How to schedule your life: Part 1 of 3: Your Weekly List
Part of creating a successful life and business on your terms is deciding how to spend your time.
The first step is learning how to schedule your life.
If this seems daunting, don’t worry! I’ve broken it down for you. Over the next three weeks I’ll be teaching you how to schedule your life day by day so you get done what matters most.
Because when we find ourselves on our deathbed we want to know we spent our time exactly as we wanted! Right?
When we break down our life it really comes down to how we spend our hours, days, weeks and years.
Where do you want to put your energy?
Where do you want to spend your time? The beauty here lies in accepting that you are 100% in charge of this.
If scheduling out your entire week sounds daunting to you, don’t worry - this is a work in progress.
Have compassion for yourself that you are right where you need to be. And then take baby steps to get there.
Taking consistent baby steps is the most powerful way to get to where you want to go.
The first baby step I’m going to talk about is creating your weekly list.
Then, Over the next 3 weeks I’ll be teaching you how to schedule your tasks and how to follow through.
Managing your time and your life starts with setting aside time each week to plan.
Spontaneous people, come back to me now!
The beauty here lies in deciding ahead of time what you will do but remember that you are in charge, so if being spontaneous is your thing - you can plan for this (more on that later).
Here are 3 simple steps to scheduling your life by first creating your weekly list:
Set aside time to plan your week. I do this on Sunday or Monday morning.
Create your weekly list.
Curate your list.
Now let’s dig in!
#1 The First Step in Learning How to Schedule Your Life Part 1: Set aside time to plan your week.
When you’re first starting out, I recommend setting aside 2 hours for weekly planning.
This 2 hour block includes time for making your list (today’s blog) and scheduling your week (next week’s blog).
As you get more practiced, this time will decrease. But at first it’s a lot for your brain. So give yourself plenty of time. You will be using this time to make most of your weekly decisions so you don’t have to later.
This time needs to be quiet and uninterrupted. This is the time you will put everything you “need” to do down on paper. Then you will make decisions about what will get done and when.
I use my phone only to get key meetings and appointments down or to read any texts I’ve made to myself (this is how I take notes when things come up out of the blue). Then I set my phone aside and turn it off so I can focus.
#2 The Second Step in Learning How to Schedule Your Life Part 1: Create Your List.
Write down everything that you think you need to do. This includes all things work related, home related and personal related.
Write down your meetings, projects, household chores and projects, social gatherings, phone calls, appointments, fitness tasks (go to the gym 3 times, etc).
This list will have on it all the tasks you think you need to do.
After the first draft of your list, sit back and ask yourself: “is there anything else?”.
Write down what comes up.
Congratulations! You now have the first draft of your weekly list!
Whew!
Does this look like a lot?!
That’s OK because now it’s time to curate your list.
#3 The Third Step in Learning How to Schedule Your Life Part 1: Curate Your List
Let’s face it, we usually overestimate what we can get done in a week and then end up feeling disappointed about “not getting it all done”.
I’m giving you full permission to cull or put on hold the things you know you don’t have time for.
Be ruthless here - go through and ask yourself: “how can I break this task down into smaller tasks?” or “what can wait until I have a quieter week?”
This is you being realistic and taking care of yourself before you allow overwhelm to overtake you.
I put tasks or projects I know I can’t finish into a project planner like Asana.
Asana is a free app where you can organize projects and schedule tasks to complete.
For instance I may want to put on my weekly list “create marketing calendar for 2024” but when I sit and think about it, doing this in one week with all my other tasks is too much.
So then I break down the project into 10 tasks: brainstorm 20 blogs, create a spreadsheet, create a calendar template, etc.
Now I see that I can fit in brainstorming, but the other tasks will have to be done at a later date.! Brainstorming will stay on my list and the other tasks will go into my project planner for another week.
Tip from an expert: you may be tempted to take out personal care tasks like getting your haircut or going to the gym.
Don’t compromise here.
Caring for yourself is the most important thing.
You can’t perform at a high level without these things.
Fitness tasks stay. Need more convincing on why not to skip the gym or your run? Head over to my blog “7 Reasons Why Fitness is Your Key to Business Success”
Personal care stays.
Maybe an email can wait till next week.
Maybe cleaning the closet can wait until next month.
Once your list has been curated, you are now ready for the next step - scheduling your tasks.
Tip from an expert: When I started this list making process my to-do list was pages long.
Now, after years of practice, I pretty much know what is a doable amount of items so my list is down to about 10-15 business tasks and 10-15 personal tasks. But know that this is personal to YOU. If you find out you can sustainably get done 30 business things per week, go do it! If you can get done 3 business things per week, go do it! This is not a competition. This is taking care of yourself.