Composition Analysis

Emotion Expression

Color Strategy

Text Strategy

The 'Unschedule' Method

Gamify with Randomness

Interstitial Journaling

The Sticky Note Strategy

I am so over the world of productivity telling everyone that time blocking your week is the only solution, that the Eisenhower Matrix is the answer to all of your problems, because everyone's brain is different. On some days, those tools might be super helpful, but on other days, they might not be, and that's okay. There are so many other ways to plan your days and plan your time in ways that might actually work for your mind. In this video, I want to share with you five different ways to plan your time. You don't have to pick one and stick with it. You might pick one that feels really good for you right now and then switch to another one that feels really good on another day, because in the same way that on some days we like different kinds of food, on some days we like different ways of working and planning.

This is a planning method for you if you feel like something is up, you're a bit burnt out, you are resisting doing anything, the procrastination is just rampant in your life, you're never not thinking about all the things that you have to do, but you're also not getting those things done. This planning method was created by Dr. Neil Fiore, built on by Dr. David Burns, lots of doctors in the mix, so you know it's got to be good, and I've also added some of my own thoughts and experiences. This planning method starts out with a schedule for the week. The first thing you're going to do is set the start and the end time for your work days in stone. Then you want to schedule in only the stuff that is absolutely set in stone that you must go to: meetings, appointments, your friend's birthday, date night. Then you're scheduling in your free time, and the biggest thing that you need to do here is to make sure that you are spending your free time doing things that you actually want to do, not scheduling in things that you want to want to do. For example, you might go, 'Okay, free time, I'm going to schedule in a nice walk,' but in the back of your mind, you know that at that time you're probably not going to actually feel like going on a nice walk. Now you've turned that free time into a should, into a have to. It doesn't feel like free time for your mind; it feels like an obligation, and right now you don't need more obligations. Your free time needs to be dedicated to things that you actually want to do. Something that I actually like doing these days is planning spontaneity, so if I plan in free time, I'm not planning in what I want to do in my free time. I'm going to get to that free time block, I'm going to sit there, and I'm going to go like, 'What do I actually feel like doing right now? ' I'm going to wait until something hits me that I actually feel like doing, and then I'll do that.

The general rule is you are not allowed to do anything that you genuinely don't want to do in your free time. This is a really big part of recovering from any kind of burnout: actually listening to your body, actually listening to yourself when it comes to what you want to do in your free time. You're obviously not allowed to work. Ideally, you want to schedule these blocks of free time all throughout the week if you can, if you have that kind of flexible job or you work from home so you can control your own hours. But if you don't have that flexibility and control, but you have things that you want to do on the weekends, goals that you want to work on, schedule in that free time on your weekends. Now you are left with all these blocks of time where you can do work. According to this time management method, you don't have to work during this time, but you can work. The only thing that you have to do is to schedule one hard work starting time, and these start times indicate 30-minute chunks of work, so you're only committing to 30-minute work periods, then you can stop. The key to using this work schedule is to never focus on finishing anything; that at this stage is not important, but to continuously focus on starting, since you only ever need to commit to 30-minute blocks of time, and to stay committed to using those free time periods.

This is a spontaneous planning method, and it is from Mark Forster, the author of 'Secrets of Productive People. ' What you want to do is write down a list of tasks in your notebook, in your productivity app. Count how many tasks you have, then use a random number generator to generate a number between one and your number of tasks. When it produces a number, go to that task in the list. Your goal is to work on a small part of that task until you feel like you're ready to move on. If you finish a task, cross it off from your list, and if you only work on a task for a little bit and then decide that you want to move on, you can still cross it off from your list, but then add it again to the bottom. Add one to your random number generator and do another round. If you happen to land on a crossed-out task, you can just slide past it to the next task on the list. It sounds complicated, but it actually isn't once you do it. Hopefully, the visuals that I've got going here give you a better indicator of what I'm saying. This way of planning is really all about reducing your resistance. It's really good if you are someone who craves novelty, if you're just at a stage where you kind of like working in little bursts, but you're not really ready to commit to things.

