This post is Day 16 of the 31 Days to Reset Your Life Challenge for 2011. Learn more and sign up for the program here.
Yesterday, you conducted an audit of your time. You were able to look at how you spend each hour of your day and see some patterns that could be modified or changed. Today, you’re going to experiment with the data you collected and redesign your day to make it more productive.
Estimated Time to Complete: Varies
Today’s assignment is to outline a strategy to redesign your day to make more time for the things truly matter to you. You can present your redesign plan in a simple paragraph or a bullet point format. Your plan to redesign your day might include the following (these are just ideas to jog your brain):
- Wake up earlier (or later)
- Negotiate different working hours at your job
- Eat a healthy breakfast in the morning
- Schedule 30 minutes for exercise or just a walk around the neighborhood
- Pack a lunch instead of spending time and money on eating out every day
- Use your lunch break to take care of personal appointments, work on your business or blog, read a book or call to check on a loved one
- Cut out activities that “kill time” i.e. mindlessly checking text messages, unproductive phone calls
- Stop surfing the internet for long periods of time without a real purpose
- Go to bed earlier (or later)
- Schedule time for daily meditation or prayer
Take Action and Reflect: Please share your redesign plan with us in the comments! What did you notice about yourself as you were coming up with it? If you blogged about today’s assignment, please post the link in the comments so we can read it.
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- Wake up earlier
- Find time for daily meditation/gratitude
- Eat a healthy breakfast
- Spend less time mindlessly searching the web ( FB etc.)
- Make ‘Me’ time everyday (E.g, reading, journal writing, writing poetry, Traveling Womanist blog posts)
- Read environmental news network everyday
- Read Buddhist literature
- Get fresh air that doesn’t involve running to and from work or an appointment.
- Study Italian
- Eat a healthy breakfast
- Get at least 8 hours of sleep
My redesigned day:
*Get a third job (freelance or part-time). I have about 4 hours a day I’m just wasting.
*Go to sleep and wake earlier, and generally push everything back. I waste the most time when there’s dead space in my schedule, so I need to schedule things closer together.
*Have a to-do list and a plan for my time on the computer. A list of goals to achieve will help drive me forward.
*Move faster. Set a timer and stick to my deadlines for writing, exercising, searching for jobs, and even completing Reset exercises.
*Spend less time during the week talking on the phone. It keeps me up late. Instead, cut phone time in half (maintaining and building friendships is a high priority for me, so I won’t cut it altogether) and indulge in longer gabfests (or just go out!) on the weekends.
*Move back to the city. Drive times are killing my schedule. Time to cut them in half again.
Please read my post about my day redesigned.
Read my latest blog post…31 Day Reset – Day 16 – My Day Redesigned
My Redesigned Day:
* Wake up earlier
* Eat a healthier breakfast and pack a daily lunck and snacks
* Write out daily to-do list to map out daily schedule
* Watch less television
* Schedule daily prayer and mediation times
* Schedule exercise classes in schedule
* Decrease unproductive activites and procasination
* Go to sleep earlier
Just a start up of me redesigning my days, I’m buying a planner to keep better track on my time usage.
The main thing I should focus on going into this new year is negotiating a cut back in hours at the full time job I DO NOT WANT. So that I can spend more time to devote to my side hustle (hopefully turned full time hustle). I could then get much more rest since my full time work schedule can very hectic- I will be setting boundaries with them.
Wow!! Thats an awesome thing to do, I love that fact that you have found a solution for your time!! Congrats!
On Addition to staying focused on what I do a regular basis such as Job/Graduate programs searches/Applications,
Below are few things I could add to my day to become more productive :
- Wake up when my alarm rings…Stop “Snoozing”
- Eat a healthy breakfast in the morning…I just do not eat breakfast anymore. Sad I know!
- Schedule some Exercise Time…Unemployment has gotten me more and more lazy these days
- Read more often – Personal development books or article
- Respect my praying schedule – Sometimes the temptation of staying in bed is taking over…
I will begin to wake up earlier and read my bible and meditate, cut my twitter time, do research on the internet, find my science magazine, read more uplifting things, spend time walking around the neighborhood and enjoying the nice air.
I will prep all of my lunch food items for the following day in the evening after I come home from work. Instead of prepping half at night and half the next morning. This will allow me more TV time so I wont feel the need to watch TV after I’ve had my evening shower. This will allow me to go straight to my room after I shower and journal, meditate and sleep.
I will also cut out watching the news during my dressing and grooming time in the morning. I don’t really need an hour to dress and groom myself, it takes that long because I get distracted by the TV.
I will pack leftovers to take take to work with me so I can have dinner at work when I know I am staying there past 6pm. This will cut back money spent on food.
