An easy way to focus and get things done
We are officially past the summer solstice, which in the Northern hemisphere is the longest day of the year. It is timely, therefore, to put our attention on the summertime; this season is very short and very precious here in the Northeast US.
On Monday, June 19th (which is Juneteenth in the United States: a holiday to mark the abolishment of slavery) I ran a workshop to expand the Time Management in Summer for the Distracted Entrepreneur topic. In this article, I’ll highlight an important, practical, and immediately actionable portion of that workshop: 4 practical tips for blocking out your time mindfully.
- Step One: Get a blank calendar – an old school one with squares – something you can print (like this). Next, get several colored pencils. Pick a color. Color in date squares for items to which you’ve already committed. For example, anything on the weekend that you’ve already committed to, any holidays you’ve committed to, your work schedule etc. Get those all blocked out. What’s left is the time that you have to work with. Doing this visually is really powerful because you can see how much time you have left in a given month. We really just have a little more than two months as early September is culturally “autumn.”
- Step Two: Pick your top 3 desires this summer by category. Sample categories: beach, work, children, fun, planning. You may start with more, and pick the top 3 categories.
Continue reading or watch the video below.
- Step Three: Pay special attention to the category that you wrote down in third place. Why? That third category is the one that you really need to place your focus on. Most likely, it lights you up the most and the one that you dismiss the most, or the one that’s perhaps the most important for your health and wellbeing. Examples of the third category might be: self care, gardening, or program creation. For that third category, create actionable items. Using the example of self care, actionable items could be ‘move every day’ or ‘make sure your body is eating organic and fresh’ or ‘allow yourself small joys like special cups of coffee’
- Step Four: Add the bullet pointed action items into your calendar. Use a new color for this. If you put it on your calendar and do not take action on it, don’t give up. Talk to a friend, talk to your coach, talk to or DM me and say, “oh my gosh, how can I get this on the calendar AND pay attention to it?”
Repeat step 4 for each category and place it on the calendar.
There you have it: 4 steps to mapping out your summer mindfully.
Bonus tip: allow white space. White space is time where you’re not planning anything because that white space gives you that ‘stare out the window’ time and that ‘stare out the window’ time is in fact your creative time. You are in fact blocking out creative time, but also block out some white space time because that white space time gets your mind flowing freely and it gets your creativity big. And it also helps you feel really grounded – and you can’t do any of this stuff very well without being grounded.
If you want a lot more of this, I am running a summer program. You can start July 20 and you must sign up by June 29. Imagine: your summer is not waste, it does not go through your fingertips, and you wake up on Labor Day (if you’re in the United States) and you feel like “I did it!”.
That’s how I want you to feel. Let’s do this!