You know that we believe big time in the importance of having strong systems in place.
OWING YOUR TIME is critical to achieve success in anything in your life: relationships, health, business
And today I am going to share with you a little calendar trick I do at the start of every year that has made a huge difference in "de-stressing" my life.
In December I print out 12 months of calendars
I write in the name of the month, number the days, etc….
I am sure you can do this on your computer easy peasy, but this is what I do, I think of it as a ritual 🙂 and I am a big fan of ritual. I always do it with a cup of ginger green tea and a sharpie marker…my comfy yoga pants and big sweatshirt, cozy socks…..anyway….
then I post them all to a wall so I can see the WHOLE year at one time….and I start adding in events.
personal, professional, trips, important dates, etc EVERYTHING
And then I start working backwards
for example:
we are doing a private training at Leadership on January 9th
So January 6: record trainings
January 7: put together PDF
January 8: pack, call hotel to confirm room set up
I do the same thing with my events
April 6: group gathering
March 1: send group evite reminder with registration deadline
March 7/8: design projects
March 15: reminder of final day to register
March 16: place supply order
March 17: contact caterer
I am on "spring break" March 23-30, so….
April 1,2,3: prep for the event
I don't have to stress about my vacaton becausei I have everything scheduled around it
you get the idea…..
the beauty of this is that there is no last minute rush
big things don't get scheduled over other big things
I don't feel like I have "so much to do"
and it helps keep me focused on my strong belief of do less do better
obviously I still have my daily and weekly tasks:
blogging, emails, videos, trainings, etc
But the big stuff, the out of the ordinary, the what we call +tasks get done in a low stress, high return way.
Give it a shot, we know it works for us….and we are pretty sure it will work for you!
Be Inspired*Be Inspiring
Lisa
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Oh yea! My kind of planning. I need to add the tea and cozy socks, but I start like this with an Outlook/iCalendar that already has all the birthdays and anniversaries on it.
I also have used these electronic calendars to “see” where I can add in monthly offerings. By putting them in there and then scrolling through each month, I can easily see where I’m getting myself in too deep and over-scheduled before it’s too late.
Celia, as much as I love technology, my heart will always belong to paper and pen 🙂