This is a planning method created by Toby Stubblebine, and it's a really mindful way of moving through your day. Basically, instead of your typical to-do list, you're actually journaling your way through the day, and you journal with every transition. So whenever you go to stop a task, whenever you start a task, whenever you go to break, that's when you'd revisit your journal. It's called interstitial journaling. With every transition, what you want to write down are things like how you're feeling about the task, what you're thinking, any worries that you have, what you got done, what you didn't get done, any obstacles, what you want to get done—all of those things are the things that you're writing in your interstitial journal. This helps you to create clarity as you are moving throughout your day. It helps you to process your emotions, and it just helps you to move through your work in a really mindful, calm, and gentle way. Plus, you're not pre-planning things ahead of time, so it feels really smooth and easy if you're in that mode of like resistance, of like, 'Ugh, work is too much right now. ' This is a good, flowy way of managing your time.

This is really helpful on days where you are just overwhelmed, like there is so much on your to-do list and you can't stop thinking about all of the stuff on your to-do list instead of thinking about the one task in front of you. I've called it the sticky note strategy. Get a stack of Post-it notes. Write down the first task that you want to work on on your first Post-it note. Write down how long you think it's going to take in an ideal world; it is under 30 minutes, and if you're on a really tough day, I'd keep it under 10 minutes, so you might need to break your task into pieces to action this. Then write down how difficult you think the task is going to be from 1 to 10. Once you have finished your task, you want to write down how long it actually took and how difficult it actually felt, and put your sticky note somewhere visible throughout the day so that you can see all the tasks that you're racking up. This way of planning does two things. Firstly, it keeps you focused on one thing at a time; a lot of overwhelm comes from thinking way too far into the future, thinking way too big picture. This keeps you honed in and focused on the one next task you need to do. Number two, it taps into the power of prediction errors. Prediction errors are actually how we learn; surprise triggers learning when reality doesn't match our expectations, we learn. So if you are someone who always builds up tasks and you're like, 'God, it's going to be so difficult,' if you're constantly predicting the difficulty of a task and then rating it and finding that things aren't matching up to your expectations, you eventually learn a little. This can also be really good for people who have time management struggles, who aren't really good at predicting how long things take, because you can get a little bit better at predicting how long your tasks are going to take, making them feel hopefully a little less overwhelming. There is also a third thing: it taps into the progress principle.

If you can visibly see the progress you're making, it's so motivating; it creates momentum.

This is another one from Mark Forster. Write down a list of three to five things that you want to get done. You want to include things that you're really resisting on your list, but also things you're like, kind of looking forward to, on your list. If you can, then you want to put on an interval timer that slowly increases over time. So for the very first work session, you want to work on each task for 5 minutes, rotating through the tasks. When the time goes off, you move to the next task, etc. , etc. Then you want to work for 10 minutes on each task, rotating through the tasks using the timer, and 15 minutes, and 20 minutes, and so on and so forth. I probably would only go up to 25 minutes if you even feel like you can commit to that. It's so easy to commit to just 5 minutes on a task, but once you actually get into this flow, you'll find that when the timer goes off, you're like, 'Oh, like I want to keep on working on the task. ' And I think it's up to you; you can follow your intuition when you get that feeling of like, 'I want to keep on working on this task,' and keep on working on that specific task, or you can keep on doing your timer so that you're making progress on a bunch of different little things so that you feel a bit more productive, and you're still creating more momentum. This is also a really good technique that you can use to soften your tasks if you have a bunch of tasks on your plate that you're like, 'I don't want to do this. ' This is perfect. You can use the timer for all of your tasks if you want to and interval through them all, and it'll soften the tasks in your mind so they feel more approachable that way for the rest of your week. You feel more like doing those tasks.

If you liked this video, you'll probably like my video on how to plan your week, so create a weekly planning routine that suits you, that suits your mind. Once again, it's very customized to your brain and how it works. I'm going to have that video linked down below. I think a weekly planning routine is kind of essential in terms of your productivity. It keeps you focused; it keeps you working on the right things. And if you don't have one, I would really recommend that video 'cuz it walks through step-by-step how to create your own planning routine. That's going to be linked down below as well as on the screen. I appreciate you so much, and I'll see you soon.