How To Get More Done In Your Day With Less Stress
Hi friends – I hope you are having a great day today! Are you enjoying the monthlong series on time and time management? I am! I hope these episodes have been as useful to you as they have been to me. I wanted to do this series because time management is something I have struggled with since leaving my day job in the spring. Without the structure of a 9-5, I kinda lost my way. I didn’t know what to do with my time when I had so much of it. I know – what a problem to have, right? But I realized that I was so much more conscious of my time and how I was spending it, when I only had mornings, nights, and weekends to dedicate to this show and my coaching business. I had to be very surgical with my time.
Without the structure of a 9-5 gig, coupled with school being out, I wound up spending a lot of time in confusion or yup, overwhelm this summer. I had no idea what to do when. I would get distracted by all sorts of things. Start something, get up and never come back to it. Or come back and have no idea where I was in the process. It was not good!
And yet, I was telling myself that I was “multitasking”. That I was juggling all these tasks and priorities and that’s supposed to be a desirable skill – multitasking.
But here’s the thing. Multitasking doesn’t work. In fact, research shows that it is less productive than doing single tasks while stoned on weed. Yup. Multitasking can reduce your productivity by up to 40 percent. It also impairs the ability of our brains to learn new skills. A study by the University of London found that participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks, experienced an IQ score decline similar to those who have stayed up all night. There’s even some evidence that multitasking too often causes permanent damage to the brain.
Multitasking conjurs up a picture of an octupus, answering the phone, typing, filing, cooking – doing all the things simultaneously. But in reality, mulitasking is forcing your brain to quickly switch between tasks – you’re not actually doing things at the same time. Ping-ponging between browser tabs or different jobs is giving you a false sense of productivity, you’re in fact working less efficiently across every task. You aren’t fully completing a task before moving on and so you leave behind what’s known as ‘attention residue’ when you jump from job to job.
As the University of Minnesota’s Sophie Leroy puts it:
“People need to stop thinking about one task in order to fully transition their attention and perform well on another. Yet, results indicate it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task, and their subsequent task performance suffers.”
Brendon Burchard talks about this in his book, High Performance Habits. He suggests that after you have completed a task, you need to release any tension or energy you have around it before moving on to the next thing. This allows your brain to fully complete the task. He calls it Release Tension – Set Intention. Once you have released the tension, you set your intention for the next task or part of your day. By using Release Tension, Set Intention exercise you are allowing your brain a little time to recharge. And it helps you from mindlessly plowing into the next task. My son uses this on the pitching mound now. After he throws a pitch, he releases the tension of that pitch then sets his intention for the next pitch. It’s a great exercise as you go about your day as well. When you pull into your parking spot at work, release the tension of the drive, then set your intention for your first meeting.
OK, so now that we know multitasking doesn’t work, let’s stop holding up multitasking as this great thing. It’s not. Our brains are not made to work this way and we are actually harming them.
So how should we be working?
For me, I knew I needed to structure my time in a way that would maximize my brain power as well as give some structure to my day. I decided to go back to what had worked when I had a full time job. TIME BLOCKING. Time-blocking or batching is where you group like tasks together so that your brain is able to fully focus. Just like you would schedule a meeting, you schedule your batch time in your planner (whether it’s online or paper – or like me, BOTH! I will speak to that more in a minute).
This summer, coaching has been my full time job and that means I am dedicating 30-40 hours a week to it. Without set hours, it’s up to me to be really mindful of my time. Within my coaching business are different tasks and appointments. There are podcast tasks and client calls and networking events, my free consult calls and then of course there are family and house tasks.
Here’s how I set up my calendar: I use Google calendar and 2, yes 2 old fashioned paper planners. That might seem excessive to you but it’s what is working for me now. You can use whatever planner or calendar you want. I like having my calendar on my phone but I also LOVE writing things in a planner. I might change it up but I will explain why I use all 3 calendars.
