Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What Is This All For!
Yesterday I was traveling back from Colorado Springs (I am going for another week next week if any of you live there, drop me an email and we can maybe have a lunch thing) and I realized that there is no way I can put this plan all in one post… so I am going to have to divide it up.
In the previous post “4 Weeks to Answering What This is All For” I mentioned the four part…
- Time: I needed to give myself as much time as I could to focus on the right things, needed to eliminate activities that were time suckers or may even seem important but distracted me from achieving this goal.
- Health: I needed to eat better, sleep better and exercise more so I could feel better and be more focused… but I needed time to do that.
- Clutter: I needed to organize myself better and delegate better (ties into “Time” but for me I made this a separate category).
- Family & Friends: I needed to make room for the people that I love first and foremost.
Today I am going to walk you through the “Time” steps I took. My notes initially were a lot smaller but that is because I knew in my mind what it was they meant and I realized writing this post that I need to go into a little more detail.
NOTE –> This is NOT going to be a four week post series… but it is going to take 2 or 3 more posts (a couple more then I originally anticipated).
Make Some Time
The first part of this entire process for me was making time for things. If my thought was “I have no time because I am too busy” then I was never going to be able to achieve my goal. This also made me look at what the word “too” means and one of the definitions is…
excessively: to a degree exceeding normal or proper limits; “too big”
That means that I have an excess of things that are keeping me busy and therefore I needed to trim the excess. If this was really important to me, then I can NOT use the excuse “too busy”. So the very first thing I needed to do in order to make this work was clean my time table and commit to holding to it. Since this is a 4 week plan, the clean slate time frame was focused on that period of time… meaning i did not have to quit and cancel everything… but i had to at least postpone as much as possible to clear the 4 week period.
Clean Slate Check List
1. Planner: Set up a 4 week daily calendar for this specific goal and put in big letters on the goal date so you can see it. I recommend you use a day planner type calendar that will allow you to pencil in time for each day (you should be using a planning system of some sort anyway but that is just my opinion).
2. List Commitments: On a separate piece of paper, list all time commitments that you would normally be committed to for the next 4 weeks. This includes appointments, activities, meetings and so on.
3. Prioritize Commitments: Now create two columns… one with the header “Critical” and the other “Not Critical” and enter in the appropriate column each commitment. This is harder to do then you may realize at first (was for me anyway) because it is human nature to often think everything is much more important then it is. The thing to remember here is that you are not categorizing for life, this is simply for the next 4 weeks, so if there is an appointment or volunteer activity that can go on without you or be rescheduled then put it in not critical. For those that have a full time job working for someone else, make sure to put the hours of work and travel time (if there is a bit of a commute) in the critical.
4. Reschedule Commitments: For all the “not critical” tasks you now need to reschedule, postpone or cancel. I actually quit one volunteer activity I was involved in because there was enough help and it was too big a time commitment for me. A word of warning… they will try to convince you otherwise but just say no. Do not waffle on this! Tell them that after 4 weeks you will reconsider but for the next 4 weeks the answer is no. Now in your calendar / planner enter in all the critical commitments and mark the times.
Note –> This is going to change a bit in the next 4 weeks as new things come up but I found it a lot easier to say no to new things because I was too busy for them… and the cool thing was the things I said no to were not important and it felt good to say i was too busy for them.
5. Schedule Rest: Our bodies should get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. I realize each person is different but one thing I find is when I talk to people about sleep, it is the people that stay up late that feel they need more then that. It is believed that every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth 2 hours of sleep if you go to bed after midnight and personally I can vouche for this because I find if I go to bed after midnight, I feel that I wake up with almost a hangover type feeling… which never happens when I go to bed earlier and sleep the same amount of hours… unless i have one too many beer 
What I did here was make a commitment to be in bed by 9:30pm and this way I could hopefully be a sleep by 10pm. I also made sure to set my alarm for 6am to ensure I got my 7 to 8 hours but did not waste any time sleeping in. Yes, this includes weekends… and remember this is just for the next 4 weeks, but i hoped i could get my body in a better pattern.
This was very important for me because I know personally that giving my body the rest it needs is critical to having the right mindset and having a healthy body.
6. Daily Time Suckers: Next I looked at all the time wasters I participated in that were small daily things but wasted a huge amount of time. An example of this is flopping in front of the TV and wasting 60 minutes watching TV. So I made sure that I committed to clearing up ALL not critical time. I erased everything… no matter what it was because I wanted a fresh slate.
Now for those of you saying you need to have time in there for family and exercise… I 100% agree, but those are not time suckers… I am talking about doing things like going to forums online or just aimlessly browsing the internet, chatting on the phone, playing video games and stuff like that.
Now I struggled here at first with just saying I am committed to this because I know for myself I need constant reminders. So I updated my start page and put a reminder on the wall beside my desk about focusing time on my goal. I recommend you do that as well to keep that reminder front and center.
Result: The end result here is a clean as possible plate that I can start working with, which you will see why i did it in the next couple posts. My mindset behind this is, when I start listing important tasks and activities in the next step, I want to be able give them as much time as possible and I wanted to be able to schedule the rest of my life around them. I am not posting the next step tomorrow (Sunday, I have a few paid reviews I have to get caught up on, so this will be on Monday).
Any questions?
Posts in this series…
- 1. What is This All For?
- 2. Do You Need a Slap in the Face?
- 3. Do You Already Assume How the Conversation Went?
- 4. Four Weeks to Answering What is This All For!
- 5. Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What is This All For
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
[...] 5. Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What is This All For [...]
[...] 5. Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What is This All For [...]
Great post going more in-depth on the time aspect of your series.
This is a great checklist for someone like us just starting out.
Good plan. I’m going to do the same and try to make some time for myself.
Taking out the big empty notebook that I as a prize in some quiz and planning my schedule..
Good post.It is so easy to get distracted online.I have also a list of tasks that I must do every day, but somehow I manage to finish my daily work at 6 pm, when I should be finished by 2pm.
I guess the problem for me is that doing all of these scheduling and prioritizing tasks takes too much time. Its a vicious cycle.
Cheers!
When I first reading the post, I just imagine my coming 1 month of holiday.
I will target on doing something. Nice articles, give me a lot of ideas.
Great Post. I use a tool called Rainlendar. This tool help to organize my time.
Reggards from Peru
Yeaaaaaaah boyeeeeeeeeee!!! You know I’m feeling this Jason! Right up my alley man! I too can vouche for the going to bed earlier thing! I used to be a night owl to the heart, once I started going to bed a little earlier, I noticed a drastic change in energy!
Now, I don’t get 7-8, but shoot for 6
I like it man, scheduling, the whole bit…keep it up man. I’m watching.