Setting up a Schedule To Help You Right Now

I spent over 6 months working from home and as my own boss this year. In the middle of a pandemic. For a lot of that time, I was very busy. I made a lot of masks this year- and that takes time! But if there’s one thing I learned this year, it’s that having some kind of schedule and structure made everything so much easier for me.

Without any structure, it gets really easy to take naps after lunch, convince myself I’ll work later, tell myself it’s ok to work a short day… and before I know it, I’ve only actually worked about 15 hours that week, and I’m behind on stuff. And so, I set up a schedule for myself. At first, I balked at the idea. Isn’t the point of being your own boss to have a lot of freedom in your schedule? What happens if a friend calls and wants me to do lunch that day?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could still have a lot of freedom in my schedule… but that I needed a schedule to make sense of my days.

So here’s what I did and what worked for me:

-Every week, I sit down with my calendar and look at my week. Now, mid pandemic, I didn’t have a lot of calendar appointments, but I still looked at any major deadlines I needed to keep up with, and anything else I knew I had going on.

-Once I’m clear on my calendar, I make a master to do list for the week. I just dump anything and everything into the same list. Cleaning my house, grocery shopping, work projects, paperwork, long term projects… all of it.

-Once I’ve got my list made, I sort it. Sometimes I sort it by category: “work”, “house”, “personal”, whatever. Sometimes I sort it by urgency “today”, “this week”, “this month”

-After sorting, I assign each list task to a day, based on any deadlines or appointments that I need to fit in from my calendar check. Here’s the big trick though: I put as many tasks as seem doable on Monday. All of my urgent tasks, and several week long ones. I continue to fill Tuesday as much as possible, but if I stay on pace, I will have less and less left on my list, so that by Thursday, I can almost always use some time as “catch up” time. Here’s where that much desired flexibility time comes into play: If I know I have “catch up” time built in AND I know I have scheduled time for things AND I get the most urgent things done first… then if I want to work a short day, or have lunch with a friend, or I get an emergency work thing or whatever else, I’ve built my schedule to allow for those things to happen!

The other thing I do is set up each week for success. That, to me, means I still set aside time to make meals or do meal prep if I want to. It means I do laundry for the week on Sunday. It means making sure I schedule time to do other weekly chores, like mowing the lawn. It means scheduling in time for my morning routine and exercise.

Figuring out how to make your own schedule can be really hard. Learning to be accountable to yourself for your productivity and your time can be really hard. It is ALWAYS worth it, though. When I get myself set up well, I feel better, get more done, eat better… you get the idea. Things are just… better.

I hope this helps!

Talk to you soon,

Charis