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Building the blueprint.
(another long read – you can watch the video above instead)
So we started you off by having another look at the procrastination video.
The idea was to give you a context and hopefully a bit of a sense of urgency about the way you currently use your time.
We introduced you in that to a couple of concepts and start or two in a simple way, encourage you to look at the big picture and how you use your time.
And then we asked you to audit your activity,
not the most glamorous task and quite annoying, actually, but as you’ve seen, it produces essential insight into what you’re actually doing.
It gives you data and this exercise always throws up surprises.
Next, we asked you to analyse your audit.
So we started there to make sense of some of that, that you gathered, worked out the percentage of time that you’ve spent doing things, and then worked out whether you can streamline tasks to avoid replication and get help with them.
We worked out if you can systemise what you already do better to outsource it or stop it entirely.
We looked at what, what you want to do more of, we found out where the sticking points were, the sad faces and addressed them with your bridge model.
So you had new actions that would help you move forward with no sad faces going into your blueprints.
We remembered the Eisenhower matrix
from the procrastination video and develop that into definite actions.
The Eisenhower matrix, your ‘better than a to-do to-do list’ –
allocates how important each of your upcoming tasks are – and ultimately gives you an order in which to do things so that you don’t get behind and you don’t miss out the importance.
So we develop that a little bit further to do first that’s the urgent important tasks schedule the important, not so urgent tasks,
outsource the not so important urgent tasks and the not important, not urgent tasks
the don’t do tasks,
Sorted tasks out into those four quadrants.
Obviously you don’t need to put that you are brushing your teeth, that you are doing the school and you don’t need to put those things on there,
but all those other things that would go on your to-do list, they all go in the Eisenhower matrix.
And that means everything.
So there should be a, a lot of stuff on there.
Certainly initially this very first time we do it.
And as you do this, we asked you to think about some concepts that help you gain a deeper understanding of why you do the things that you do.
This helps you avoid treading some of those same pathways that you would like to swerve.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Einstein said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
Well, I wouldn’t call it madness – what I would call is it being maybe too close to the issues,
constant firefighting,
overwhelm and tiredness,
but only by biting the bullet and, and not shying away from this actively rolling your sleeves up and running towards it will get it unravelled and sorted for the future.
And that’s how to fix it.
This will buy you actual time to do the things you love.
That’s what we want for you to start planning for the future, to fulfil the hopes and dreams and all the things that I made you panic about in the procrastination video.
That’s the whole point of all of this.
This isn’t about calendars and spreadsheets.
This is about freeing up your life from drudgery, from boring stuff and getting you, having fun and excited and loving life again.
So just before we get stuck in there with planning, I invited you to have a look at some of the other time mastery concepts.
I called it theory university.
And these are just things to start keeping in mind, just throwing some light into the way that you are doing things currently making you hopefully sidestep any of those traps that you might have been falling into.
First one,
Minimum Effective Dose
fighting back the concept of overdoing things.
So the point of this is so that you do get enough of all the vital things done and don’t focus all of your energies in one area, finding yourself very behind in lots of important areas of life.
Somebody described it as plate spinning, but looking up and making sure you’ve got the right things and the most important stuff on those plates that you’re all keeping up.
Bike Shedding
focusing on the trivial things
when there are big, important things that need to be done, just because they’re easier and for more familiar to deal with
Yak shaving,
not becoming to attach to a solution, if the solution gives you another problem to find another solution, people found that they were doing that
Parkinson’s law
work expanding to fill the time available for its completion.
So we talked about mini sprints and partial deadlines to keep you focused, to stop things being aimless, and to keep you actually making progress with the things that you want to do.
And this forms a lot of the focus actually of your blueprint.
More scheduling tips
how to allocate the right amount of time to a task that will help you be ready to put them into your calendar with time boxing.
It’s not just having a to do, but thinking of it as an actual unit of time, like a box that gets scheduled in the diary, and if it doesn’t get done, which sometimes happens that time is immediately rescheduled.
