MAKE EACH DAY YOUR MASTERPIECE
Ready to get ORGANIZED in 2021 - and find more time in your days?! Grab my FREE Productivity Planner and start planning like the #MomBoss you know you are!
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing several different ways you can start living a more productive life. I hear from so many of you how you struggle with your time and feel like you just don’t have enough time to get it all done. I totally get it, so I want to share with you some of my top tips for managing your time and getting your time BACK so you have more time for the things that are important to you.
One of the things that I learned when I first started building a business was how to create an ideal schedule. This was the thing that really made my dream feel like a reality and gave me so much clarity on what I was working toward. I really think you’re going to like today’s post on how to create your ideal schedule.
Let me take you back to 5 years ago…
This blog was a toddler (don’t ask me how many years old… I’ve lost track at this point…). I was working full time as a physical education teacher. I was coaching middle school track + cross country (which was a BIG change from being the head coach of the high school volleyball program). I was working 30 minutes west of where we live (an hour outside of Downtown St. Louis). I had 2 little ones at home, one which was in preschool 3 days per week and the other was full time at the babysitter’s house.
At the time, I was waking up at 3:45AM to run because it was the only time I had. I had to be completely dressed to shoes by 6AM, getting both kids dressed and out the door by 6:30 (some days, taking my oldest to preschool), and at work by 7:15.
We taught 3 classes in the morning, had an 80 minute break for lunch (thank goodness), and 3 classes in the afternoon. The kids were dismissed at 2:45, but we had to stay until 3:15 per our contract - or later on days we had meetings after school.
Most days, I was getting home at 4 at the earliest, but other days, I was getting home closer to 5PM.
Dinner was served promptly at 6PM (thank the Lord for my amazing husband who enjoys cooking because I do not), the kids would be in the bathtub at 6:30, and would have some downtime at 7PM before our bedtime routine started at 7:30. By 8PM, the kids were in bed…
And I was exhausted.
But, that’s when I was just sitting down to spend the next 2 hours on my business.
Most days I was in bed around 10:30PM, only to wake up and do it all over again.
Needless to say, I was EXHAUSTED. I was running on fumes and completely burnt out.
Add on top of that the fact that I was no longer feeling fulfilled by my teaching job, and I was on a whole other level of burn out.
I wanted OUT. I wanted something different. But, more than anything…
I wanted my TIME back.
Maybe this is you. Maybe you can resonate with a lot of my story. You might not be waking up at the buttcrack of dawn to go run in the pitch black around your neighborhood, but you know what it feels like to just want something different.
Or, maybe you LOVE your job (WOOHOO - I’m FINALLY there too), but you’re feeling stretched thin and just don’t know how you can actually have time to relax a little bit.
This is not the blog post about starting a business or quitting your job. Nope, that’s NOT what this is about.
This is about laying out a schedule that makes every single day one you want to wake up to.
But, it starts with where you’re at NOW.
If you didn’t do your Time Audit Homework, I strongly encourage you to go back and do that before you jump feet first into this, but if you haven’t, that’s OK too. This is still a good starting point.
Today, we’re going to work on creating your IDEAL SCHEDULE.
You know, the one that lights you up and makes you want to jump out of bed every single morning.
Even if you’re not where you want to be right now (similar to my story when I first did this), have no fear! This is going to be the stepping stone to get you to that next point, my friend!
Ready?! Let’s get started!
STEP 1. START WITH WHAT YOUR DAY LOOKS LIKE NOW.
Block in all the non-negotiable commitments you have every single week. If you work 9AM to 5PM, put that on your schedule. If you know you have to take the kids to the babysitter or pick them up from school at a certain time, put that on your schedule. If your daughter has gymnastics on Wednesdays and your son has soccer on Saturdays, put that on your schedule.
All of these things are the things that you MUST DO.
You can do this on a Google Calendar or you can grab my Productivity Planner for a weekly planner where you can pencil in your time. I also love doing this in a Google Sheet (y’all, I’m OBSESSED with spreadsheets) because it just makes it easy to have different tabs for different schedule ideas.
(Psssst… here’s a copy of my Google Sheet…)
STEP 2. ADD IN ADDITIONAL THINGS YOU WANT TO DO.
Now that you’ve blocked out all the time for non-negotiables, maybe there are some things that you WANT to be doing on a regular basis.
This is entirely up to you. For me, it was building businesses in order to quit my 9-to-5 job. But, maybe for you it’s working on your house, or creating art work, or having some 1-on-1 time each week with your kids, or doing whatever it is you LOVE to do and want to make time for.
You can already see where you HAVE to be doing things - now you can FIND THE TIME to fit in the things you WANT to be doing.
White space is my FAVORITE thing in my calendar, and I typically make sure I have white space after 3PM on weekdays and the majority of the weekends. I NEED time to not do what I do all day long, so white space is my time for those fun things that I WANT to do and enjoy, like spending time with my kids, or trying to beat my husband in Dr. Mario.
STEP 3. CREATE YOUR DREAM SCHEDULE.
OK, so you might have read that last paragraph and went, “But, wait… I don’t HAVE white space in my day!”
Hey, you heard my story earlier… I didn’t have white space (which is why I was building businesses in my free time).
That’s when I decided to build my DREAM schedule - what I wanted to work toward. When you look at your current schedule, is there anything that you could maybe NOT do? Or move to a different time?
I know that’s hard when you work fulltime, but maybe you can shift around some activities for your kids or eventually move to part time or different hours.
I can’t determine your schedule for you… this is ENTIRELY up to you. But, don’t be afraid to dream a little bit! For me, it was quitting my job + working from home. I dreamt of waking up at 5AM to work out, putting my kids on the bus for school, working in the morning, having lunch out with my mom + my friends, shutting down my computer at 3PM everyday, etc.
Did it happen overnight? NOPE. But, by putting that dream down on paper, I knew what I was working toward. It took time, saving money, shifting activities (like quitting coaching to have more time on my hands), etc. Yet, if I didn’t VISUALIZE that dream, I wouldn’t be living it today.
Now, everything that I wanted in that DREAM SCHEDULE has become my reality. Again, even after quitting my job, it didn’t happen overnight. I took on some projects + clients that exhausted me. But, I still kept working to figure out how to get to that dream day, and I can’t happily say I feel like I’m finally living it more and more everyday.
Friend, if you want more time, it’s time to go out and FIND it! This is a great starting point for you! And if you want more ideas on Ideal Schedules, I have several linked in my Productivity Planner when you download it!
If you missed it, definitely hop back to the last post all about auditing your time! You’ll definitely want to start there before you start dreaming about your days so that you’re not wasting your precious time! It’s the one resource in the world we don’t get more of - unless we MAKE it!
