Day 03: National Clutter Awareness Week — Decluttering Your Schedule

I am sure if you have found your way to this, you know you need to declutter your schedule but let's say that you have just been following along with the series this week and want to see what a decluttered schedule looks like. Having a cluttered scheduled may affect your productivity, so stick around to know how you will be able to declutter your schedule!

Let's Start With the Why:

For starters, we find ourselves in a digital age where we are given access to more opportunities than ever before. This is good if you know how to manage this. If not, you will be:

• Overbooked
• Overworked
• Overstretched

And perhaps the biggest "AHA Moment" is this, being busy isn’t the same as being productive!

Steps to Declutter Your Schedule:

1. Track what you do. for one week, write down everything that you do. If you check your email, write that down. If you scroll social media, write that down. On average, we check our email 15 times a day!
2. Go through your week and circle everything that you enjoy doing. Put a box around everything you do not. Those boxes become the things that you either delete or delegate out. More on that is below. Another way to capture these ideas is to use this matrix model to sort tasks.

Since we were young, it has been drilled into our heads to create lists. But nobody told us the correct way to make them. So here is something to ponder, your to-do list will only be complete when you are dead...

Okay, that took a dark turn, but it is true! We will always add more and more things that can or should be done. How many of those things actually need to be done though?

Here is how to create the correct list:

First, have a "Master" list and sort your goals into yearly goals. These then get broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

You might be saying "Caitlin, I am not writing down my goals" Well, I say back to you "you can't hit a target you cannot see." Very few adults take a few moments to sit down and actually write out their goals. So instead, we are pulled into a million different directions with no advancement toward our dreams.

Once you have your "to-do" lists created, you will be able to see very clearly, what tasks are in scope with your goals and which are not. Below is how we manage the ones that are not.

Setting Boundaries: How we limit

The 3 D’s

• Delegate. Reassign the task to someone else
• Do It. Within your scope, you can do it.
• Delete it. Remove unnecessary tasks
  • Batch/Blocking time and actives. Setting aside time to work on one task is a lot easier than doing that task multiple times each week.
  • Outsource what can be outsourced. If you have tasks that you have found are eating up a lot of your time, delegate those out to someone who can manage them for you.
  • Build in play/downtime. It can be very easy to quickly jump from one thing to the next so building downtime into your schedule will help maximize your potential.

These are some of the things I have found along my journey to help set into place the boundaries of my time. We can all be pulled towards work, family, friends, and other activities but proper time management is critical if you actually want to progress towards your teams.

If you want more information or to dive in deeper. You can use the resources below to access the books I mentioned.

Other Resources:

1. The ONE Thing
2. Eat that Frog
3. Working hard hardly working

Happy Decluttering!

xx Caitlin

If you want to schedule a call and start the journey to living a more organized life (and a less stressful one!) you can book your call with me HERE.