205 | Easier Ideas to Manage Your Schedule and To Do List

The more we have to do. The more important it is to have those systems in place that help us manage our schedules and make sure that we are getting to our responsibilities and getting that stuff done as efficiently as possible. I know sometimes a schedule audit can be necessary. It’s something that comes up and it really ends up being necessary to figure out how we can use our time better. And be more efficient with all of that stuff with everything that we have to get done so we have more time for the things that we actually enjoy and the things we want to be doing

 Hey there and welcome to another episode. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but that was the first episode with new intro music and something. Kind of crazy happened and I’m actually a little bit annoyed [00:02:00] by it, but you probably have noticed and listened to the last five episodes. Those were episodes for the best of series. I’m not sure what happened, but the first two of those episodes. The beginning of what was supposed to be. For you to hear was not there. It was like missing from the episode when I go back and I see the recordings, it’s, it’s all there. But. When they are played, it doesn’t matter what podcast platform you’re listening to podcasts on. The first couple of minutes are missing both times ends up starting with the. Episode. That was the best of episode. So that happened for the number five most weighed episode. And the number four, you didn’t miss anything content wise, but you did miss the introduction. And on that first one, I explained why I was doing the best of series and. I have to be honest, when I first thought about doing these a best of series last year, I wasn’t sure. And I really went back and forth with, do I really want to do this? Or are people not going to care because they’ve heard these episodes before the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. You really liked hearing them.

there’s a reason that those episodes are the most played episodes. last year I did it with the top five episodes from the first year of the. Intentional audit podcast. And this year as we are right here this week, At our two year anniversary. the episodes that I picked for the top five, the best of series were episodes that were the top five, listen to a four. The second year of the intentional audit podcast. they were different than the first. And then probably next year, we will do the same thing with the top five episodes from the third year. If you are downloading those episodes and listening to those, and then. Those are obviously important topics. And when I was recording the intros and re listening to those and seeing why you guys were listening to those over and [00:04:00] over and over again. I could see why they’re topics that we touch on often here, but they’re so important. So if you haven’t listened, go back and listen to the last five episodes. Those were the best of series. The top five. Listen. Into two episodes. For the entire second year of the podcast this week is the second anniversary. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for two years. Thank you for submitting your questions and being on this journey with me. I really don’t know how to say thank you enough for being here and I feel very grateful and honored that I can be part of your lives and of the, part of your lives, where you are getting to simplify your learning, how to simplify. Apply. You’re becoming more organized. You’re making systems that make things more streamlined in your homes so that you could do what is so, so important to me. that’s spend time with your family. Have more time to spend time with your family, your friends. The people that are important to you without feeling overwhelmed and exhausted all the time order, and organization, and a great routines in our homes, getting rid of the clutter. All of those things that I am so passionate about. Those are things that help us get to that place of simplicity, where we could finally do those things that we actually want to be doing. thank you for being here listening and celebrating. a big milestone with the podcast, which is thank you to all of the people listening. way earlier this year hitting a hundred thousand downloads. So that was exciting. I’m going to come up with something fun to celebrate that before the end of 2023, which is crazy to say that we’re already here. I also want to remind you, or this is probably the first time you’re hearing of this. There will be another home organizing challenge starting on November 1st. This is a free challenge this year. We’re going to do a 10 day challenge and there will be more information coming up. starting on. November 1st for 10 days, there will be quick [00:06:00] episodes each day with a task or an assignment or homework project, whatever. However you want to look at it. Of an area in your home that you can spend about 20 minutes a day, 20 ish minutes, depending on how bad the clutter is, it is a small project in terms of organizing and decluttering. one project, every single day, we will focus on, I’ll walk you through that. And then I will also be sharing on Instagram in stories, how those areas look in my home.

So be sure that you’re following intentional, edit on Instagram and I’m thinking about going live. I’m not sure if I will do that in the Facebook group or on Instagram or Tik TOK or where, but going live and answering some questions for a little bit each day during that time also I’ll let you know more details as we get all of that. Figured out, but mark your calendar for the first 10 days in November plug in a 20 minutes a day so that you can go through your house and get these areas decluttered and organized. This is especially helpful before the holidays, as we approach. The holidays that busy season. And we have a lot going on a lot of extra stuff, maybe. Company coming or travel or any of that, but let’s get these spaces decluttered and organized so that you can feel good and have that kind of stuff checked off your to-do list. it’s a Tuesday. So I’m answering a listener question. if you have a question for me that you want to have me answer in detail on a podcast episode. Go to intentional edit.com. There is a link in the podcast description, wherever you’re listening to this click on that link When you go to intentional latta.com, you click on the record. Now button that pops up and you leave a message for me that says what you’re struggling with, or ask your question.

