May 20, 2019
Today’s Guest
I'm back again, with another solo episode! I've been thinking a lot about prioritizing lately, especially since my calendar was crammed with things to do prior to the launch of my recent book, If Trees Could Talk: Life Lessons from the Wisdom of the Woods. And it didn't stop once the book was launched: I've been very busy ever since. I had to make decisions about what to do, and when, and which things I could bump to a later date in my calendar. I wanted to share my reflections with you, since time management and prioritizing tasks and activities can be a big challenge for many people.
Listen To This Episode
What You'll Learn
- How to organize your life with Google Calendar (or something similar)
- Why time blocking is so important
- How to figure out what your non-negotiable tasks/activities are
- How to organize your regular tasks and recurring events
- How to break bigger goals into specific tasks so you can time block them
- How to design your ideal week and see how that compares to reality
- Why it's so important to leave open slots in your calendar
- What to do when you have a scheduling conflict
- How to decide what to do and which task/activity is the priority
- Questions to ask yourself so you can easily make decisions + know your priorities
- Examples of recent things I've had to rearrange and why, so you can see how I do this
Things I Discussed
- Survey
- Life categories: social/friends, family, fitness/outdoors/Nature, self care/me time, spiritual and personal growth, hobbies, career/business, health/wellbeing, creativity/self expression
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondō
- Boomerang for Gmail
Questions to Ask Yourself
- What's more important? Listen to your gut response
- How does this activity/task take you one step closer to achieving your top goals?
- Can you do one of the activities at another time/date? Later in the year?
- Can one of the activities be rearranged without overcomplicating things or inconveniencing someone else?
- Are other people involved? If so, that might make rearranging more difficult
- Do you have the time/money to do this right now, or can/should you rearrange it for a later date?
- Do you absolutely need to do this activity NOW (for example, because there's a deadline), or can you do it at a later time/date?
- Do YOU absolutely need to do this task/activity yourself, or can you outsource it?
- Do you absolutely NEED to do this task/activity now, or is it just nice to do? Can you bump it to a later date/time in your calendar, or consider not doing it at all?
- Is there another date/time/location you can do this?
- Does this activity spark joy? If not, do you really need to do it? Can you get someone else to help or do it for you?
- Is the activity/task urgent + important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, not urgent + not important? (See quadrant)
Resources
- Wheel of Life
- List of values
- Important/Urgent quadrant
Connect With Holly
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