How I Structure My Schedule for Max Productivity
Alisha here and I'm pulling back the curtain on the logistics of how we run several businesses, have a toddler at home, and still manage to spend time together as a married couple. These are strategies that have been built over time, with much testing and application, though continue to be modified as life changes. These are equal part productivity/life hacks and also suggestions on how to manage it all while staying sane.
Background info
Cycle Syncing
One of the most liberating steps I took in the development of my productivity was aligning the work I do with the phase of menstrual cycle. It's called cycle syncing, and has many layers (fitness, food, work, sex life, etc.) but I primarily use it ensure that the phase I am at in my cycle aligns with the work I am focusing on. This has caused tremendously less exhaustion and frustration in my life.
Batch Working
This is a hack I learned years ago from Jenna Kutcher and have never been able to "un-know." In fact it has become so engrained in my thinking that you will see all the different ways below that I schedule things as a result of batch working. The essence of this is that you combine "like" tasks all together and do them at once. For example, a weekly recurring task, you do all 4 weeks a month ahead of time. This is particularly useful for writing, recording, creating, etc. I do this in all aspects of our life: grocery ordering, scheduling sitters, writing blogs, putting meetings on the calendar, etc. It has probably saved me hundreds of hours at this point.
Once you combine batch working with cycle syncing, you'll never so productive with so little effort!
Planning
This may seem like an obvious one (productivity requires planning), but we had to take this up a notch when we had a kid. Something as simple as which flight time to take because of nap times/wake windows causes me an incredible amount of stress. Planning well in advance relieves pressure and allows greater productivity to get things done. And this applies across the board: planning the vacation months in advance, thinking through a podcast launch 6-12 months before its release, building anticipation for an upcoming product release, knowing when childcare will be unavailable and planning alternative options.
Repeatable processes
The only way I have gotten to the level of productivity I have is because things simply get repeated over and over again. Again, this is part of batch working, but more-so than doing multiple of the same tasks at once, I repeat those same tasks every quarter or annually. The first time I do something, I try to templatize it. When I'm starting out with a new process, I find a software to support the work (and make it as efficient as possible). This is all done in an effort to not "reinvent the wheel" each time I need to complete the task again. For that reason, I may spend more time at the onset of a new task to create it in a repeatable way.
Logistics of my schedule structure
How I schedule every week
Every Monday morning, I open OneNote to write out what needs to get accomplished that week. How do I know what needs to get accomplished? There's a multi-layer approach:
every year I write out intentions
then each quarter I think about what needs to get done and what I want to work towards
with each new month I write out what can get accomplished in the next 4 weeks
then, with each new week, I look at what's already on the calendar and then write out what I want to work towards in those next 5 days
What I don't do:
I do not create a daily schedule.
I do not "block out time" in my calendar to work on certain projects/tasks
I do not have the same routine every day or every week
I do not allocate certain days to working on certain things
I know these are suggestions that work for other people. I've tried them, they don't work for me. After creating my weekly "punch list" I simply work on what I want to work on, when I feel like working on it. I have enough discipline for this to be effective for me.
What I schedule in advance
There are certain aspects of our life that make sense to batch schedule or put on the calendar on a recurring basis instead of scheduling it week by week. Here's an example of those, that save me tons of time:
All sitters are scheduled for the month. Whenever we need additional help (beyond what each of our mom's already provide us) with Tatum, we schedule that for an entire month. We have a sitter who comes every Tuesday and Saturday. Its on the calendar, all the start and end times done in advance. No need to text back and forth deciding this on a weekly basis.
Monthly House Cleaning. Whenever our cleaners are finishing up one visit, I don't let them leave without scheduling the next one, for 4 weeks out. No going back and forth, no comparing schedules when we're away from each other. Put it in the calendar before they leave.
Weekly House Manager. We have someone who comes to the house on Friday mornings to swap sheets, put away laundry, restock the fridge, get the mail, return items, etc. In anticipation for this, we do all our laundry on Thursdays, have groceries delivered, prepare a punch list for her, etc. (however, we made a templated list that she goes off of each week, we just add or subtract).
Meal prepping. As we found ourselves eating out more and more, we decided to try a meal prep service. We put our orders in on Friday, it's delivered on Sunday, we have meals for the week. This costs us WAY less than we were spending on DoorDash, and it relieves a stress of "what are we having for dinner" each night.
Pre-load anything that is daily. When Tatum was doing swim lessons, I had the car pre-loaded with all supplies: clean towels, extra diapers, pack of wipes, hair ties, lotion, etc. So each morning, all we had to do was grab a fresh swim suit + what to wear for the day. This made getting ready (and out the door) SO much easier each day. I anticipate doing something similar when she starts school.
Self care. Whether it's workouts, massages, facials, or time away, it gets put on the calendar well in advance so I don't leave it for last and I can plan around it. I am less likely to cancel or altogether not get to it when it's in my calendar at least 1 week ahead of time.
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