And I will focus in on that question on a future episode. that will be the topic for that entire episode we will get your question answered when you ask it so [00:08:00] unintentional@a.com click on that record now button and ask a question there The question that came in, that I will be answering today is one that I think most of us can relate to. They usually are. If you have a question and you’re thinking. What do I do about this? How do I solve this problem? This is really stressing me out. How can she help? There’s probably something that I can give you in terms of tactical advice and solutions that can help you manage this situation and get control and move forward in a way that’s going to be beneficial for you and your family.

So don’t be afraid. Don’t hesitate. I do encourage you to submit your questions it’s not just going to help you. so many people can relate to the situation that you’re in and have similarities to the same struggle that you are having. So if you take the initiative and ask the question, then by me answering it, it will help many, many other people. It’s not just going to help you. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. It will help a lot of people. Now the question for today says. My friend had a coaching session with you and she using what you told her and has dramatically changed her schedule. She says you did change her life and I can watch where she is using her time more wisely. Can you share some ideas on how to do more at my house in less time and use our time wisely? When my schedules are busy, especially after school, should I have a planner or an app to keep track of everything, please help. If I had a list of what to do, maybe I would manage it better and be able to get more done. I think so many of us, like I just said, can relate to this because. When we have. Kids or people in her home that depend on us to manage their schedules. It’s not just our schedule that we are in charge of. We are the manager or the CEO kind of, of all of these little people and all of these schedules and trying to [00:10:00] mesh them together to make them work so that we don’t go crazy. And we get everything done still that we still need to do.

of course there’s chores and household tasks. things that just have to be done when you have a home and you are in charge of taking care of that and managing everything that happens in there. So I love this question. I usually love the questions that come in and because. When you ask a question and then we can get right to figuring out what would be the best solution. Now, sometimes in coaching sessions, they lead to something that I call a schedule audit. It could be a full schedule audit or a partial schedule audit depending on what is really going on. When that happens and we audit our schedules and we take the time to analyze what is going on on our calendars every single day. That’s why I call it a schedule audit. we use our time better.

Changing the time that we complete a task, it could be something as simple as when you make lunch or what you do the five minutes after you walk in the house for the last time of the day. Or when you are putting a load of laundry in, when you are folding that laundry, simple, simple things, sometimes changing the time that we do one of these tasks, then we get these things done. That might only be 30 seconds of our day, but just switching it from doing something at night to doing it in the morning or the other way around. At that time. Makes it so that we can accomplish more. Uh, CMAs like, wow. Is that really, a thing that can help you. And yes, it is so many times. Joseph by changing around and moving around the pieces of our schedule so that we start something or we complete something at a different time in the day. It makes it so other things are easier or it’s possible to get other things done instead of constantly putting them off. We want to fit these things in where it makes the most sense, or they take the least amount of time to get done. And [00:12:00] oftentimes that is determined when there are gaps in your day, whether it’s a 30 minute gap or a two minute gap, we use those gaps. And we fill those up with the things that needed to be done and putting those things in the right order. So we take those few minutes in between one thing to the next thing. And you use that instead of wasting that time. Now all of this aligns with the great routines and the systems that you set up in your home. And how you run your schedule is affected by those routines and those systems. So, again, this is an example of a decluttered home and an organized home is going to make you more efficient and going to give you more time. And those routines and systems work with that. And they work all of these things work in conjunction to make everything easier. And to maximize your time. Now, one idea that is something that you can do right now, or later today, if you’re struggling with this, then do a brain dump. You have probably heard that term before brain dump all the things that you have to get done in a week.

