We all want to be able to do more in a day. The key is understanding that you can’t control time and time management is an actual misnomer. You can’t manage time. Time just is. My mentor and teacher Brooke Castillo has a method that when applied allows you to do more in a day than most people get done in a week. How? Lets look at that.
The Time Journal
This shows you how much idle time you actually have. You think you are busy all day long when in reality you are only busy for 10% of the day. You may think you have 10 things to do each day but you have 4 things. What do you do when you get home? Where is all your time going? the Time Journal will tell you.
TO-Do Download
Now write down all the todos you want and need to get done. Write everything down. Clean the grout in the kitchen? write it down. Finish those emails? Write it down. Keep that up til you have a full page or things to do.
Prioritize the tasks
Number the tasks you wrote down and number them from most important to least. Then you grab your scheduler and you start getting ready to schedule your time. Now many of you men have the thought that you don’t like to schedule your time. You like your freedom.
Let me ask, how free are you really? Discipline is freedom. I get it sounds like a mantra from Ingsoc but it’s not. It is the truth. I swear. When you are disciplined you can almost create time. It is that important to be free, is to have your life disciplined.
Now another question many people have about this is how you schedule your time. You don’t know how long a task will take. This is your brain wanting to be confused. Take a guess, if you truly believe you don’t know. The cool thing about this is Parkinson’s Law
Work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion
So if you cut it too short then you may not get it done. Thena gain you just may get it finished. The problem is that when you are running on default mode you will just work a little here and a little there. This is meant to point you onto the road of intentional thinking and intentional doing. This is because if you don’t finish it you will have to work during your free time, and you are wanting to have as much free time as possible right? If not then you wouldn’t be bitching about how busy you are.
Give your tasks the focus they deserve
Now we schedule Start planning your week out not just the day but the whole week all 7 days. Now before you start to cry about the weekends too, keep reading.
Schedule your off time first
How do you want your life to be? do you want 3 days off or do you only work 5 hours for 5 days? This is completely up to you. Plan your day. What does your day look like? Mine 4 day work weeks. I take clients for 4 days the 5th day is actually media day and then I am free, baby at noon. So before you apply the work you put down your sleep, Eat and the Free time you want to have.
Schedule appointments for Focus time
This is where the rubber hit the road. This is where you get focused. You look at what you are wanting to get down and you do it. YOu turn off all the distractions. That means you put your phone on airplane mode or DND. Then again you might just turn it completely off. You lock the office door and you put a sign on the door that says focus time Do Not Disturb. Not little dings, bells, trumpets no alarm sounds. It is you and only you. and your plans.
This isn’t the busy work that we do. This is the thinking time. This is you planning your week out. This is you plotting your world domination. You don’t do this with your kids running around. You don’t do this where you have lots of distractions. It is you and your goals and all you want to get done. This is you planning how to get to the finish line in a very thought-out and deliberate way.
Make a list of all the results you want to create this week
These results are listed out. Do you want to get done? What are the results you want? This is the more important question you want to ask yourself. Your massive action is from the accumulation of results you have collected. So what are your results you want to have? Because your thoughts make your results.
Fill in Your Calendar
Now start filling in your calendar and give yourself the time needed to get stuff done.
Follow Your Callendar
This is the big challenge when starting off. You have to follow your calendar. That means when time is up, time IS up. So you have to stop and go to the next job. You will get back to the other task at the end of the day.
You will have lots of thoughts about how you can just let this slide or if you don’t feel like doing that task right now. You have to just say, You don’t care what your mind wants you to know what has to be done so you are going to do it. Then you do it.
Sunday Hour Done
This is your celebration time. You completed all your calendar tasks and so you give yourself a big whoopty do! It may be time doing your hobby or have a celebratory drink. How you do want to celebrate your big win? Either way, you have to let yourself have a celebration time for the work done