The first thing I do is pull up my google calendar and enter all my standing appointments – the calls with my clients, the weekly call with my coach, mastermind meetings. Then I layer in any other appointments (doctor, dentist, baseball practice etc.) And I add travel time where necessary! This is a game changer. I wasn’t putting that in and I found myself always feeling rushed or running behind. Give yourself time to get to and from places.
When I first started using this system, I would schedule general blocks for podcast tasks or coach training. I would just put 1-2 hour blocks on my calendar and figure I would know what to do when that time came.
WRONG.
Because I wasn’t specific about what that time was for, I would spin out, get distracted, what to do something else.
So I got more detailed. When planning out my week on Sunday evenings, I do a brain dump of all the things I want or need to do for my business and home, then I look to see what tasks can go together. By batching like tasks, my brain can focus on one type of action at a time.
For example, I batch my brainstorm sessions where I set aside time every 8-12 weeks to brainstorm podcast topics and guests. I use a time block for guest outreach so that I can focus just on reaching out to or scheduling guests. I batch my coach training, setting aside dedicated time to learn and grow as a coach. I dedicate a time block to consult calls with prospective clients. So when you reach out to set up a call with me, I have blocks of time dedicated to that.
As I’m matching and batching, I am also ranking tasks. With brain dumps, you get a lot of nonsense tasks on there that your brain will say you have to do. You don’t. Be ruthless and realistic and only focus on the things that are going to move the needle and make the biggest impact. Those go on your calendar next.
This is exaclty what I would do when I worked in corporate and only had my spare time to work on this show and coaching. I had set days/times for my different tasks, like recording episodes, social media time, writing show notes. It worked then and it is working now.
Look, I still feel the siren song of emails and instagram. But then I remind myself that I have that built in.
Set yourlsesf up for success – give yourself scrolling itme. This helps when you want to distract yourself and just check real fast.
This happend tto me earlier this week. I had blocked out my day and included time for laundry. When I was focusing on a task and it started to feel hard, my brain was lik e”Oh laundry – we can do that instead of this” without my time built in, I would have HAPPILY done laundry then.instead I reminded myself tha i had time for that once this task was done and my brain was like “oh that’s right”
Time blocking and batching have been so helpful in wrangling my brain and helping me to honor my time.
So why do I use three calendars? Even saying it seems a little nuts, but here goes.
I use google calendar because as I am scheduling my batch blocks, it’s easiest to move around and figure out the puzzle that is my week. I can also color code on there – that is important to me because I color code my written planners as well. So everything matches and it makes me happy!
I also use google calendar so that if I don’t have my paper planner in front of me or am out and about, it will remind me of upcoming appointments.
The first paper planner I use is the Living Well planner. This planner is great for long-term goal setting and for seeing my week in a glance. Every month there are 3 goal setting pages to help you break down the steps to achieving your monthly goals. Each month also has a budget tracker. I haven’t started using that, but I like that it’s there! One of these days I am going to start using that! This planner usually stays home. It’s took big to cart around with me.
The other paper planner I use is the Next Level daily planner. I keep this one in my purse and take it with me everywhere. I have a love hate relationship with this planner. I love the abiliyt to track habits and I love that it has a morning and night routine section. I love the way it has room for your schedule but also your to-dos. The task section is broken into priority, important and non-urgent. Love that!. What I don’t like is that it has a lot of space for notes in the back which takes up a lot of space that could be used to include more daily pages, since it is only has 90 days in the planner which sucks becasuse I like to have the whole year. My planners are like journals to me and I like to keep them.. It is also a bound book and I prefer spiral.
So there you have it. Multitasking doesn’t work. Instead you should batch your tasks so that you are doing one thing at a time. If you are interested in either of the 2 paper planners, I will link them in the shownotes at dothedamnthingshow.com.
If you are having trouble sticking to a schedule and honoring your time and want some help, send me an email at hello@lizheron.com and we can set up a time to chat!
My mission is to help as many people as possible do the damn thing! And I would love your help in spreading the word – so If you are enjoying the show, please share with your friends, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes! I would really appreciate it!