What are the thing is that are these like non-negotiables. Walls that have to be done no matter what you have to get these things done, or the next week will be very, very difficult, or you won’t be able to send your kids to school because all the clothes will be dirty. If the laundry doesn’t get done and they won’t have anything to wear. Uh, or you have to go to the grocery store because there won’t be food to serve your family. If you do not do the grocery shopping. So these things, what are the non-negotiables, what are the things that have to be done every single week, do a brain dump of these that simply means write them down on a piece of paper, make a list and just jot down every single thing you think of. Then I want you to print, or you can even make one on your own, but print or write down your schedule with all of the things [00:14:00] that are happening every week. At the same time, write down appointments. I want you to plug in driving times. If you’re always going to work at the same time. Plug in those driving time to block that off. You’re not doing anything else while you’re driving. If you are dropping off kids at school, and there’s a chunk of time that you are sitting in the pickup line, waiting for those kids to be done with school, block that off every single thing that takes up time that has to happen at a certain time. you wouldn’t plug in take a walk to the park. If you do that. Any time between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM every day. Because it could happen at four, it could happen at 6 45. You’re only plugging in things right now that are happening at the same time. No matter what they have a start time, they have a finished time. You have to do these things at a specific time. And then you get to look at your schedule and you can see what time is available to you. And what times of the day are blocked off. When you have this overall glimpse and you can look down at this piece of paper or look at the screen with this weekly schedule, you can see how packed your schedule is or how flexible it is.

You can see the blocks of time where. You probably feel like there is not enough time in the day, but all of a sudden you can see you have these blocks of time, whether they’re large or small. And those are the times when you’re going to get things done. Now you can use this overall schedule audit to determine so many things, really all kinds of things from the tasks that you needed to do that take a few minutes or the task that even take a few hours that are along big things, because you can plug the things in that you need to do. Do and use your schedule. As the baseline of where I can fit things in, where can I do things? And it’s like the framework for, that’s probably a better term. I use it as the framework. So if it’s something that takes just a few [00:16:00] minutes, like putting a load of laundry in the washing machine. You can plug that in at a certain point on your day. And if your days are not the same every single day, it doesn’t matter. You, you adjust depending on the day based on the framework. Then you also need to have probably a minute at some point to switch that load from the washing machine to the dryer. And then at what point is that 15 minutes going to be where that laundry is folded and put away. I like to see a good glimpse. then I know what kind of a meal can I have for dinner. You know, that I do the two week meal planning, so I don’t have to really put any effort into meal planning, but I still have to pick what day are we eating each dinner? That is on that two week list. I know I have all the groceries for it in the refrigerator or the pantry. They’re ready and they’re available for me, but I need to pick what is for dinner and because I’ve made those meals over and over again, I know that some meals. Take 10 minutes to prep and get, get in the oven and get going. Another meals might take 30. So based on the availability, just by looking at that calendar and I get a glimpse of the chunk of time. That would be around the dinner hours. Then I can see, I can make a more complicated meal or I need to make a really simple meal that day. And then I plug it in for what makes sense for that day. I have the list of options for the groceries and all of that. And it makes it so easy because I just plug it in. And that’s the same thing with the laundry. I’m pretty much in the habit of putting the one load of laundry. In, in the morning, I was one of the first things that I do changing it into the dryer before I leave for school drop off. And then at some point during the day that load of laundry gets folded and put away. So those are routines that work and they work with my schedule. If my schedule were to change, I might change that my laundry routine might happen at the end of the [00:18:00] day. It wouldn’t make sense to happen at the beginning of the day. Use this schedule audit when you do something like this to your advantage. Another thing is I use a paper planner and I also use the digital calendar or the calendar on my phone and computer. I plug everything in to the calendar on my computer. It’s all there. But each week when I do my weekly refresh and restock, Every weekend, usually. I sit down with my planner and I transfer things from the digital calendar to the paper planner. And then I add my to-do list to that. And I make sure that the things that need to happen that week are written in that planner. And that paper planner is then my go to resource. It becomes my to-do list and my calendar for that entire week, it only takes a few minutes to get those things on there, but it saves a huge amount of time throughout the week. it’s a great resource for me. it keeps me on task for the top three things that I have to get done every single day. And it is super, super helpful for how I get everything done and managed to keep things going and make sure that we’re not falling behind and make sure that we always have what we need for the things that are coming up for the next few days.

I hope that helped you. If you have more questions about doing a schedule audit, or you want to book a coaching session with me, I can help you do a schedule audit and then plug in. The thing is that we need to have you get done throughout the week to manage your household and be as efficient as possible. I would love to help you with that. If you want more information or you just want to send me a message or get more clarification on this, I’m always happy to help you. Don’t forget. You can submit your questions for future episodes on Tuesdays, where I answer Go to intentional edit.com. Click on that record now button, and I will answer one of your questions in the future mark your calendar for November 1st. every day for [00:20:00] the first 10 days of November, we will be decluttering and organizing a different area in our home. That is the home organizing challenge of 2023 and I would love to have you join me for that.