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Imagine a world where every hour of your day aligns perfectly with your goals and reduces stress rather than adding to it. That's exactly what we're focusing on today the backbone of effective time management, which is a solid, realistic daily schedule. We'll dive into how observing and restructuring your daily habits can transform your productivity and peace of mind. From mastering the art of batching tasks to embracing themed days, get ready to tailor your time to fit your life perfectly. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Systemized Business. Here we dive into strategic productivity to help you overcome entrepreneurial overwhelm.

Speaker 1: 0:49

I'm BK and I do not believe that you have to be a slave to a business. You can streamline both your business and your life with simple systems. So, whether you're a female entrepreneur navigating the fast-paced world of business, this podcast is your go-to resource for simplifying processes, optimizing efficiency and achieving more with less stress. So we're going to lay out our entire day by creating a realistic schedule for our day-to-day system. In order to make the most effective use of our time and to be most productive, we want to map out our hour to hour details that comprise each of our days. Before you schedule anything, take a look at the way you currently spend your time. Take one week to observe each hour of your day. You guessed it I'm talking about a time audit Document the way you currently spend your time. This exercise will help you create a structure that can provide support and help you make the most use of your time with the least amount of stress. You can make it as detailed as you want. So instead of observing, maybe hour by hour, you could look at half hours. You can make it as detailed as you want. So instead of observing, maybe hour by hour, you could look at half hours. You can even look at every 15 minutes. How are you spending your time? If your phone has reports on how you spend your time on there, pull that out too. Look at it, acknowledge it, come to terms with it. There's no judgment here, friends. When we know better, we do better.

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So your day might look something like this Maybe from 7 am to 8, maybe you're waking up, you're making your bed, you're meditating, praying, you're eating your breakfast. Between 8 and 9, you go for a walk or you go to the office. You review your to-do list, your priorities. You might even check your email. Maybe from nine to 12, you are working on tasks in the order of priority. You're taking the planned breaks of at least you know, at least every 90 minutes. You know this sounds like a full day and we can go on and on, and the longer you do this time ordered for the better or the yeah, the more clear, the more clarity you have on how it is you're spending your day.

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You don't need to do everything all in one day. You don't need to do everything all in one day. If you put too much on your plate, you'll end up losing more time and producing less work or less quality work. Imagine for a second if a doctor who books too many patients in one day they are accounting on each patient may be taking exactly 13.6 minutes, like clockwork. If there's any disturbance to that schedule, the waiting room will grow more crowded, the wait gets longer, anxiety and frustration will only grow.

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What we want to do is reduce the scope of our days and focus on what is realistic. If you end up taking on too much, it will be harder to keep up with that schedule. A full plate is a catalyst for stress and incomplete work. Be quick, yes, but don't hurry. We want to avoid overwhelming ourselves in order to be efficient. I like the idea of leaving no task untouched. In other words, don't have an all or nothing mentality when it comes to the things that you have planned to get done. Maintain the order of your day to the best of your ability. If you have a daily routine you want to follow, then stick to it. Follow the order of each event, even if you no longer have the planned amount of time. For example, if you have planned to clean your house for an hour today, but something happened and you found out that, okay, now you only have 20 minutes, instead of not cleaning anything at all, what you can do is pick a room, pick a spot and focus on that and get that done. This helps us maintain the daily schedule in the long run, even if it doesn't work on one particular day. Things may not go as planned, as we have talked about in previous episodes, but time can still be used wisely. Even though not everything is accomplished, something is accomplished, and that feeling of success will still come after doing everything that you could in the time that you had.

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A technique that I love to do, and I think it's worth giving it a try, is batching. Batch your days, batch your hours. When you batch your days, you complete similar tasks in sections, so you might have one hour in your schedule, for example, where you have decided to check your emails or return phone calls. So you have batched your emails and returning messages and phone calls. So you can even split your days into sections like this and create a streamlined organization.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Talking of email, there seems to be this culture of like constantly checking email, but research and newer research is coming up and it suggests that you know it's okay, it's actually even healthier to check your email just three times a day. For some, of course, this sounds really stressful to not check your email every possible moment because there's a fear of missing important updates and updates. There's a fear of missing messages, which makes that constantly checking your email very irresistible, and this is one tough habit to break, for sure. But you can start small Check your email five times a day, schedule the times that you want to check email and put a note in your email signature to let people know that you do get their emails, and all the emails will be responded to within 24 hours. This is helpful because it manages people's expectations too.

