Last week I gave you a step by step rundown of how to calendar, or schedule, your to-do list.
This week I want to take a closer look at several of the involved elements and expound upon them further so you can take your calendaring to the next level!
No Going Back!
One way to learn to trust yourself and your calendar is to delete your to-do list after you’ve transferred the tasks onto your calendar.
Those who use paper and pen for their to-do brain dump should crumple up the paper and throw it away. (I said that for dramatic impact, kindly recycle instead!)
Your to-do list represents your overwhelmed, reactive primitive brain. By transferring the to-do list to your calendar and getting rid of it, you’re telling your brain not to worry and that you’ve got this! You’re harnessing your neocortex over your primitive brain!
When an Unstoppable Force Meets a Movable Object
As you are writing down tasks for your to-do list, you will have more complex items that you will want to break down into steps. Write each step down as a separate task.
Thanks for the step-wise instruction, Amy and Tina!
You will also want to write down any obstacles that may impede your ability to complete said tasks and what you need to do (i.e., another task) to overcome said obstacles.
For example, let’s say you want to start a blog. You may feel stuck right out of gate. So you write down the following obstacles and more tasks to get past them:
- I don’t know if I need a domain name, website host, a website builder? Or all of them?
- Spend time researching
- Ask a friend who has a blog
- Hire help
- What’s an email service provider?
- (same list as the last one)
- What should my blog niche be?
- Write out list of interests/passions and areas I’m knowledgeable about and look for intersection
- Jot down ideas where I think there is a lack of content or need for a perspective I can provide.
- Etc.
Every time you ask a question (obstacle), you want to try your best to give an answer (a task). You are smart and will have some idea, even if it’s simply to phone a friend.
You can then schedule out these smaller, more specific tasks that propel you forward instead of struggling with the nebulous “start a blog.”
I Can't Do It, Captain. I Don't Have the (Will)Power!
If the main obstacle you come against is your motivation/willpower, then break the task down into very small concrete steps with time built in for each step.
What does this look like?
Well, if you’re trying to take up running around a park to which you have to drive, then instead of putting on your calendar “6am – Go for run,” you break it down as follows:
- 5:30am – Wake up
- 5:35am – No really, wake up
- 5:40am – Put on running outfit
- 5:45am – Put on running shoes
- 5:50am – Get in car to head to park
- 6:00am – Run
Did I forget to mention which park this was?
I know this may seem childish and like you’re padding your calendar, but your primitive brain loves to knock off easy tasks. Each little task completed builds your motivation to take the next step so you can achieve the overall goal.
Wake Up and Smell the Routine
In last week’s post, I talked about adding first to your calendar your basic week’s framework of things that you know have to get done like eating and sleeping.
This serves several purposes.
First, you add some structure to your calendar so it’s not a completely blank canvas which can be super intimidating to fill.
Second, the structure helps you understand where in your schedule you can find time for deep work—the tasks that require more prolonged focus or attention.
The third point is the next section, but before moving to it, I want to mention something else.
If you can make your base weekly structure the same week in and week out—that is, a routine—then you’re not wasting your time and energy as well as working memory trying to focus on the mundane, such as when you’ll eat lunch.
You can apply this tactic elsewhere in your life. Think of all the famous people, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who notoriously wear the same outfit day after day to simplify their lives avoid and wasting bandwidth on decisions they don’t care much about. (I know, all those verbs are past tense for Jobs 😢)
Like this…but the opposite.
This frees up your brain to accomplish so much more!
Treat Yo'Self
That third point for adding in your basic framework to your calendar first?
On top of basic necessities, self-care, and other requirements, you add in the things you want to do as well as when you want free time for whatever!
Schedule your needs and wants first and then fit the other stuff in.
You make your time a priority by building it into your framework such that it’s a given. This gives you time to do what you want to do…unless you have young or adult (sorry Boomers, no really) children, then you’re hosed.
Every Boomer thinking about all the stuff their adult children make them do. Amirite?
Deny Yo'Self
The flip side of my last point is a deal you make with yourself: if you don’t honor a commitment or get something done in the time allotted, then you have to do it during some of your scheduled free time.
If you had three weeks to work on a project and you fail to mentally organize yourself and thus don’t schedule all the tasks out, then you might find yourself procrastinating. You end up churning out the work in the last hour.
Without constraint, we allow things to fill up our time, even if most of that time is spent anguishing about those things! The former part of the last sentence is called Parkinson’s Law, and I’ll write about it more in the future.
To Do, Or Not to Do? That Is the Question
This might be the zaniest thing I tell you about calendaring, so I saved it for last.
There is nothing on your to-do list that you truly have to do. Seriously.
You are a human who has free will.
You don’t have to go to work, eat, sleep, or mow the lawn. Heck, you don’t even have to care for your children. Told you it would sound zany (that word looks so odd typed out).
You do those things because you choose to do them, be it to feel pleasure, to avoid a negative consequence. or out of love.
So decide what you want to do from your list. If you don’t want to do something, then decide if you want to delegate it or delete it entirely.
I’ll run a post I mentioned last week in the near future about a decision matrix surrounding this.
The point I’m trying to make is that you hold complete agency over what you do and want to accomplish.
Knowing that you don’t truly have to do anything, but still do because you choose or want to is a beautiful thing.
It’s motivating. It’s empowering.
It might not feel like it, but you’re in the driver’s seat of your life. You’re the boss.
Taking control of and being intentional with your time is an amazing way to experience this.
If you calendar out your tasks and then implement the tweaks and improvements here, you will show up in your life as a bad ass.
What do you think? Can you take your calendaring to the next level? Let me know in the comments section below.
Let me know in the comments section below.
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