The Key To Building Structure Into Your Day.
This week, how do you build structure into your day so you stay focused on what is important?
Script
Episode 138
Hello and welcome to episode 138 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
So, you have yourself organised. Your to-do list is set up, your projects are being managed from your notes app and your calendar is serving you (rather than the other way round) but you are still struggling to get your most important work done each day. Why is it going wrong?
Well, that depends and that’s what I’m going to answer this week.
Now before get started, have you joined the time management revolution yet? Are you using the Time Sector System? If not, there a couple of ways you can join. The first, of course, is take the course. For just $49.99 you can learn everything you need to get started with this fantastic system.
If you're not ready to take a course, then don't worry, I have a comprehensive blog post detailing the outline as well as plenty of set up videos on my YouTube channel.
All the details are in the show notes.
Okay, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Sarah. Sarah asks: Hi Carl, one of the things I’ve always struggled with is getting my planning done each day. When I do plan (which, to be honest, is not often) I end up not following my plan and not getting my work done. Are there any tricks that you use that help you stay focused on your work?
Hi Sarah, thank you for your question.
I find this is a common issue for many people when they decide they want to get themselves better organised and become more productive. Setting things up is generally quite easy. The motivation is high and you set aside time to do it. The issues arise once you begin implementing the process.
The problem here is that the process can be boring. And the habits haven't formed yet. So if you have not embedded the habit of planning the day the day before and setting up some structure into your day, your old habits will do their very best to prevent you from following your plan.
So step back for a moment and ask what one new habit would have the biggest impact on your time management?
This could be taking ten minutes at the end of the day and creating a plan of action in your calendar for the next day. Or it could be to focus your attention on collecting items into your to-do list manager—an important first habit to develop.
It’s really about establishing which 20% of your efforts will give you 80% of the results you desire.
If you try to change everything at once, all you need is one slip up and you feel everything has failed. And more importantly, trying to change everything all at once is hard. I would say it’s almost impossible because you are going to be constantly pulled back to your previous habits. Our brains hate change.
Change takes a lot of energy and we will resist it. You have to be determined to change and you have to focus on making that change. So make it easier for yourself and focus on one thing at a time.
So if you have never spent any time planning a day, it is something you are not used to doing, so at the end of a day, you’re tired and just want to crash out in your favourite armchair, you are not going to sit down with your laptop and spend ten minutes planning tomorrow.
That said, one simple way to start is to do two things. The first is to make sure you develop the habit of collecting everything. It does not matter if you think something is silly, just collect it. You can delete it later. And don’t worry about how much you collect. If you are using the Time Sector System it won’t take long to process what you collected.
The second part is to dedicate ten minutes at the end of the day to look at your calendar for the next day and decide what you will get done.
That’s it. Collect and plan.
Now, this is not the complete picture, but developing these two habits first will set you up for success later.
You see, if you are not in the habit of collecting everything that comes your way, you will forget something. And if you are not planning your day, all your old, unproductive habits will stay around. The goal in the initial stages is to change those habits. To build a little structure into your day.
So, the building of your daily structure involves two steps:
The first, before you begin the day, while you are drinking your morning coffee, open up your calendar and look to see what your day looks like. Then review your to-do list for the day. In total, that should only take 5 minutes. You do not need to do anything else. Just look to see what you have planned for the day.
The second is doing the same thing again in the evening. Give yourself ten to fifteen minutes to review your day’s tasks. Look at what you didn’t do, reschedule those for another day, look at your calendar for tomorrow and decide what needs doing. Then stop.
Now, here’s the essential part. Commit to doing that every day for a week.
In total, you are committing yourself to twenty to thirty minutes every day for seven days.
If you really want a way of motivating yourself, then draw out a sheet of paper with seven boxes on it and every day you do it put a cross in it. You are looking to create an uninterrupted chain of seven crosses to indicate you completed these two processes for seven days.
Now, after a week, and with seven crosses, create another seven boxes and do the same the following week.
As the ‘chain’ grows you are going to find it increasingly difficult to skip a day. The rule is, if you skip one day, you must start a new piece of paper and draw out seven boxes and begin again.