All of these activities will benefit me in two areas that are improtant- More sleep and more money in my pocket
My Day Now: Time Planner and using Blackberry time app reminder to get me on schedule
• Wake up 60 mins earlier
• Listen to my favorite preachers preach
• Pray and mediate
• Look at my visual board & video
• Spend time to visualize my ideal life
• Listen to my life soundtrack
• Only check email from Important senders
• Write my I DID list and write my today To DO list
• Eat a full healthy breakfast or smoothie
• Take a walk or dance for exercise
• Spend a full focus 60 mins on my hustle
• Spend time searching for support groups & networks
• Read uplifting articles and business weekly topic This week topic: (Branding Yourself)
• Do research on the internet
• Spend time building and strengthen the team
• Eat a healthy lunch or snack
• Meditate and visualize my ideal life
• Pay It Forward: Make a difference in at LEAST 1 person’s life
• Work on my spoken word piece
• Clean and organize house
• Do some enjoyable activity/hobby just to live in the moment
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I definitely need to cut back on my Twittering/Tumblring time. I’ve decided to start using a timer. 30 min. intervals only, so I’m spending so much time idling away. Also, I making time to go for walks for at least 30 minutes a day. I still need to work on getting to bed at a decent hour though. I got a job (yay!) that will be starting next week so I need to get my sleep schedule back on track.
Some of these things I’m already doing:
Wake up earlier (or later)
Eat a healthy breakfast in the morning
Schedule 30 minutes for exercise or just a walk around the neighborhood
Pack a lunch instead of spending time and money on eating out every day
I need to stop doing this:
Cut out activities that “kill time” i.e. mindlessly checking text messages, unproductive phone calls
Stop surfing the internet for long periods of time without a real purpose—> I tend to do this throughout my work day. I can schedule times throughout the day to tweet, text, FB so that I’m not tempted to do it at random times.
I can do more of these:
Negotiate different working hours at your job —> I can get to work 30 minutes earlier to either get work-related tasks completed earlier or work on my side hustle before everyone else gets there.
Use your lunch break to take care of personal appointments, work on your business or blog, read a book or call to check on a loved one —> I tend to do this, but I can devote this tome solely for eating lunch and doing these tasks as opposed to doing them throughout my work day (which leads to procrastination)
Go to bed earlier (or later)—> I typically go to bed around 11 I can shoot for 30 minutes earlier OR go to bed around 9 one day a week just to see what it feels like
Schedule time for daily meditation or prayer —> I can do this for 10 min in the morning, and 10 min before bed
Read my latest blog post…In Case You Missed It: The Week of August 15th, 2011
I did the time audit and found I spend an enormous amount of time looking for things. Im constantly expending energy looking for things Ive lost in order to start some project.Im exhausted and unfocused by the time I find what I need. I find this is a problem at home and at work. Organization is definitely something I need to get a grip on. I could cut down on tv watching. It is the mindless way I destress in the evening. I lack focus in the evening and need to do things that dont require any mind energy.
The days I work are not good days to do anything else. I work 7am to 7pm. Im done after that. But, I only do 3 of these a week. So I need to put the focus on what I do on non work days.
I meant to run this morning, but I woke up at 5am and then went back to sleep.
Im up now at 8am writing this instead of doing what I know I should do and go get a run in.
In looking at what I say my goals are, I can see that I need to plan my day in a way that allows for time to pursue the things I say I want. Im not over run with chores, so I believe I do have time to do all things I want to do. Procrastination is the enemy.
It’s funny, I did yesterday and today’s exercise towards the end of last week. Going through the things that I’m wanting and trying to figure out how to put an action behind them led me to the idea that I need a lot more organization and planning in my life, so I did exactly this, I already knew how i was wasting my time, so i wrote down a list of everything i needed and wanted to do for any reason, then i ordered it by importance and time it would take and have made a schedule of sorts for this week, I actually started yesterday and it turned out really good, I got quite a few things done that i had been putting off and when I finally just sucked it up and did it, it wasn’t as bad as i had made it seem and once it’s done its done.
But some of the things i needed to do:
-Stop wasting time online [i cut it to 2hrs a day max]
-set times for sleep/wake up
-breakfast EVERY morning
-30mins of morning exercise
-write in journal, pray, 15min of quiet time everyday
-planning meals ahead of time so i can cook more.
There are a few other but those are the basics,my schedule is still under construction while i figure out how to work them all in. Hopefully by the end of this week i’ll have a more realistic idea of time allotment.
My response to today’s exercise is posted on my blog.
http://liftingu2dream.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/day-16-reset-redesign-your-day/