Today’s episode is going to literally open your eyes to a completely different way of doing things and how you are managing your time. I can guarantee you that almost every single one of you are making this number one mistake with your time. I’m so excited to dive into this to see how it makes a major impact on your life. So what do you say? Let’s get started with figuring out how you can manage your time and make the most of your day.

Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast

How To Make It All Work

If you are over there asking yourself how in the world do I make all of this work? How do I figure out how to spend time with my husband, with my kids, and have enough time for my business? Then this is the episode for you. 

If you are trying to figure out time management, how to figure out a schedule, how to get everything done. Literally, the basis of every single thing that your life is built upon is dependent on how many hours in the day you have and how you use them. I can’t even tell you how many people that come into the Facebook group to answer the question, what are you struggling with right now? The answer is time, either not enough time for my kids, or not enough time to focus on my business. It’s literally time management all day long.

And I’m so glad that you’re here because this is what today is all about. And the reason why you’re searching for those answers is that you’re making this number one mistake. It’s literally crippling everything that you do. 

The problem is there are so many hours in the day that you don’t even know you’re not using. And that is. And I think it is really hard to know without an outside perspective. We can only see what we can see inside our own lives. So that’s the glory and beauty of this informational age that we live in. 

But I don’t just want you to be inspired. I want you to be an action-taker. I truly want you to move on. What is the right thing to do? So here is what this really comes down to right now in your life.

Time Management

What are you doing with your time? I want you to write that down. Are you using a Google calendar? Are you using a paper planner? Are you winging it? Are you writing notes in 15,000 different places? Are you trying to just figure out where you’re supposed to be and only focusing on that? 

Okay, so my kiddo has an appointment. We have swim lessons. My older kids have an activity at school that they have to be there for. My husband’s going to be working late this day. I have two business meetings and three group calls. This is everything that I need to do and I’m going to work everything in around all of these appointments. 

I think this is what a lot of people do, and that is the beginning of the problem. It really is. And you probably thinking, isn’t that a good thing that I know exactly where I’m supposed to be? 

Yes, it is, but you’re doing it upside down and backward. It’s a little like Tetris where you make every single cube fit where there are no gaps anywhere. And that truly is what you should be doing with your time.

Build a Framework

The problem is that you’re using a schedule-based time management system, instead of building a framework. You need to have a literal framework that supports you minute by minute, throughout every day of your week.

If your typical day looks like you waking up to your kiddos in your face, not getting up before them. Throwing something together for breakfast, cereal, or yogurt, whatever that looks like. And you really have no gage over their nutrition first thing in the morning. You’re on your phone first thing, responding to work emails and your social, and you’re already sucked in. The days just started and then you hit the madness running.

You’ve gotta get ready. You’ve got to get the kids out the door. For me, it’s little kids, right? For you, it might be older kids, but still, somebody always needs something. Are you really getting yourself ahead of the game or are you just starting your day behind and setting yourself up for failure? 

That is going to be the bonus of this whole thing. If you could just make that different, let that be your action item. Get up early or at least earlier than your kids do. So your not searching for your coffee cup, reheating it 12 times, and trying to figure out how to post on social media while you’re starting your day. You are not constantly rushing to get everyone out the door and feeling that literal sense of relief. And then doing it all over again the next day, always feeling like a chicken with his head cut off. Barely making it to meetings and constantly feeling like you’re always pushing the envelope with getting to where you need to be on time.

Fill The Gaps In Your Day

Here’s what happens. Your brain knows there’s a list of things that have to get done all day long and you’re managing your time based on these timestamps. You might even be holding every timestamp that you have for the day in your head. Or maybe you’ve written it in your planner or you only have your meetings and where you’re supposed to be in your Google calendar, but nothing else. So you’re holding all the rest in your head and now you have massive gaps in your day.

Say you have an appointment at 8:00, 12:00, 2:15, and then again at 4:30. That is where your mind is focusing all day long. I have to show up, have to be out the door, have to be dressed, have my coffee in hand, and have to have the kids situated.

