Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 98
So, want to know my magic little time-creating tip for the week? I promise it's a complete game-changer. It's super simple to describe and not so simple to implement, but it can be. And the more you practice it, the easier it becomes to weave into your day.
So wait for it.... Little drum roll. What you've been waiting for, how to make more time in your life.... is to decide ahead of time what you're going to do. Sounds super simple, right? And I'm sure loads of us have been guilty of putting things in the diary that we know we need to be getting done.
But actually, when it comes down to it, we tell ourselves we don't want to, or it's too big, we don't know where to start. We don't know quite how we're going to manage to get all of the things done today. Maybe we tell ourselves that it should feel easy, or we need to feel inspired in order to take action. Or the opposite end of that being. It's got to be absolutely perfect. And if it isn't perfect, it isn't right.
And I want to dare you to just try for a day or a week, see how it goes, to decide what you're going to do ahead of time. So plan it maybe a day or your whole week ahead. You're going to break things down into very small, easy, achievable chunks, and you're going to decide when you're going to do it. You're going to decide how long it's going to take you, and you're going to decide that when you come to the end of that time period that it is done and finished.
And that's going to feel so uncomfortable for so many of you. You're going to be like, oh, I can't possibly do that. Anna. You don't understand how difficult my task is or my job is or how unique my situation is. But let's put it into the example of you need to write a proposal, so you want to, rather than I need to write a proposal, which is a very big thing and quite sort of intangible. You could have a 20 minutes section in your diary you block out and for 20 minutes you write subheadings of what that proposal is going to entail. And maybe the day after that, you flesh out one of those subheadings and that 20 minutes block you absolutely commit to doing that task and nothing else. You don't check your emails, you don't check Facebook. You don't wander around the kitchen wondering where that herbal tea you bought a couple of weeks ago has gone in the cupboard. You absolutely get your nose down and you commit to the task for the time that you allotted it.
And what this does and why this gives you extra time is you don't spend time going, "oh, I don't know what to do next. Oh, it's really hard. I have to decide all these things to do. I don't know what. There's no point even starting" or judging yourself for what you have done, or judging yourself for how much you're not going to do, or telling yourself that there's so much of it that you can't possibly do a good job here today. You decide what you're going to do, and then you decide that what you do is going to be good enough, and you give yourself a block of time to do it.
And you save so much time when you don't have any time for the brain drama. If you've only got 20 minutes to get that task done, you don't have time to spiral off into your own inadequacies. You don't have time to spiral off into all of the reasons why you could be doing something more fun or why someone else might be better at it than you. You've just got to get down and do it because that's the only time in the week that you have to do it.
I have never found anyone who has not found this completely revolutionary and it is a lot more hard than it sounds. But I dare you to give it a go. I've actually got a little course on How to Make Time for Yourself, which is £27, which teaches a full system as to how to make more time for yourself.
You can actually find that over at Selfcareschool.co.uk. But just this one little tip is going to revolutionise the way that you manage your diary. I would love to hear how you implement it. If you do find it useful, do drop me an email. I'd love to hear how it works out for you.
Good luck in making those commitments and following through with them.
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