How To Plan Your Day [and Actually Get More Done]!

Let me paint a picture that might sound familiar to you. You sit down, you write your to do list and you're ready to tackle the day. Before you know it, you're pulled into a phone call, you're putting out a client fire, you have to run to pick the kids up because somebody got sick at school. And when you sit down at the end of the day, you realize you hardly got anything done on that to do list. So what happens? Your to do list from Monday now moves to Tuesday. And and by the end of the week, your to do list is massive. And there's no way you're gonna be able to take off of work on a weekend. Right? You've gotta get stuff done. Can I get a praise hand emoji if you've ever been in that situation? This past year I've been making a huge effort to be more strategic with my time. And because of that, I've been working from Monday through Thursdays, getting all of my to do lists done and taking three day weekends. So in this video I wanna show you the process that I've been doing. So maybe you can incorporate it into your to do list process and start taking a three day week. Hi, welcome back. My name is Trina. If you are new here. And today we're talking about creating to do lists so you can actually get those to do's done in a day. Because here's the deal, not all to do lists are created equally. Some of those things on your to do list may take you five minutes and some of them may take us five hours. And what happens is we're not smart about the task we're putting in into a day. And so we're not effectively getting as much done as we normally could if we were smart about what we were planning for in every single day. So here's the first thing that I do in my process. I sit down on a Sunday and I just brain dump. I get a piece of paper, think about all the things running through my head that I want to get done this week. Now, our week in my house is a typical week. It starts on a Monday, ends on a Friday. Weekends are Saturdays and Sundays. So this could be totally different for you and your life plan. But I'm just telling you, before my week starts on a Monday, the day before I do this brain dump, the next thing I do is I look at this to do list and I start looking at similar tasks that I can group together. Are there client tasks that I need to do, things I need to do for my client? Is there video editing that I need to do? Is there filming? Is there content planning that I need to do, like writing newsletters or social media posts? I like to generally take a highlighter and highlight similar tasks because this is going to help me start batching tasks on certain days. Because this is going to be a key to crushing your to do list here. So the next thing I want to do is I'm looking at these batch tasks and I want to see, are there bigger projects that are going to take more than a day? I want to really get granular here. So if I'm saying I want to create a new course, okay, well, what are those granular tasks that I need to do? Do I need to give it a title? Do I need to write the curriculum? Do I need to shoot the videos? Do I need to create the PDFs for it? Okay, you need to get really granular because once you start breaking these major projects into smaller tasks, you can really start filling out your weeks ahead. So this helps me plan out basically two to three weeks in advance. So I'm not having to sit down every Sunday and do this brain dump because I'm able to plan out in advance. Now the next thing is we're going to look at that to do list again and you need to start reevaluating what you have on it. There are probably going to be some things on that list that you wish you could do or you're very hopeful that you can get done. But are they really critical to your success or to your ultimate goal? You've probably heard about the Time management matrix by Stephen Covey. Bosses like Amy Landino, Ashlynn Carter, and Alice Beaden always refer to this time management matrix. And basically what it says is your task will fall into one of four quadrants. Important, urgent, important, not urgent. Urgent, not important, not urgent, not important. So I start filtering all my tasks through this matrix. Important urgent tasks for me include client deadlines, calls that are already scheduled, and on my calendar or appointments. So those are things that are already set in stone that have to get done. Not urgent, but important. Could be things like painting our nails, reorganizing our desk, or one that's been on my list forever is decorating my family living room. But this is not urgent and not important. So anything on your to do list that's not urgent, not important, just plop it over into that section of your quadrant. Those are kind of the two biggest quadrants that I look at that really help me filter through how to pick what I actually want to do this week? Okay, once I brain dump everything and I start categorizing if anything is not urgent, not important, and urgent important now I grab my Google Calendar. I live on my Google Calendar. If it's not on my Google Calendar, it's not going to happen. So what I'm looking for here are those client calls or those appointments. And I'm going to start by plugging in any groups of tasks. Remember, we batch things together. Because when you batch tasks, you're able to stay in one zone of genius and you're able to get more things done. When you tend to shift from task to task, it takes your brain a little bit of time to catch up. So if you're going to be editing, stay in the editing zone for a chunk of time to get more than one thing done. If you're going to be writing social media posts or writing content, stay in that writing mindset so you're not losing those IQ points and having that lag time for your brain to catch up if you're going to move over to editing. So this is where I start blocking my time on my Google Calendar. And I actually already have certain things I do