3 Simple Steps to Redesign Your Day.

Want to get more out of your day? Try these 3 simple re-design tips.

Wishing you had more time in your days?

Are you feeling overwhelmed, or have conflicting priorities across your personal and professional life? Do you feel that dreaded sense you’re not spending your time on the things that count?

Whatever you might be experiencing, if you want to get more out of your days and feel more motivated, productive, and energised, then give these 3-time management strategies a go and re-design your day to help set you up for success.

1)    Weekly schedules

Although the focus is related to getting more out of your day, by starting with the big picture across your week, it may support you in making better decisions day to day.

Start off by mapping out the time you spend on the MUST DO activities like your hours at work, weekly exercise classes, date nights, and do not forget time to eat and sleep.  

(Example below):

Weekly schedule to support planning.

Filling in a weekly schedule can help you see how you are currently spending your time and where you might implement changes based on your priorities and goals. This allows you to see where you have time available, or how you could re-purpose tasks to help you achieve your goals, enhance work/life balance and feel more productive. 

Making even minor changes to your weekly routine, can make a significant difference.

It might look like getting out of bed earlier, going for walks over lunch breaks, or scheduling in time to catch up with friends and family, listening to podcasts on the way to work  and simply adding in tasks during those “empty times”.

2)    Eisenhower Priority Matrix  

The Eisenhower Matrix, developed by the 34th US President Dwight Eisenhower and further popularised by Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is a well-known productivity, prioritisation, and time-management framework designed to help you prioritise a list of tasks. The key to using this matrix is understanding the difference between urgent and important tasks and by separating these differences it will assist you in working through  the matrix and to create new habits.

Urgent tasks are things you feel require immediate action and important tasks are things that contribute to your long-term mission, values, and goals. ​

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Eisenhower Priority Matrix.

The matrix is separated into quadrants to help you allocate the appropriate time and action to tasks. Used often enough, it can support you to create new habits on how you prioritise your work.

Quadrant 1, DO: Are the tasks and projects that are urgent and require your immediate attention. They are the tasks that you do now, for example, a task your boss has assigned, a dentist visit from tooth pain, , or a client comes to you with a pressing problem. Often urgent tasks come with clear consequences for not completing them. For some of us, they can form a large part of our jobs, but spending too much time here, without some good self-care measures can lead to elevated levels of stress and prevent us from planning for greater success.  ​

​Quadrant 2, PLAN: Tasks are high on importance, but low on urgency. Important to long term goals and can often be scheduled and planned for another time Such tasks might include, routine maintenance, training and development, networking, strategic planning, writing a newsletter piece or report, (this one should be in DO, and routine health care appointments.

Quadrant 3, DELEGATE: It’s tempting to prioritise these tasks because of their urgency. However, due to their low importance, they should never be prioritised over Q1 tasks, since these tasks are not crucial, and may not need your specific skill set you  may delegate them. Consider a challenge  a co-worker is facing, responding to ‘some’ emails and texts, unnecessary interruptions from co-workers, meal prepping, organising social activities, meetings - could you send a proxy to attend instead?

If you cannot delegate these tasks, could you:

·        Turn off notifications and distractions ​

·        Negotiate ​new timeframes or practice saying no ​

·         Communicate clear time boundaries to others

·        Save Q3 tasks for times when you are low on energy, versus allocating them when you’re at your energetic peak.

​​Quadrant 4, DELETE OR REDUCE: These tasks are neither urgent nor important, they are more about instant gratification, but can lead you feeling unfulfilled long term. Since these tasks rank low on both urgent and important, they do not require as much attention. Binge watching Netflix, scrolling though social media, coffee runs, distractions from others, avoidance, and procrastination tactics to name a few.

Everyone needs balance, it is about being intentional of when you spend time  on these tasks and recognising when you are  sacrificing more  important tasks and goals.

You can use this matrix by writing down everything that is on your to-do list in both your personal and professional life.  This allows you to free up mental space and decrease the amount of what may feel urgent, but isn’t. Work through your tasks and see which quadrant they fit into.

3)    Daily To-Do List

Our final suggestion is keeping a daily To-Do List, that you can easily access wherever you are. Write your list on paper or use an electronic version in your calendar, or download an app.

We love how the Marshman Foundation created a simplified version of the Eisenhower Matrix within their To-Do List, which helps you distinguish between the important or urgent tasks and the course of action to take. See below.

They explain how To-Do Lists allow our brain a break from having to remember all the things we think you should do. We can therefore concentrate on the important things, and not feel overwhelmed as we know we can come back to our list later. The bonus is, when we tick items of our list, it makes us feel great too.

Task allocation.

Keep a To-Do List and refer to your weekly planner and urgent tasks that you identified within the priority matrix. To further enhance your to-do list skills, try out the following.

 -        Create boundaries to protect against distractions, turn off email notifications, go into a private workspace, put on headphones. Intensify your focus, rather than extend your hours of work.

Try not to overschedule your day. Ensure you allow for small amounts of buffer time to get work done and allow for interruptions.

Do your ‘hard/difficult’ work when you are at your energetic peak

-        Prioritise time for rest and breaks throughout the day. Refuel and recharge your body to perform at your best.

To Do List.

If you want further information, training or coaching on more strategies for time management and achieving your goals, then put it on your to-do list and reach out to the team at Generation Thrive.