What you are doing is using Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain’ methodology to keep you focused on what you are trying to do.
What I’ve found with many of my coaching clients is as they focus on the morning review and the evening planning sessions, they make tiny adjustments to their set up. As they do this they begin to feel they are making progress—which they are doing—and at the same time, they are beginning to embed new habits. And habits are so much easier to manage than trying to restart things every week.
The next thing is self-discipline. Now here I notice a frequent problem. I’ve come across a lot of people who have developed a false belief over the years believing they are just not the disciplined type. This is complete rubbish! It’s just an excuse to avoid doing something that is quite hard to do.
We all have bundles of self-discipline. It is not that you are not the self-disciplined ‘type’, it’s that you are human. And humans are naturally lazy. So, really not following through on your commitment is just laziness. Apologies for being so brutally honest.
This is why you need to start small. Self-discipline is just like a muscle and to grow your self-discipline you need to exercise it. Exercising self-discipline does begin with small things. For example, sitting down at the end of the day for ten minutes with your calendar and to-do list open and planning tomorrow, while quite a small task, if you do it every day and practice resisting the urges to skip it, you build your self-discipline. Every time you resist the temptation to skip it, your self-discipline becomes stronger. Every time you give in to the temptation, you weaken your self-discipline because there is no pain associated with giving in.
Instead, every time you skip a planning session you need to feel bad. Feel guilty. Be angry with yourself. You failed and you will need to restart your seven-day chain.
Once you have committed yourself to doing a daily planning session, when you give in and don’t do it, then you must associate that with failing. Tell yourself: you failed!
Our feelings about failure cause us pain. We hate to fail. Failing at something is one fear we all have. Failing at a presentation, failing to achieve something leaves us feeling bad. Use that bad feeling to motivate yourself to not fail. After all, we are only talking about ten minutes here.
You can help yourself by doing something pleasurable while you do your planning session. Get yourself a glass of wine or a beer. Treat yourself to a nice cup of relaxing tea. Whatever you enjoy, use that to motivate yourself to do your daily planning.
As with anything worthwhile, the key is your motivation. Why have you decided you want to get better organised and more productive? Is it because of the disappointment you feel when you let someone down and miss a deadline? Or is it because you want to have more time to do things you really want to do? Whatever your motivation for becoming better at managing your time, use that to motivate yourself.
Whenever you feel like not doing that planning session, remind yourself why you are doing it. Write down your reasons why and stick them somewhere in your work station so you can see it every time you sit down. Don’t lose sight of your why.
Once you have embedded your daily planning session, create s structure to your day. Use your calendar to block off time for your important work. You can use the same strategy with building this structure.
For example, if you decide you want to exercise four days a week, put your exercise days on your calendar. Let’s say you decide to exercise Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday every week, put that on your calendar. Fix it there are create recurring events. This way, you will gradually begin to see those days as your exercise days and you will just do your exercise without thinking too much about it.
And you can gradually build in more of the things you want to consistently do. As each week passes your self-discipline grows, your habits change for the better and after three of four months, you find your new habits are embedded.
Now, the reality is you will still have bad days and weeks. That’s natural. We all get thrown out of our routines. Going away on holiday, spending a week on a training session etc. All these throw us out of our routines. The trick is to recognise these changes and to refocus ourselves when we return to our normal daily lives.
A trick I learned a while ago is with morning routines. If you try and create morning routines around a particular time every day, your chances of success are limited. All it takes is a night out on the town and being late to bed, and you will wake up a little later, you will skip your morning routine.
If, however, you create your morning routines around a series of actions you take from the moment you wake up, it means that no matter what time you wake up, you will follow the same routine and that way you are much more likely to follow through with your plan.
So there you go, Sarah. I hope that helps and has given you something to think about. Start small. Build that chain and your self-discipline and remember, if you fall off the wagon, you can always get back on it again.
Becoming more intentional about how you spend your time is a journey. There will be hills and mountains to climb. You will fall done, trip up and have to restart. But it’s a journey. You find out a lot about yourself on this journey and if you stick with it, the results are profoundly fulfilling and often lead for more positive changes in our lives.
Thank you so much for your question and thank you to all of you for listening.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.