Reorganizing Your Priorities: When You May Need to Rethink Your Schedule
When it comes to taking back control of your time and mastering time management, creating a schedule is not, actually, the most challenging part. (If you have made it that far, congratulations!)
If you’ve already created your schedule, this means you know the challenge is truly in actually doing the damn things.
When it’s time to sit down and take action, all of your priorities are going to quickly come into question. No matter what the task at hand is, your brain is going to try to revolt.
It is 100% predictable you are not going to want to take action when the calendar reminder pops up that now is the time you had scheduled to act. Revolt!
Great! This means everything is going just as planned.
When this happens, give yourself two options.
Option 1: Talk yourself into just starting. Just create the Google doc and give it a title. Just open the documents you’ll need to read through. Just brainstorm three bullet points. Most of the time, once you get those brain muscles working, you’ll fall into a flow state and your task will be completed in no time.
If that doesn’t do the trick…
Option 2: Sit and stare at a wall. No phone. No social media. No organizing the desk like it’s the most important must-do life-saving option. Just stare…and patiently wait for the brain’s temper tantrum to stop and the boredom to set in.
Do you know what the brain likes even less than cranking through a task it doesn’t want to do? Boredom! Nothing will push you into any sort of action than escaping the feeling of being bored. Back to option 1. And if you get bored while doing the task, just work to complete it faster. Make it a game.
But, there is an art to this time management and productivity.
While you do need to keep a close eye on reigning the brain back in when it fights your schedule, sometimes you do need to accept that the plan you made days, weeks, or months ago may no longer be aligned. There may have been a significant change in your circumstances, your original goals may be irrelevant, or new opportunities may have come into play.
In these times, it’s important to lean into your intuition and allow yourself to rethink and reprioritize.
Reprioritizing Your Week
Whenever you’re scheduling for the week, you should keep these principles in mind:
Your schedule should be specific, with tasks aligned to the results you want to create for the week.
Your schedule should be prioritized, focusing on the most important work early in the day or week.
Your schedule should be realistic, scheduling time for you to take breaks and recharge and allowing plenty of flex time to tackle those unexpected items.
Even with these proper planning techniques and solid follow-through, unexpected circumstances come up. A new project with an urgent deadline, a friend in town for an impromptu long weekend, or a pesky cold hitting you out of nowhere (I thought I remembered Joe sneezing near me…)
When this happens, step back and ask yourself, “If I had this information and were to schedule my week all over again, would it still look the same?”
If your schedule would have looked a little different (for example you might have planned to take off early on Friday afternoon to spend the rest of the day reminiscing and connecting instead of perfecting that Excel template), make those schedule updates now. Evaluate your schedule for the rest of the week. Decide what could be pushed until later or removed altogether. Refer back to the scheduling best practices above and continue to take action on the newly prioritized plan.
Watch Yourself:
Again, trust your intuition, but keep a close eye on that brain of yours. Make sure the updates you’re making to your schedule aren’t just a way to avoid the work. A few signals:
Don’t make these decisions to update your schedule in the moment. In other words, don’t jump to the conclusion you need to “reprioritize” conveniently when you are just about to dive into a task you’ve been dreading. Look at the week as a whole and ensure you are still planning for a successful ending.
As you take a few runs at reprioritizing, take your learnings to future weeks. Is this practice happening often enough that it could really just be a case of not leaving enough flexibility in your schedule to allow for these unknowns? In that case, you may need to get a little more realistic with your weekly planning from the start.
Reprioritizing Your Big Goals
Your week-to-week schedule is, hopefully, putting you closer to the bigger-picture goals you’re working towards.
You’re going to start a business. Hell yeah, you go girl. You put together a clunky but reasonably thought out “business plan” (read, numerous bullets in a random Google doc that will lead the way. Business Plan done: Check!).
Or, you’re renovating that house. Saweeeet! All of the project to-dos have been outlined and planned for the rest of the year(s). Break out those power tools!
These high-level plans guide your evenings and weekends. You’re hustling. You’re doing the work.
Now, even with these plans in place, you’re probably still consistently searching for good reasons to procrastinate instead of creating content or painting yet ANOTHER wall (look at your sweet dog over there, he’s never looked so cute! This task can wait, dog snuggles are a must at this very moment.) The brain revolting just as planned.
You’re failing along the way. You’re learning along the way. Repeat…you’re learning.
As you’ve hustled towards these bigger goals, you have a whole new brain full of new tidbits and knowledge that didn’t exist months ago. Maybe a product you were originally super passionate about creating just isn’t resonating with your clients. Or the list of house projects is taking you away from your zone of genius. Or life has hit you with new obstacles that have changed what’s really important.
In these moments, check in on your intuition. Don’t give up on the end goal, but maybe it is time to re-evaluate. Understand the journey and the path to that end result is going to look a little different than you originally thought it might. No problem!
Take a step back. Dust off that “business plan” or project list and decide what pieces still align and make sense. Remove what doesn’t and add in the elements that are going to keep you inching forward. Then get back into scheduling and action mode with a newly prioritized game plan.
Watch Yourself:
Once again, make sure the changes you’re considering aren’t just avoidance when life gets hard. A few signals:
Is it bright shiny object syndrome? Make sure you aren’t consistently jumping from one thing to the next, never getting passed the finish line on anything.
Are you burnt out? Maybe you really just need to pause on the content consumption, take a break, take some small actions, and come back to the original plan but with a refreshed brain.
Does this goal realignment happen consistently enough it’s just a way to procrastinate on the actual work? Nah, I’m onto you. Keep taking action and trust you’re working on the right things.
Pushing through the “I don’t want to’s” and avoiding the pain of acting now for the pleasure of an hour-long Instagram black hole is all just a part of time management mastery.
There is a time and a place to push past the resistance to create another successful week and really make progress on your goals. Most of the time.
But don’t let this drive and passion mute what your intuition may be telling you. Give yourself some grace to take a step back and re-align with the amazing person you’re growing into every single day.
Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed? Do you feel like there are always important tasks left undone, hanging over your head? It's time to take control of your productivity and prove to yourself you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.
Check out the 7 Days: Consider it Done! guide to transform the way you approach your to-do list.
Say goodbye to procrastination and unfulfilled goals and hello to a sense of control and reignited passion for life. Consider it done!
