be hard trying to remember the difference between un jour and une journée. Both of them mean a day! Everything can get even more confusing when you add in une année bissextile or the many ways to say schedule.

I poorly managed my both my French and my time once by thinking in English. J’étais à la fac (I was on campus) looking at les flyers hung up on the walls and on les panneaux d’affichage (the bulletin boards). I saw something that looked like a schedule, only it had a name that I had never seen before: Emploi du temps.

I knew emploi meant employment so I figured it was about les emplois étudiants (student jobs).

I asked le secrétariat (the administration office) about les emplois étudiants that I had seen. They tried to understand what I was talking about, but ended up just giving me another flyer and letting me know there are des emplois à temps partiel (some part time jobs) for students around town.

I left confused thinking il n’y avait pas d’emploi (there wasn’t a job) available for me.

It wasn’t until le lendemain (the next day) that I realized the mistake I’d made. Mon professeur asked us how much work we had in our other classes. He used the word emploi du temps and my classmate took out our class schedule to show him our emploi du temps chargé (busy schedule).

Emploi du temps is another word for schedule!

Voici un vocabulaire de gestion du temps :

L’emploi du temps – Schedule, timetable
Un emploi du temps chargé – A busy schedule
L’agenda – Agenda, schedule, appointment book, organizer
L’agenda – Agenda (things to do)
Le programme – Agenda (things to do)
L’ordre du jour – Agenda (things to do)
Le calendrier – Calendar, schedule
Le planning – Calendar, schedule
Le rendez-vous – Appointment, date
La réunion – Meeting
La planification – Scheduling
La programmation – Scheduling
La gestion du temps – Time management
Disponible – Available
Occupé – Busy
L’emploi – Job, employment
Le travail – Work, job
Travailler – To work