Manage Your Day For More time

For every single one of you that are sitting there trying to figure out how to manage your day better, I can teach you this.

Let’s say your first thing is to drop kids off at school. And then the next thing that you have is something at 12. Well, there’s a gap in your day. What is happening in that gap? You have no idea. All your brain knows is that there’s a ton of stuff to get done and you end up cycling through like a chicken with its head cut off, mentality. And when you have those gaps in your day, that is the biggest waste of time which causes you to feel extra behind and in a rush.

You really can get more done in a day than you would normally do in an entire week just by the way that you manage your time. I promise you, I see it happen with the girls in the Academy all the time. If you think about even having three gaps of say 20 minutes each, that’s already an hour in one day of being more efficient. Now you take all of that across the span of a week and just like that, you have five hours that you just didn’t have before.

How Much Time Can You Create?

You were sitting on a gold mine the entire time and you didn’t even know it. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. You can create 5, 10, or 15 solid hours of uninterrupted time for your business every single week, and then the rest of your time is focused on cleaning, cooking, playing with kids, self-care, date night, and all those other things. 

How would that make you feel if you were able to have that much uninterrupted time and completely focus on your business during those hours? Focus on all the other stuff outside of that without constantly mixing the two. It is so insanely possible just by making one shift.

My Hybrid System

I talk about this all the time inside the Facebook group. What are the two things that come together? Your paper planner and your Google calendar. What are you going to put in each of them? Your paper planner tells you where your heart and your mind are supposed to be at all hours of the day. 

This is where you kill the chicken that already has its head cut off but won’t stop running around in circles like a maniac. So that’s in your paper planner. 

Now the Google calendar tells you where you’re supposed to be and this is what’s been lacking. You’ve had no consistent understanding of how to structure both. Where am I supposed to be focusing? What are my intentions? How am I showing up in my heart? How am I bringing my best self to this moment? And where do I need to be all day long? This is how you marry the two.

Paper Planner Time Blocks

So what goes in your paper planner, your time blocks? First and foremost, the five-block system goes inside the paper planner. 

And if you’re new around here, you can get the free workbook on my website chelsijo.co. Just click on the word FREE at the very top. The workbook is in there that will help you determine what your time blocks are. You can also head to the Facebook group, it is the one-stop shop to get all my FREE resources and everything that you need inside of the welcome post. Then you can ask all the questions that you want any day of the week and on Mondays, I do a planner audit. So you can give that a whirl, take a picture of it, and I will coach you on your time blocks. 

Just to give you a little inkling of what goes down inside of the Academy where I do coaching, literally three times a day. I pop in morning, noon, and night to make sure questions are answered to coach ladies to give feedback, encouragement, and accountability. 

So that would be the first thing that you need to have inside your paper planner.

Fundamental Needs and Routines

The second is your fundamental needs need to be in there. Again, if you don’t have your fundamental needs, I have that workbook for you as well at chelsijo.co. The same place where you find the time block resource. And then all of the routines that you’re going to be doing inside each block. 

That is what I want you to put inside your paper planner. And that is it. I do not want you to write your appointments. Now sometimes if we have a new routine in my PM block I will write swim practice. I don’t put the time that it happens, but it’s a new thing in my PM block and I need to have my brain shifting into this mode. 

Electronic Calendar & Time Stamps

This is the second part of the hybrid system is your electronic calendar, AKA your Google calendar. So what goes inside your electronic calendar?

Fundamentals

First and foremost, your fundamental needs need to be in your Google Calendar every single week. Wait, did I just say your fundamental needs have to go in your paper planner and your Google calendar? Yep, I sure am. Why? Because they need to be in your face all day every day.

I also have them written on a chalkboard in my bedroom because your fundamental needs need to become integrated into everything you do. So you need to put them in your Google Calendar.