on certain days to help me start putting those to do's where they fit in. My week all of Monday is blocked out for internal business tasks for myself. So this means content creation, social media planning, shooting YouTube videos, researching YouTube videos, anything that my business needs. If there's any tasks in my brain dump that fall into this category, then this is what I do on Mondays, Tuesdays, then are all the client work that I need to do. So client work also falls into two different kinds of categories. So I will schedule my mornings for editing client videos and then in the afternoon I will schedule my time for researching their video Strategy, analyzing their YouTube videos to see what we need to do to fix. But you see how even when I'm blocking one day for clients, I'm still blocking within that day. So specific tasks and my brain stays in that zone of genius. Wednesdays are generally phone call days for me. So I will leave this day open for calls with clients for their monthly check ins, podcast interviews, discovery calls. Any kind of call is going to go in on Wednesday. And I just know that that's what I'm going to be. I'm going to be a little bit in and out of my business. So any kind of little tasks that won't take up a lot of work, like maybe paying my credit card bill or, or checking over my finances in between those calls or What I will put in on Wednesday and then Thursday is client work as well. Again, this is where if they have editing to do, if I need to review their scripts or I need to look at their YouTube channel. This is all for client days. All right, now that you have everything batched on certain days so you're going to get more done because you're not switching from task to task. We need to reevaluate that to do list one more time. Look, I see you loading that Monday up with a crap ton of things to do. Let's take a look at that again. We have got to remember that there are only eight hours in a day. If you're working a full day like I do Monday through Thursday. And yeah, you need to eat at some point. So let's look at those tasks in every single day and let's see if anything can be moved to that not urgent, not important segment of your time management matrix. All right, did that reevaluation. Now here's your next step. I want you to pick a big three. So a client and good friend of mine, Ashlyn Carter, actually taught me this idea. I want you to pick three, three major things that you have to get done this week. Alright? Pick three of the biggest things that you know you need to get done this week and write it down. She likes to write it on a post it. I like to write it in my simplified planner. Wherever you want to write it, write it down. Remember these are the three big things that if nothing else happened this week, these are the things that you need to get done. Got them written down. Let me know what they are down in the comments. Your next step is going to be adding in life things. Because here's the thing, we've got to do things outside of business and building a business and entrepreneurial things. So yes, this means scheduling. Time to eat lunch. I see you sitting at your desk not eating lunch. Time to work out, time to shower, time to do the laundry. Any type of self care thing you need to do to feel better, you have got to put this on your calendar or you will skip it. Trust me, I know from experience. In 2018 I did not put enough of this into my schedule and I quickly became burnt out. You have to fit this time into your schedule. You have to make it a priority. So for me it has to be on my Google calendar and this is when I put it on my Google calendar. Alright, now you got the strategic to do list. Kind of a little bit messy on this piece of paper. Let's start Organizing it. Because if you're like me, I love a good checklist and seeing me get through those things all throughout the day. Now, whether you use Trello Asana, I like to write these down in my simplified planner. But I start writing out those daily tasks. Do I need to edit this client's video? Do I need to edit that client's video? Do I have a phone call that I need to do? All right, I start putting it into my simplified planner. It's also on my Google Calendar, but I like to have it on paper beside me as I work. So I'm not always having to go into my Google Calendar because again, I'm switching a task. If I'm going in to look at my Google Calendar and I'm going to lose those IQ points, I'm going to get out of that zone of genius that I'm in. Also, writing this down is kind of like a journal exercise for me. I can see what I got done. If I ever need to refer back to when I worked on a certain client's project, I can go back to my simplified planner and say, oh, I did that on July 15th. I also like to use my simplified planner, the little spot at the bottom, to write things down. Like, did I exercise that day? What exercise did I do? Again, just to track if I'm giving myself that space that I need to take care of myself. And this is the biggest lesson you have to learn through doing this process. You have got to be flexible. Look, I have kids. I have clients that have emergencies. I have clients that may turn in videos late. You need to be flexible. There are Fridays that I do work because something came up or I have a bigger project and I want to get some things done. And that's okay. I just don't make it a habit to work every single Friday. My goal is to get that to do list done and create a strategic to do list so that I have everything done that I need to to enjoy Fridays off. Because again, I plan for not working on Fridays. There's nothing on my to do list for Friday. So if you're wondering, then what does a typical day look like for me? I actually filmed an entire day in my life so you can see what it looks like for me. I'm gonna put that video right here for you to watch. So go click on it and see what my day looks like. After I explained my.