084: How I standardized my weekly schedule

Let's talk about time management, productivity, and weekly planning! I'm a mom of two, pregnant with baby 3, and on a good week have ~12 hours to work each week. 

While I've always been a fan of creating a weekly block schedule, my old way of doing things wasn't working for me in this season of life. 

So I decided to standardize my schedule so I never had to plan my week from scratch again. Instead of complicated project lists and plans, I now have a standardized schedule where I know exactly what to do and when to do it. 

In this episode I share my schedule with you and share how this has helped me be more productive.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Let's talk about time management because this is arguably such a hot topic and such a controversial topic. There's so many people out there, me included, who have produced productivity and time management content over the years. Sometimes there can almost be this like unintentional negative side effect of that where we assume productivity and time management is always about doing more. But that's not what we're talking about here because I'm a mom of two kids. I'm pregnant. I have very limited work hours available to me during the day. And I have childcare. So just even with the childcare, there's just limited hours. We're talking like maybe 12 hours on a good week. And so I have had to adjust how I manage my time. In the past, even when I was a mom, but just had a little bit more childcare, I have always been a big fan of weekly block schedules. I think I've made several YouTube videos about it. I've talked about it on old podcast episodes. I help my clients with it. I feel like it's a pretty essential step. But the way I've done it in the past was not working for me in this season of life. I felt like I was still kind of planning from scratch each week, even if I had blocks on the calendar for like content or like focus work or calls. That was helpful. But it was really hard to sit down and plan every week and feel like I was starting from scratch in so many ways. Even if I had a to-do list and projects mapped out, it still mentally felt like starting from scratch. And so I've been really wanting to do what I'm calling a standardized schedule. And I finally did it. And I kind of just want to share a little bit about my experience with having a standardized schedule so far and how life-changing it's been. Because instead of just having a block on my calendar, what I have done is identified a focus and a theme for each of the days I am working. And not only a theme, but basically recurring tasks that need to happen on each of these days. And the cool thing about this is while it may not sound that substantially different from what maybe you're already doing or what I was previously doing myself, mentally, it's radically different because I could essentially spend zero time planning my week each week and know exactly what my priority tasks are and what to do because I've distilled my business strategy into something that is so simple that it is essentially recurring actions. And I felt, I used to feel like this wouldn't work for me when I was trying to batch content, but the reality is that this still works when you're trying to get ahead on content. I've just, in this season of life, stepped away from the idea of batching, meaning one day I record six episodes of a podcast and instead to mean every week, I'm gonna chip away at creating a couple of episodes and like eventually that'll get me ahead and I could take a break, right? If every Tuesday I record two podcast episodes, which isn't a ton, I will very quickly like be ahead. and have a batch and always have the flexibility to skip a week without suddenly then being in like a week to week mode, right? So that's exactly what I've done. I have been living with this new schedule for not very long yet to be totally transparent, but I can't even express to you just how powerful this shift has been. I'm so excited I did this and that's why I wanted to share it with you so that you could potentially experience tweak how you're planning your week. And instead of it being this thing you'd kind of do from scratch each week, potentially standardizing how you do things too. So like I was saying, every day that I am working has an overall focus. So for me, Monday is what I'm calling scripting day. Tuesday is recording day. Wednesday is call day. And Thursday is writing day. And those are really the days I plan on working. Of course, if I need to work a Friday or something, I could. But my standardized schedule is the four days I want to be working. The cool thing about this is that on Monday, scripting day, it's not just like I sit down and I'm like, what am I scripting? I literally have two tasks for Monday. Outline two podcast episodes and then outline any curriculum or trainings. And that's it. I know exactly what I need to do every Monday, even if I put zero minutes into planning. Same thing on Tuesday. It's recording day. That's today. It's Tuesday. Hi. I have to record curriculum and then record podcast episodes. That's it. Nothing else. Wednesday's call day. I have two to three call slots on Wednesdays. Thursday's writing day. So that's where I'm like turning things into blog posts or, you know, creating kind of those ancillary pieces of content, like getting ahead on any threads I want to pre-write, if I want to create any Pinterest pins or anything to kind of like syndicate my content. And then also drafting and scheduling any upcoming emails. And the nice thing about this too is that let's say something is going to shift in the week. For example, Thursday, we want to take our kids to the rodeo. It's rodeo season here in Houston. We love to dress up in our cowboy hats and our cowboy boots and take the kids to the rodeo. So I know that Thursday, my writing day won't be happening on Thursday. But that's not a stressful thing because I know it. And so either I'm ahead enough a schedule where I can skip a writing day or I can just know that I'm going to do my writing day on Friday. because I've kind of got this built-in buffer, I can do that. And as I get ahead of schedule, I can skip Thursday writing day more easily. But it relieves this pressure of needing to have like a week where I batch 12 episodes and I get like super ahead and I do all this stuff. That hasn't been working for me in the season of life. I like want to change what I'm going to talk about or I want to talk about something more in the moment, or I just like fail to do that and then like get stuck in that week to week. cycle, which is always really difficult to get out of. And so this has been such a big shift for me. Part of this, I also just like really quickly or not quickly, but I really clearly identified my work blocks and simplified it because I have these major outcomes. And so instead of thinking like, you know, on my Google calendar, like this hour, I'm doing this specific task in this hour, I'm doing this specific task. Instead, it's just I have a one and a half hour block in the morning and And then like a one and a half or two hour block in the afternoon, Monday through Thursday. There's like a little lunch break in there where I do personal stuff, what I call like quick tasks, you know, call, make a doctor's appointment, something like that. But I have like a morning block and an afternoon block. And so that's it. And so basically each day kind of has like two tasks. And so I can just really intuitively split that up. And of course, it doesn't really matter. Like if I finish one thing early, I can get started on the next thing because it's just so clear what I need to do. And All of this has just been game changing. So if you're sitting there and you're like, I don't even know how to manage my time, or you feel similar to how I was feeling, like you're just kind of planning from scratch over and over and over again, I would encourage you to try a standardized schedule. This has been life changing. I think every standardized schedule is going to be completely custom to you. What type of content you're doing, what type of business you have, your publishing cadence. But I really think this themed framework is a game changer. And also I have ADHD. Sometimes it's really hard for me to initiate things or I really want to procrastinate on things. But the idea that like today's my only day to record is so motivating. It's like Tuesday's my recording day. And so if I want to get ahead on podcast episodes, I'm gonna record as many as I can, which then motivates me on Monday to outline as many as I can so that I can record as many as I can. And same thing with even curriculum and trainings for programs I'm teaching. I know I wanna drop a couple of these trainings, so I'm gonna make sure I'm ready to do that. It's an incredibly motivating, really works with my brain so far, and the expectations aren't outrageous. Two podcast episodes, that's pretty doable. And if I only did one, we'd live, right? But the idea that at least doing two feels so sustainable and gets me so far ahead of schedule eventually, that I'm really excited. So I wanted to share this with you, why I'm doing the standardized schedule, how it has benefited me so far, and some tips on how you could implement this too. So if you decide to implement a standardized schedule, I would love to hear from you. Tag me on Instagram or send me a message on threads. Send me an email, do whatever you want on whatever platform. But I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what your schedule is or the benefits you're seeing. If you have any follow-up questions, definitely let me know. And I just hope that this simple approach to time management can help you as much as it has helped me. If you liked this episode, don't forget to leave a rating and a review. Share it with someone else you think would really enjoy it. And if you're not already, subscribe to the podcast. Do that too. I will see you in the next episode. Bye.