Once it’s passed that box of time in the diary, according to what you’ve identified are the most important tasks and which is the most sensible order for them to happen in.
So if that thing you meant to do that should have taken an hour, this Tuesday didn’t happen this Tuesday and you think next Tuesday’s a good time to get it done.
Then you move it straight away.
So it doesn’t just fall off the end of a to-do list doesn’t get forgotten about, but it actually gets rescheduled.
So, you know, what’s important and what’s coming up.
Shoe the elephants out of the room
It’s those difficult conversations is someone making your life harder for you because they are not pulling their weight.
And they’re making you do more than your share.
Are you getting the support you deserve?
Are you letting this happen?
It’s not fun. It’s not pretty, but it is important.
And it’s a long term approach – shoe the filthy elephant out of the room.
And we know lots of you have been doing that for good,
The Pareto Principle
that’s the 80 20 rule, 20% of what you do has 80% of the impact on productivity that 80% of your output comes from 20% of your effort.
So the idea is to focus on that effective 20% and double down on it, do more of that.
And the pain in the arse 20% that has probably impacted 80% of your life output.
Your Calendar Blueprint.
You’ll use everything that you’ve learned about time, yourself, the way you currently do things, your ability to solve the problems that you’ve been holding yourself back with – with your bridge model solutions,
And now your completed Eisenhower matrix of all of the things that you need to do.
Although this course should have taken around month and we are nearly there.
We’d like you to allocate two more weeks to implement what you’ve learned and put it into practice.
So to be really clear on that, we’d like you to produce a finished, time-boxed calendar next.Use the following two weeks to implement that. And then we’re gonna keep the group going in the meantime to support you.
We ‘d love to see your new and improved schedules once you’ve tweaked them, which you probably will over those two weeks – and to hear about the time that you are saving.
Your blueprint needs to have the following one big, long term goal for those two weeks.
2weeks is a, a great length of time to get something big, achieved – something important to you.
And we’d encourage you to do this every two weeks. Something separate from the day to day.
It might be as simple as a decision to reconnect with an old friend or something.
As enormous as going back to university,It might be something as mundane as cleaning out under the stairs,
Or as lovely as booking a holiday or getting your eyebrows done up to you.
One big thing – for you.
Trust me on this.
One calendar (rather than separate work and home ones) makes sense because there is only one of you.
You can only have one priority for the next hour.
Please make sure you’ve allocated enough time for each item on your list in each of the quadrants,
but not so much that you don’t move forward
You might do three do first top left tasks, or you might rip through seven of them.
On one day three was my example.
It’s a good working number for me.
I’m usually delighted with myself.
If I’ve got 15 most important things done a week, I find that’s enough.
You might want do more.
Remember the scheduling principles, be sure to reward yourself rather than just piling on the pressure of more jobs.
When you get to the end of things, make time in your diary to actually do the scheduling each week or the whole thing will fall apart and all you’ll do this once.
Do a really good job of it and then never do it again.
So that goes in your schedule to that goes in your diary, your blueprint, your calendar, whatever you want to call it.
Also schedule your time to revisit your bridge model each week, probably at the same time.
So you can sort out problems as they come up.
Amy told us about doing your bridge model.
Revisiting that weekly makes total sense.
This could also be a great time for a family meeting so you can find out if anyone else has things going on that you need to know about too.
If you have a family notice board, you can use that time to fill it in.
This is a great time to update your calendar with things like dentist, half term, mot, smear tests, eye appointments, birthday, school dates, all those other things that can catch you out.
Scheduling in time to schedule staff sounds bond cause was actually the key to staying on top of everything.
Use whichever calendar or diary appeals most, whether it’s a paper, one, a wall planner, an online one, whatever you will actually use.
And as always – let us see what you’ve done.
Congratulations – let’s build that blueprint x