I get a lot of questions about time management and productivity, and I often get the question “How do you manage to do so much all the time?”.
(Which makes me laugh cause I often wonder “what the heck did I do today?”)
Planning and optimizing my work is a total obsession of mine, but not in the way you would think. When you hear that someone is a great optimizer and planner, what do you envision?
Probably someone who is rigid, Type A, detail-oriented, and high energy. Well, I am none of those things (except maybe Type A, but I think that definition is highly outdated).
I actually test as a Rebel/Questioner in Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies (which I highly recommend doing). Which means I have a hard time being motivated or accountable for anything. My Rebel tendency rejects all internal and external accountability. My Questioner tendency rejects anything external. So I had to get really creative with my productivity systems.
I mean, being a Rebel/Questioner is great if you are able to work in a completely unfettered way and are never accountable for anything, but that kind of doesn’t exist in life, so we have to find ways to work around that.
Being a Rebel doesn’t mean I won’t do anything. On the contrary, I do a lot. It just all has to be my idea, and I have to make it competitive (with myself), make it a game, try to prove myself wrong or right.
But Rebel or not, my big quest has been to find a way to structure my work so that I can have all the freedom I crave in my schedule, but still be hyper productive.
So I created a three-tiered planning system, and paid attention to where the details made me feel a bit constrained, and worked around those.
Here’s what I know:
If I make it too difficult to keep track of new things to do, I won’t do it. So even though I am a systems person, using a software tool for catching to-do’s throughout the day didn’t work. So I write them on a notepad.
At the end of each week, anything that I didn’t get done from that notepad, I transfer into my app (I’m currently using Monday for its simplicity). I have a list called a Task Backlog - it’s all the work that remains unplanned but still needs to get done at some point. I have that organized into categories based on how I think about my work.
At the start of each week, I move all of the tasks I want to work on from my Task Backlog list to This Week’s Tasks list. That way I am going through a prioritization exercise and I am also not overwhelming myself by looking at a huge list every week of things I can’t get done.
Now, I have the Weekly Action Plan notepad from Best Self, and I move all of this week’s tasks to that notepad, which sits beside my desk. I know, personally, I like having this week’s work in front of me all the time, and I can write quick notes and I can see the items getting checked off.
There is a huge and important key here. I have learned how much I can reasonably get done in a week, and I no longer over schedule myself. All that does is result in frustration and burnout. I purposely am very conservative about how much I assign myself. If I find I still have time at the end of the week, I can add more from my backlog, but that focused, specific list makes it so much easier to feel like I can make progress.
Now, here’s the part where my personality comes in. I don’t ever want to feel like I am tied down at any point in the day. I have a huge trigger around people owning my time (even myself!), so I will never structure my days. Instead, I make sure that my This Week’s Task list is in priority sequence, and when I sit down at the start of a day, I will decide what I work on that day. Typically, I will work down the list in order of priority, but sometimes I just want to do something different, and so I do.
My goal is to never feel friction in my business, or anything that I “should” do. I know I am much brighter in the mornings so I will usually just use that time for anything that requires creation.
And we all know how our days typically turn out a little different than we expected, and so I want to be able to go with the flow.
Using this system, I am able to ensure I continue to make progress on my bigger projects plus all of the minute details. It makes me feel like I own my time, and I always know what I am trading off if I decide to do something different. My task list is a suggestion, not an edict.
In fact, this works so well, I have four clients who have hired me now to do exactly the same thing with them, on a weekly basis.
If you’d like to learn more about how to structure your own time, book a free strategy call and we can talk more about your own personal work schedule:
https://stephaniehayes.kartra.com/calendar/strategy-sessions
Tell me if this sounds like it would work for you! What tips and tricks have you found that have helped you with your time management?
