I wanted to start out today’s podcast by sharing a couple amazing testimonials from our STEPpers. š This first one is from Dianna:
And this next one is from Laura!
And now onto the podcast!
If you currently feel like you have SO much to do during the day that you never have time for āprojects,ā todayās podcast is for you!
I recently received a message from one of our viewers who watched our video about the 4 criteria (where to start on our to-do lists) and said this:
“Just after the 8 minute mark, you used a phrase I havenāt heard before. You said that you have ‘project time each day.’ This is where I struggleā¦. Could you explain that more? I canāt figure out how to fit in projects. Youāve mentioned having 8 projects going in one month and I canāt even figure out how to use time to work on one single project. I know there is a solution. I just canāt figure it out. Do you schedule a certain amount of time every day? Work on one project each day? Multiple projects each day for 10 minutes? Iām so interested in learning more about your daily project time. Thanks for all you share. Your videos are so encouraging and uplifting.”
I LOVED this question, and Iām excited to dive in todayābecause if youāre in the same boat, at home or at work or out in the community, I want you to know that there is HOPE!
Having the ability to identify and complete projects is one of the best ways to improve your life. (Do you want to move? Get a new job? Prepare for a family? Strengthen your family? Create systems so that you have more free time? Travel? Serve? Get healthier?) These all can be done through effective projects.
(1) The number of Current Projects you have is related to how many routines you have and what is on your calendar.
Picture a pie chart. The big circle represents your available time/energy to work on things. Ā½ might be routines (personal and family care), ā of what is left is calendar/appointments, the final ā of the Ā½ is project time. So I only choose the number of projects that will fit in that time. And I err on the low side. (You also might want to consider the amount of help, health and energy, skills, etc. that you have in the areas that youāre wanting to move forward.)
(2) These projects need to be organized and put on a Current Projects List so you can actually know what youāre focusing on that month.
Sometimes I might fold in extra things that could technically be called āProjects,ā like making some new Indian food recipes or hanging up our family photos on the wall. Those are multiple steps, but they were fun and easy to manage with my regular calendar/next actions list, so I didnāt write them down. What you DONāT want is to have a bunch of big āsecretā projects that weigh on your mind, but donāt get acknowledged.
Here’s an example of one of my past Current Projects Lists:
(3) At the beginning of the week, I look at what I want to accomplish that month, and I ask myself what makes sense for THIS week.
If I am traveling, I can do a digital course and planning, but I wonāt be doing some of the deeper computer work or home projects that Iād planned for the month.
(4) For ANY project, you need to break it down into clear Next Actions. 10-minute microbursts are key.
Holiday plans, for example, can sound really nebulous. But I figured out super specific tasks to move me forward:
- Talking with Eric about our holiday budget
- Talking with our kids about their hopes and dreams for the holidays
- Researching local events for 10 minutes online
- Researching new traditions, etc.
(5) DEEP WORK: I keep a few hours of āproject timeā open each day.
For me, 11am-2pm is ideal for that. I do morning scripture study, prayer, and journaling, get Spencer off to school, exercise with Eric, walk Sunny, do a morning tidy, take a shower, etc.
Then my deep work as an entrepreneur is 11-2, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and sometimes, depending on what I’m working on, I might get up earlier and get quite a bit of work done in the morningāor if we have a lot of meetings/events during the day, I work in the evenings for a few hours.
I didn’t always have this kind of time available during my days. We are about to be empty nesters and I have a lot more flexibility each day than I did when we had 4 young children at home. When all of our children were little, I would do most of this deep work during the early morning or evening hours.
(6) The best skill is knowing how to ābookmarkā a project and get back to it.
For example, we have been updating our sales page and emails and it felt pretty overwhelming to me because there are a lot of moving parts to this project.
So I outline the related tasks in order in Asana, and I make sure they are super simple, and then I work on them in order. Last week, for example, I made a Google Sheet with edits I need to make on our sales page and emailsāmultiple locations.
