Did you get to check out Haylins’ spectacular email last week? If not no worries it was so great a turned it into a blog post you can check out HERE.
After reading his email I realized two things about my calendar.
It just so happened that on Friday we took an awesome course on Becoming a Time Ninja from our good friend Michael Keeler.
As you can imagine the topic of calendars came back up.
I explained to Michael that I just use my calendar for appointments I have. It could be training sessions with clients, phone calls to talk about nutrition, meetings with my team, and other things that are scheduled at a specific time.
What I didn’t have in my calendar were the tasks I had to get done on my own. Things such as answering emails, writing emails like this one, cleaning the gym, following up with clients, writing programs and so much more.
I had a list where I would check off things when they got done but I didn’t have them scheduled into my day. I would just sit down at my computer and think “okay what should I do now”.
While that might not seem very unproductive Michael went on to explain the time and energy we would waste before even starting our work. It could take 15-20 minutes to focus on a task and get started. Doing this a few times a day over a week can add up to real-time!
My first take for becoming more efficient with my time was to use some system to write out my tasks for the day the night before and put a time frame on when each task would get done.
Michael introduced me to an app called Todoist.
This is a scheduling app that allows you to insert tasks, schedule them for a date/time, prioritize the tasks and even create sub-tasks to have everything very organized.
Now I have only been using the app for a few days but I can already say how much I am enjoying it!
It allows me the freedom throughout the day to simply look at the calendar, complete whatever task I have assigned at that time and check it off the box. It takes the mental lifting out of figuring out what to do out of it and I must say it feels great!
The other thing I noticed that I never realized is how good it feels to check things off your list when they are done. It makes me feel like I am getting more accomplished and does not feel like I am constantly facing an uphill battle with my work.
My challenge to you is to create a system that works for you to schedule your tasks throughout the day and try it for 4 weeks. Your trial needs to be long enough for you to know if it is working or not.
While I love Todoist, you can use whatever works best for you. There are plenty of apps out there, or you can simply use a day planner and pen. The tool you use right now is not important, what is important is you take a few minutes daily to plan and do that consistently.
Treat this as an experiment and let me know how it goes!
Pat