Assigning Fundamental needs

A great question came to me inside the academy the other day. Do you actually put your fundamental needs as an event in your Google calendar? Do you put it for all day? How do you do this? Now, I actually assign them to the time that I likely will be getting them done. If I know that in my AM block, I’m going to be cleaning and it’s a two-hour fundamental need, I know that if I spend two hours cleaning once a week, that will satisfy me, my husband, and my kids.

That’s what we need to operate. Not tidying my house, not organizing my house, but cleaning it. Cleaning toilets, showers, kitchen sinks, kitchen counters, floors, all that kind of stuff. I will put down 9:00 to 11:00 and that will say cleaning zone one. And that’s what I put in my Google calendar as my fundamental need. And then in my paper planner, I just write inside of my AM block zone one cleaning and I highlight it orange because all my fundamental needs are orange inside of my paper planner. 

I do that with everything. If Blaine and I have a date night on Wednesday, I’ll put the timeframe that we’re going on our date night, like four to six or four to nine. If it’s a day date, I’ll put in the date with Blaine, or a day date and then how long we’re going to do it.

Commitments & Appointments

The next thing is your commitments and your appointments for your entire family. Not just you but your husband and your children. Meaning if your kids are older and they have places that they need to be, those were in there. Anywhere that my children need to be on time and it requires me to be there. It needs to be in the Google Calendar. 

Now, Blaine, if I don’t have to be there and Blaine has to be there, it’s in his Google calendar and we share it so I can see where he needs to be and he can see where I am. And I highly recommend you do that with your older kids as well.

Important Reminders

Okay, the next thing is important reminders. Now, I don’t use my Reminders app on my iPhone because I like to keep everything consolidated as much as possible. If you’re already in this mode of using your reminders app, go for it. It’s a great useful tool. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just choose to put important reminders, in my Google calendar and I set an alert on it. 

I actually set alerts on almost everything that I put in my Google calendar. I don’t put them on my fundamental needs because they’re just so intertwined with everything that we do now that I don’t need to. It’s just kind of how we live our life. So I will put all of my important reminders inside of the Google calendar. Sometimes Blaine, if he’s having a hard time remembering something, he’ll do the same thing on his end that he needs to get done that day.

What Makes Sense To You

So utilize that in a way that makes sense to you. And then anywhere and everywhere that you’re supposed to be, this kind of falls in line with your commitments or your appointments. But just if there’s anything extra that isn’t a work meeting, but say you’re supposed to do something for a friend, put it in your Google calendar. 

If I tell someone, oh yeah, hey, I’ll do this thing for you Thursday. I put it in my Google calendar, I create it as an event even though there’s not an actual specific time stamp on it. So that’s like your commitments to somebody. 

Anytime you’re supposed to show up, whether it be an act that you have to do for someone or you actually have to show up and be present, whatever that looks like, put it in your Google calendar. This is when you’re able to get rid of those gaps. Those gaps where you start running around like a chicken with its head cut off have now just completely disappeared.

Clarity

This is where the clarity is going to come from. When you’re going to start focusing so much more. And where you’re going to understand how to have enough time for your husband, for your kids, for your business, for organizing, for cleaning, for all of it. 

“This is where the clarity is going to come from. When you’re going to start focusing so much more. And where you’re going to understand how to have enough time for your husband, for your kids, for your business, for organizing, for cleaning, for all of it.”

So if you truly want to start doing your very best work in every area of your life without feeling like you’re being pulled in every direction, like that crazy chicken, then this is what I want you to start doing. If you have any questions at all on how these two things work together on how I use this hybrid system, please drop your questions over inside the Facebook group.

If this post resonated with you, I would love to see you inside the Academy. My dm’s are always open if you have any questions about whether Systemize Your Life Academy is right for you.

and ask questions. Or if you are needing a little support when it comes to really deep diving into your and your husband’s strengths you can head on over to the Systemize Your Life Facebook Academy.