Now THIS week, Iām going to actually start making the edits. But I donāt want the project to feel hard or to forget where I wrote out all the details. So I include the link to the Google Sheet in the description of my project. That way, when itās time to do the work, I just sit down and click, and I can pick up where I left off.
I hope that this is helpful to you! I love your questions, and a lot of our podcasts and videos can help you, if youāre just getting started! Please comment below and let me know what you thought of this podcast and if you have any follow-up questions!
And now I want to end this podcast with a couple more amazing testimonials! This first one is from Jodi:
And this final testimonial comes from Lynette. She shared some pictures of a recent, completed project and they are fantastic!
Related Links!
Video: Fix the Overwhelm with this 3-Minute Technique
LearnDoBecome YouTube Channel!
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Great podcast, April! Iāve been flailing a bit with projects after travelling overseas and having my routines upended. Also, Iāve been feeling like Iām running out of time to plan for Christmas. Your talk and the examples you gave have inspired me to refocus on my projects and to plan them out to next 10-minute actions. Thanks!
This made my night to read this, Jode! Any time I come back from traveling, I feel like I need a week to get back into the groove. Hopefully you can rest, replenish, and then simplify as much as possible so you can have the “outcomes” without the “overwhelm.” Sounds like you are off to a GREAT start! Sending lots of love!
Thanks, April. Iām also currently re-reading Eckart Tolleās book, and have been thinking about how to put the learnings into practice. I love your idea of taking one key concept and making an actual āprojectā out of it, the same way youād approach any regular project. Brilliant!
Yay! I’m excited for you! It’s fun to look back and see all the books, people, courses, etc. that influenced you for good. Keep up the great work!
April, thanks so much for this episode. Itās funny, I was actually thinking about this very topic the other day. I feel like my day is so often overrun with routine and urgent tasks that I never have time to work on projects. This episode was incredibly helpful. I do have two follow up questions. As someone who has ADD, I struggle to stick to my plans. Sometimes, I think itās partially because I am also very dependent on external pressures to keep me on task. I have gone back-and-forth between using whiteboard, digital project planning and paper planning. I feel like if I donāt see something in front of my face I completely forget to do it. However, I feel like I spend the majority of my planning time. Copying my plan over in multiple places so that I can see it. Any recommendation for those of us know how to create a beautiful plan, but just never seem to be able to follow through on it?
Hey Daphne! I don’t know if you’ll like my answer to this, but the only thing I’ve found to help me follow through with a plan is to make it SUPER SIMPLE. Like, “embarrassingly simple.” We often create big plans with all kinds of tasks, projects, etc., but we usually don’t “count” all the time we’re spending responding to people’s needs/requests, doing work that comes at us unexpectedly, etc. And then because we run out of energy, we drop the things that aren’t “necessary,” but then we feel bad because we didn’t do our plans.
Not sure if that sounds familiar or not, but if you understand what I’m talking about, I recommend you try making a plan that has like 1-2 things on it and just get in the habit of completely following through with your plan. It’s kind of a game. Like, “How many things can I have on my list and still get 100% of them done?” In some seasons, it may be 1-2 things. In other seasons, it may be 7-8. But no matter what the number is, it forces us to pick the MOST important things. Our minds will tell us, “No! You’re not doing enough! You’re a big loser.” But that is not true. We’re learning how to work with our energy, our life situation, etc.
So maybe try making a SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE plan for a few days and let me know how it went? My hope is it will help you build momentum. š Good luck!
YES! That does resonate with me! I’ll keep you posted. I first came across LDB 4 years ago and have been benefitting from your podcasts. I am more and more convinced that your approach can help me. I’m saving up to do your STEP plan!
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Hi April,
I can’t remember if it was this episode or not, but I recently had a lightbulb go off when you talked about doing a quick task to take the pressure off other projects (in your next in line, etc). This was game changing for me, I now feel like I can just have the one current project that I have time for. My question is, how best to track those things that aren’t current projects? Do you have a subsection of next in line, do you review them often?
