GETTING IT DONE

When you learn how to manage your time with your prefrontal cortex, which means that you’re planning ahead of time what you want to do on purpose and not just reacting to whatever is going on around you, you’ll be able to plan something deliberately ahead of time, make decisions ahead of time for how you want to spend your life, and then follow through on it.

You have this part of your brain that’s very primitive, that wants to be reactive, that wants to be very spontaneous and go through life and not have to think at a higher level. You also have the prefrontal cortex, which is the only part of the human brain that can ever plan anything. 

You are going to set aside one hour for planning at the beginning of the week. I suggest either Sunday night or Monday morning. You’re going to think this is impossible, because you have so many other things going on. That is why it’s so important that you set aside the time to plan.  Because if you start your day off with email, your brain’s going to think it’s important, and then you’re off to the races with that, instead of starting your week intentionally, on purpose. This is your time to be deliberate with your life and create your schedule. Nothing is more important than you using your prefrontal cortex and saying no to the primitive brain. 

First step in your planning is a ‘to do’ dump, where you write everything you have to do, and want to do on paper. Our brain is actually not designed to store information. You need to get everything out of your brain, because if it’s in there, it’s a jumbled mess, and the brain thinks it’s all important, and you’re going to want to do it all. So, getting it all out on paper is going to be huge. 

The next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to schedule basic calendar hours. These are things like your free time, mealtime, meetings, all the things that are regular occurrences in your schedule. Then you’re going to set apart two hours for Focus Time. This is going to be the time when you’re going to be doing your best work, the most important work, the time where you need to be focused, and where you need to produce a result. After that, you’re going to schedule the remaining tasks for projects, for helping out with family, for doing things for your boss, anything like that. Afterwards, you’re going to do an overflow plan. Once you have gotten everything onto your calendar with specific amounts of time for each, then you are going to throw away your ‘to do’ dump.

Everything is out of your brain, onto the calendar, and then all you have to do is follow through. Here’s what’s great about this hour. I come into this hour all cluttered, everything going on in my brain, thinking that there’s so many things to do, and then I leave just feeling so relieved, and so stress free, because I know it’s going to GET DONE. 

Also schedule into your calendar time at the end of your day on Friday to review your past week and see, “Did we do what we said we were going to do, and what do we have to celebrate?” It’s the closing ritual to your week, so that you can enter your weekend feeling totally refreshed and done with the week.

During your Friday review, you’re going to write down the three things that you accomplished, to celebrate that you’ve completed them, to see what you’ve followed through on, see what maybe didn’t work, and write yourself some notes for your next Sunday/Monday planning session. Also write down any open projects that you still need to account for in your next Sunday/Monday planning session.

On Tuesday morning at 9:00 am when your calendar says it’s time to do the laundry or write the email, you’re not going to want to do itl. You thought you wanted to do it when you planned it, but then as soon as you get to it on your calendar, all of the resistance is going to come up.

We’re suddenly indecisive, or think we have a new decision to make, or we’ll have the urge to push it off to a better day and time, or to look at social media, or to text our best friend.

Don’t let your reactive primitive brain hijack the plans that the best you using your prefrontal cortex brain spent a lot of time creating. Follow through and honor your plans. Those plans will get you to the ambitious goals you honestly desire. 

Every time you follow through, you’re building trust with yourself that you can schedule and decide on anything and know that you’ll fulfill it in the future. Even the little things matter.

It’s amazing how different your life will be, not just in your productivity, but in actually creating the life you want to live on purpose. When you reclaim that power that you have to decide to do anything you want to do and to not do anything you don’t want to do, you’re going to be able to finally live the life that you want to rather than blaming anything external, especially time.