Why I Love This Time of Year
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact we’re halfway into the year.
For most of my readers, summer is here. Around our house, I know it’s officially summer because I took my son Jake to camp this week instead of our usual drive to school.
Summer means more than just a change in the temperature and the direction of my morning drive with my son. For me, summer means a change in my work schedule.
This is the time of year when I see an increase in the hours I can work every day. I no longer have to stop working at 2:30pm to be in the car line for the 3pm after school pickup. I don’t need to rush back home and worry if I can squeeze in an extra hour {sometimes two if I’m lucky} while Jake does his homework and then watches some TV.
Summer means summer camp that closes at 5:30pm. Summer means “Mommy, can I go outside for a couple of hours since the sun’s still out?” and I can work easily work for another hour while I watch him outside my office window.
Summer is the time of year when I plan to work on my biggest project for my business. I take advantage of all the extra uninterrupted hours of work I can get every day.
The Halfway Point
To prepare for what I expect to be a very productive summer, I reviewed my big plans that I worked out for 2015. My summertime excitement was cut short when I looked over my business plans and realized – gulp! – I only accomplished about one third of the things on my master list.
What the huh? What happened?
Were my plans and dreams too big? Nope. I still believe that all those carefully planned great ideas are going to happen. These things are still going to get created, written, produced and posted.
I thought for sure I had gotten more things done this year.
Every month, I pulled together a master list of all the stuff I wanted to work on. It was packed full of hope – how many blog posts I’d write, how much content I’d create for my next online product, challenges and mini-coaching sessions I was going to develop.
There were details about what I was going to work on for my Peace, Love & Pinterest Facebook Group. And I’m going to do this thing, and that one and oh yeah, throw that idea in too.
And on top of that – there were client projects and coaching programs that I do every month.
Whew … did you get all that? Yeah, me either. And that’s why it didn’t get done.
So what really happened?
I overestimated how much I thought I could honestly get done.
I seriously had to laugh at myself. This is one of the big things I teach my coaching clients – don’t overload your to-do list with more than you can handle.
Something tells me that I’m not alone here. I suspect that most of us do this at one time or another. We get excited about what we’re working on in our business and we make these big plans.
It’s OK, we all do it. I’m the person who coaches this time management stuff and I still do it. It happens to all of us.
How do we get back on track?
The first thing you should do is take a step back and just breathe.
When I discovered that more than half of my big plans never got crossed off my list, I was stunned. I don’t just teach this time management stuff. I live it.
Most days, I feel like a shark. You know how they say that sharks need to keep moving, keep swimming to breathe or they die? I’m like a shark. I need to keep moving, creating, working or I feel like I’m going to die.
But at that moment, I put down my binders and stepped away from my laptop. I went outside on my porch and just sat in my rocking chair. I rocked and breathed in the warm air.
And I thought to myself, what can I do to evaluate what I can honestly get done every day? How can I determine which big ticket items should go on my summer productivity master list?
I came up with the Task Tracking worksheet. { Click here to download your FREE Task Tracking worksheet }
The Task Tracking worksheet can help you evaluate the stuff you do every week. The process let you see how long things really take so you know what you can honestly handle with your schedule.
To use the Task Tracking worksheet, follow these steps:
1. List the top things you do every week for your business. Think of this like your master to-do list.
2. If the items have several steps, use the next section to list out a breakdown of your action items.
3. Now spend the next few days tracking yourself doing these tasks. Write down the time it actually takes from the start of your item until you can honestly cross that off your list.
4. Take notes if you need to in the Notes section. I find it helps to note if I had to come back to finish something the next day or if I needed to another step before this one.
5. In the next section, write out your top action items you need to work on that week to help you grow your business. Include the time it takes to do each item and include a priority number next to each item.
If you need a little help to determine which items you should be working on to continue growing your business, read through the ideas I suggested in the What Will Your Create Today post.
6. Now schedule those items into your planner and block off the time it’ll take to really and honestly get those things done.
My Mid-Year Check-in
This year my mid-year check won’t just be all filling out my web site stats with my Social Media Quarterly worksheets. I’ll be working through the Task Tracking worksheet to figure out what I can really get done during my productive summer months.
I don’t want the last half of this year to end up like what happened in the first five months. My Task Tracking worksheet will help me make sure that doesn’t happen because, like I said before, I’m a shark.
And sharks need to keep moving to keep breathing. And no one likes to be around a dead shark.
PS What if you could find a way to grow your presence in your social sites? And what if it didn’t add hours to your already crazy day? What if it took just 30 minutes a few times a week?
Click here to download the UPDATED 30 Minute Social Sessions workbook!
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