For context:
My current focus is finishing decluttering (I am very close, it’s amazing now that my home is clear it takes just a few minutes to keep it tidy because everything usually has a hinge now! STEP has helped get me there, thank you!)
On my next in line …
I need to start planning my daughter’s birthday /party, I need to start my Christmas planning (I have a very long checklist for this which I’m behind on – it’s really a long list of annual routines but it takes up my project time), we need to renovate and retrofit our home due to mould issues, I have committed to setting up a new group relating to my volunteering leadership role and restructuring the organisation over the next 2 months in order to eventually free up more of my time. These are all time sensitive as you can see. How would you juggle them while only having one current project at a time? For context I have 3 kids who do ALL the clubs, and I also work part time as well as volunteering and playing in a band. My life is full!
Hi Josie! This is such a great question. I feel like it needs its own podcast. š I’ll try to sum up my thoughts here, though. First of all, I’m super proud of you! Sounds like your decluttering was a huge success, and I’m excited for you to see how fun and easy it is to maintain it with your routines. Way to go! For the other projects, you can have more than one at a time. I recommend between 1 and 8 TOTAL, for personal, family, and volunteer/professional work, depending on your bandwidth. I try not to put more than 3 in one category, as that makes me feel spread too thin. Looking at your list, it sounds like the restructuring for your volunteer role could wait until after Christmas, so I would put that on a Next in Line list with a calendar to look at it the week after Christmas and knock it out as quickly as possible. If your daughter’s birthday is this month, then you’d probably want Christmas and the birthday party to be in your family section. For renovating your home/the mold issues, you’d obviously need to decide how urgent that is. If it has to be done now for health reasons, I would simplify Christmas and the birthday party as much as possible so you can focus on your home, but still do what’s necessary to celebrate appropriately. If the mold issues can wait, I would put it on Next in Line and add it in after Christmas, as well. Given the fact that you have a very active family, you’re working part time, and you’re involved in extra activities yourself, I can see that you have a lot of energy and talents, and that’s exciting that you are putting them to good use! I just want to make sure you don’t overdo it and end up sick/stressed out because you’re trying to squeeze in too much. I think the battle is won in our own minds. When I can carefully look at my projects and decide which ones matter most, which ones can be simplified, which ones can wait, etc., and when I put a SUPER REASONABLE amount on my Current Projects List, my body physically relaxes. Most things can be simplified/renegotiated, as long as we are clear on what is our highest priority. This month, for example, I decided to slow down on the YouTube course I’ve been taking. It requires so much energy to script, film, watch training videos, analyze, make decisions, etc., and there are a couple of other projects that are more important for LearnDoBecome, so I’m going to focus on those. Initially, I told myself, “I can push it and do more,” but that just made me stressed. And my family has some bigger needs right now, too, so I want to reserve energy for them. I’ve found that as long as I am deliberate about my decisions, other people respect them. It’s just taken some practice for me to be okay simplifying/delaying things I want “right now.” I hope that helps! I’d love to hear more about your thought process if you’d like to share!
Thank you so much for this podcast. I felt so validated with your experiences that some were similar especially the train of thought when I’ve had so much to do with my kids when they were small, not enough time. Kids are older now but I’ve been stuck. Thank you for the idea that it’s okay to just do one project and find pockets of time to do the smallest attainable next action so it’s do-able. I finally learned that every project can actually be done in 10 minute increments and not feel guilty for not getting hours dedicated to a project. I’m so grateful for you. April. My biggest and stressful project is decluttering my home and my storages. I’m going to start with the drawer cleaning concept and expand, so help me God. And I say that because I’ve been a procrastinator or stuck for a very very long time.
I’m so proud of you and excited to hear about your accomplishments! The fact that you’ve learned that 10 minutes is enough for a microburst–and that they add up–is huge! You can totally do this! Sending lots of love!