Why do you want to organize your day? There are many health benefits, like feeling less stressed, being happier, sleeping better, taking better care of yourself, and having time for important relationships. So, how do you organize your day? Evaluate your life, schedule what’s most important, and implement your plan.

Evaluate Your Life

One of the best ways to evaluate your life is by doing a time audit. Time audit involves tracking and analyzing what you do each day for several consecutive days. This can help you schedule your tasks efficiently, accomplish your goals, and boost your productivity. To run a time audit, create task categories for your tasks like these: commuting, emails, phone calls, meetings, planning, writing, etc. The categories you create should be specific to your needs, responsibilities, and interests. Now write down your daily activities that correspond with each category and record the time spent on that task each day for a week. For example, you can write down the word “email” and record the time you spend on reading or creating emails.

Once you have completed the time audit recording, review the data with a discerning eye. Notice patterns and how the tasks affect you.

Next, prioritize your tasks by defining your intentions for how much of your day or week should be spent on each of them. I tend to look at my week to be sure I spend time on each of my categories for my personal, home, and church work. These categories include daily time with God, exercise, self-care, food prep, laundry, cleaning, household organization, and outside work of lawn and garden, children’s ministry work, “Small Groups” coaching and administration, and church cleaning. For my business, I tend to look at my week to be sure I spend time on each of these categories: Administration/Finances, Read, Content/Class creation, Prospects, Clients, and Marketing. Armed with this information, begin thinking about a schedule that would incorporate them in your week.

Schedule What is Important

Time blocking is the method I love best for managing my day and scheduling important tasks. I create a daily and weekly schedule that reflects how I want to spend my time.  Time blocking is a technique that divides my entire day into blocks of time. I allocate a specific task or a group of similar tasks into each block. For example, I start my week with planning the week, starting with the Weekly Top 3 tasks that are my priorities for the week in personal categories and the Weekly Top 3 tasks for my business. In addition, I assign day themes for working on different tasks. For my business, Mondays are spent writing content for blogs, emails and social media for marketing purposes; Tuesdays are dedicated to serving my herbal school students and consultation clients; Wednesdays are spent on future planning and class creation, and Thursdays are for managing business finances and closing out the current week.

Evening and morning routines are very helpful. You can read Blog 19: Routines and Blog 31: Best Bedtime Routines for Your Family for ideas to help you create your own routines.

Implement Your Plan

Once you have created the schedule, you can implement your plan by working hard with great focus during your time blocks.

The Pomodoro Technique has helped my ability to focus during my time blocks. With this method, you pick a task. Set a 25 minute timer. Work on the task until it is done and then use extra time to go over it again or start working on another task. Take a 5-minute break. Every 4 pomodoros take a longer 15 to 30 minute break. This method improves focus, prevents burnout, and minimizes distractions. It helps to break the task into smaller, actionable steps that can be completed in a timely manner; group small tasks together; and realize that you do not break the pomodoro to check emails, answer tests, etc.  The result is that you are “getting things done.”

Assess your schedule weekly to see if the time-blocking and other techniques are working for you. Adjust the schedule as you need to.

Remember to reward yourself for making progress on your tasks. Take time to celebrate wins of making progress in each category you work on.

Action Step

Evaluate your life, schedule what is important, and implement your plan to organize your day. In doing so, you will experience progress will take you far on your path to a healthier life.

May God bless you on your wellness journey!

Joni

P.S. How do you manage your time?