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Social media is also a huge part of daily life for many people. It has become a natural way of communicating and connecting with those within our communities throughout the world. Social media is also as addicting as checking email. A healthy habit to implement is one of conscious social media consumption. Rather than checking notifications every time they pop up or every time you have a free moment, choose a time of day that you dedicate to social media. Have a scheduled one hour to work on your social media, and this will help you kind of curb those time sucks that social media tends to do and that doom scrolling, my goodness, yes.

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So here are some examples of maybe categories that may work well for your time management when you bash them together so you can have professional communication. This is checking email, returning phone calls, getting back to messages you could have. Another category could be social hours, so checking text messages, coordinating social plans, checking social media. You could schedule current events, like checking in on the news if that's something that you do, getting updates on various topics that you're interested in. Another category could be self-improvement scheduling time to go to the gym, time to work on long-term goals. I'm sure you get the idea. You can examine the rest of your schedule and look at your most productive time of day in order to choose where to batch which tasks, use your productivity time to your advantage and create a schedule according to which tasks need the most attention. So once you have scheduled your deep work time where you're the most alert, the most attentive later in the day, that's when you can schedule other times like checking social media or self-improvement or current events, things like that.

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There are even days of the week when you might want to take care of an entire category of tasks. You could theme your days. Some activities don't need to be done every day. For example, you might not need to go to the grocery store every day. Can I get an amen? Activities that can be put on one day can be categorized into themes for your days. If you have multiple errands to do each week, choose one day to do all of them. Do each week. Choose one day to do all of them. These themes can kind of build the part of your weekly rituals and habits that you want to maintain over time. So let me share with you some of the themes that you can consider.

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Mastery Mondays, for example, you can practice a new hobby or improve a new skill. You could even have metrics Mondays where you go through all your metrics and record and review and see what's working, what isn't. So you're looking at your data. You can have productivity Tuesdays. You are working on big projects that day. You schedule meetings on this day. You dedicate extra time to focus to deep work on this day. What about workout Wednesdays or wellness Wednesdays, where you schedule you know longer workout sessions or you do some, or you work with a professional trainer or you have your wellness days on that day. You get the idea. Think of your time in sections like this really keeps you focused on the day ahead rather than the month or the year ahead.

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Another important aspect of mastering our days is creating time to pursue the things that we love that are not work or business related. A great way to reward ourselves after a satisfying and hard day of work is by engaging in one of your hobbies. Productivity includes making time for family and hobbies, which is essential when you're trying to avoid burnout. You'll find, when you've scheduled your day, when you've prioritized your tasks, that you are better able to make time for the things that you really love. If you find that you have so much on your plate that you don't have time for fun, the solution is not to eliminate fun. The solution is not to eliminate fun. Instead, we want to look for times and create time and carve out time to dedicate to fun and to dedicate to hobbies. Whether it is cross-stitching that you like, rock climbing, I don't know juggling, you can make time for both your high priority responsibilities and your extracurricular hobbies. It can be difficult to find hobbies as life takes over. Time flies by as the hustle and the bustle determines how our days go. But by taking charge and making positive changes to your time management and your focus, you will find that you do have more free time to dedicate to fostering a well-rounded life.

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If you find that you don't actually have a hobby that you can engage in, then pull out your journal. I have some ideas of how you can choose a new hobby. So, firstly, make a list. Write down all the things you're interested in. You don't need to have an end plan in mind, just write down the things that come to your mind. For example, you're interested in astrology or painting or filmmaking, whatever it is. This is just a brain dump on everything that you're interested in.

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Now, once you have this list of interests, look at it, choose a couple of things that you want to try by exploring a new hobby. Now you're broadening your horizons. You have a stronger ability to approach work with a fresh, a new outlook. So if you have I don't know you want to learn how to play the guitar? Okay, this is interesting. You can take that up as a new hobby and as a new challenge to yourself.

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Now you don't have to choose just one.

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You can have a number of them. But the key thing is it's something that you can do, maybe a few times a week for 30 minutes a day. Explore some of these ideas that you wrote down. But what you don't want to do is now take on too much. You don't want to now add so much more on your plate that it feels overwhelming and unsustainable. Right, okay, so we've explored how a well-structured schedule is the key to not just managing your time but really mastering it. Remember, the right schedule for you lets you live more fully, work more efficiently and play more frequently. So start small, adjust as you go, and soon you'll see that your days will start to reflect the life that you want to live. Okay, friends, if this episode has helped you see your time differently, don't forget to subscribe to the Systemized Business Podcast and share with somebody who might want to be looking to reclaim their time too. Okay, friends, until we talk again soon. Keep your schedules flexible, keep your goals in sight and make every day intentional. Bye for now.