How I Schedule My Days …

Preparing yourself for each and every business day is all about creating a process to save yourself time, effort and making room for massive growth. It’s all about manipulating your time because we only have 24-hours in each day and unfortunately do not have the power to slow down time.

Here’s how I schedule my days …

First off, for those who don’t know me well (yet), I’m a HUGE PLANNER in all aspects of my life. Not just business. Honestly, it probably drives my other half and friends crazy some days. LOL!

Everything in my schedule, whether business or personal, has a time and a place. But honestly, that how I like it and feel it makes me thrive and keeps things in an orderly fashion when running from meeting to meeting and project to project. This way I don’t have to worry about the “small stuff” and I’m never late for anything because I can’t find my keys.

So, being meticulous and strategic about how I schedule my time is absolutely essential to me. It helps me effectivity grow my business while utilizing the least amount of time and maintaining a healthy mental lifestyle (aka. I’m not going crazy – yet, haha). I like to schedule my days for maximum productivity in the simplest ways possible.

So, here’s what a day-in-the-life of ME looks like …

I wake up early, but I don’t roll out of bed right away. I lay there and relax while taking some time to check my personal email and message first before I dive on into the business ones. I do this because I like my day to start off peaceful by reading whatever positivity subscriptions (blogs, podcasts, motivational quotes, etc.) I have myself signed up for. Instead ow worrying right off the hop about what I have to tackle first, second, third … and so on.

Then I get up, stretch and go feed my little gremlins. Yes, all 3 of my kitties. My oldest, Maxxwell, was recently diagnosed with a kidney disease and Diabetes so his morning schedule is now mine as I want to make sure he stays healthy, eats enough and gets his insulin on time.

Once they’re all fed and happily bouncing around the house, I begin my routine … tidy the house, get laundry started, breakfast, shower, make-up … all that good stuff. Then I head down to my office, open my email, my productivity platforms, design programs, check in on my Toggl reports for the week (per client) and dive right on in.

I start off my answering any “urgent” client emails then go off into social media-land and do whatever posting needs to be done for the week, both for my business as well as for any clients if that’s something on my plate at that time. And yes, I schedule each week at a time (for the platforms that allow and entrepreneur to pre-schedule any posts). This posting gets taken care of each and every Monday morning.

Then once those items are all taken care of, I review my daily to-do list, my weekly to-do list and my meeting schedule for the week so I can plan my time accordingly in between all these items, whether meetings, projects or smaller to-do list tasks. Once my mind has been refresher with the tasks at hand, I then dive into my Asana task lists, which by the way is set up in chronological order by due date and sectioned by client. Even if they don’t use this platform, I place all of the projects discussed into Asana for my own scheduling (and piece of mind) purposes.

As you can see, my entire routine revolves around a plan.

At the end of each month, I spend a few days planning out my to-do list and Asana schedule (yes, I even have a tabbed section for Virtually Untangled projects and goals) for the next month. Adjusting timelines as necessary. And every second month, I work on my social media/marketing plan since I prepare this in 3-month intervals. Just in case business (and life) gets extra bonkers. Which we all know tends to happen from time to time.

For this type of pre-planning I need bittersweet quiet time so that I can plan out any blog posts I’ve been aching to write to you about. Just to be clear, I’m not actually writing them … just choosing the topics, scheduling them into my sacred spreadsheet, cruising my stock photo collection for the “perfect” graphic(s), writing the social media blub and preparing the scheduling in the back-end of my website. Then I plan out any other social media posts I’ve been interested in sharing with my audience and work with my VA on what’s next for our email schedule (e.g. feature blog posts, contests and other goodies).

For me, nothing kills productivity and my laser focused mind than becoming distracted. I highly value every single moment I have and am ruthless about killing any and all distractions! You’re probably wondering what I mean here.

This means doing things like … having my email notifications on silent (even though my phone is within reach at all times), not leaving 5 million tabs open, only checking social media posts during certain times of the day (unless a client needs me to otherwise do so), doing my best to not let my mind wander over to my email (whether business or personal) throughout the day and working in an environment where I will have as few distractions as possible – I live in a very old creaky house so placed my office in the basement to keep myself out of reach of the kitchen (I am a snack mongrel some days) and away from Netflix, LOL).

Want to know how you can become a master of your time?

1. Set a time limit to each task. Don’t forget to add buffers in between in case you don’t complete a task on time and so you don’t take time away form whatever is next on your schedule.
   
   
2. Use a to-do list, which you’ve heard me talk about many, many times. Creating one of these for yourself will keep you laser focused and will also motivate you as you see what you’ve already achieved, and what remains.
   
   
3. Plan ahead and spend your mornings on your most important tasks (MIT’s). You have the most amount of energy in the morning so don’t waste it fiddling around!
   
   
4. Eliminate any and all distractions.
   
   
5. Change your schedule but don’t “half-work” your routines. And by “half-work” I mean, don’t stop randomly to check your phone for no reason or pop onto social media to cruise. A wandering mind never gets things done on time.
   
   
6. Follow the 1-3-5 rule, which again is, mapping out one big thing, three medium things and five smaller things you want to get done on a daily basis (and yes, those are what we like to call a reasonable number of items for your to-do list).
   
   
7. Purge your lists on a daily basis and be realistic with your goals.
   
   
8. Utilize the Eisenhower method in all decisions.
   
   
9. Stop trying to be perfect because when you’re a perfectionist, nothing will ever be good enough which means nothing will ever get done and you will be in “rinse n’ repeat” mode for what feels like forever.
   
   
10. Do less and make every action count. As a result, in the long run, you will be creating more value.