I’ve read books on tackling procrastination. I’ve taken seminars on using a planner to improve tracking my tasks. I buy a planner every year and end the year with too many unused pages. Can you relate?
If I could make use of the tools I have and know, I could get everything done that I need to, right? Wrong. The first step is to determine what you need to do.
There’s always more than enough to do in every day, week, and month. Here’s a tip: It’s not about managing your time. It’s about prioritizing your tasks to fit within the time you have.
According to FIT 4 Leading by Kevin W. McCarthy, “Time management is code for ‘I don’t know what’s important in life so I’ll do everything.’” We all know that’s not possible.
You may be familiar with the four-quadrant system of prioritizing tasks: important and urgent (dealing with a finger cut while preparing dinner), important and not urgent (reviewing the household budget), not important and urgent (reading each email as it arrives), and not important and not urgent (reviewing new posts on social media). This system encourages the user to focus on the important and not urgent tasks rather than reacting to all the urgent things. While good in principle, the user needs to know which tasks are important.
This is where additional insights from The On-Purpose Person by Kevin W. McCarthy can help.
You can’t do everything perfectly, and you can’t get everything done. A writer can keep refining words. An editor can spend too long determining if a comma is needed in a certain spot. You can stop working on a project when it’s “good enough” instead of trying to make it perfect. (We can talk about how to figure this out.)
Decide on appropriate rewards for each task or project. A diamond tennis bracelet is not a suitable reward for catching up on laundry. You cleaned up all the dirty dishes in the kitchen? Grab a glass — dishwasher-safe, of course — and enjoy a cool drink of your favorite beverage while watching the birds and squirrels through the window. You finally filed away a year’s worth of statements and receipts? Order that cute pair of boots you’ve been dreaming about.
Don’t wait until “everything” is done and fulfill the dream of shopping for an entirely new wardrobe. Every mother, homeowner, business owner knows there is always more to do.
Join me to go through a life coaching program to learn processes and tools to help you determine the things that matter most and the things that align with your Purpose and Values. At On-Purpose, we call them Want Lists and Tournaments and your Ideal On-Purpose Day. You will learn how to use the tools during the coaching program.
We’ll work through the steps together and figure out what’s important to you. This will be easier than you think. And the tools will help you set achievable goals and stick to them. And you might get that new pair of boots too.