Get Inspired with Compass On-Demand

Welcome back to the Remodel Your Reality Challenge! Now that you’ve identified the priorities you’d like to invest in, it’s important to evaluate how you’re currently spending your time.

One Thing To Think About
The potential to experience joy, satisfaction, and happiness lives in your calendar. If your calendar does not reflect the priorities you’ve defined for yourself, it will be necessary for you to make some changes in order to create room in your schedule. In doing so, you will begin to experience more of what matters to you when you schedule less of what doesn’t.

One Question To Answer
Open your calendar and look at the commitments you’ve made for the next two weeks. How many of your commitments support the priorities you just established? How many do not?

If you’re spending more than half of your time catering to the demands of others, doing things because you think you should do them, or making commitments because you aren’t comfortable declining, it’s quite likely you’re unbalanced, overwhelmed, resentful, and unfulfilled at the end of most days.

It’s time to change that! You can support the people in your life, fulfill your responsibilities, make time for things that are important to you, and create a sense of balance in your life.

One Challenge To Take

1. Track your activities for one week. Compared your personal and professional priorities against your activities. How many of your priorities have made it onto your schedule? How many items on your schedule have nothing to do with your priorities? How many activities actually serve to defeat or oppose your priorities?
2. Make a list of all of your current commitments and evaluate how they either support or detract from your ability to live within your priority framework. (We’ll talk more about evaluating opportunities in another post.)
3. Make a commitment to get free of commitments and activities that do not support your priorities. Decide what activities and commitments you’re going to remove, then create a plan to move them out of your calendar. Create a script for talking to other people around these issues, if it helps. Chose the first item to go and TAKE ACTION!

Until next time, take care!
Kim

What would be possible for you if every action you took, every habit you had and every goal you set were dictated by your own personal priorities and values? (more…)

Welcome back to the Remodel Your Reality Challenge! You’ve done a great job so far of identifying and addressing the things that drain your physical energy, and have begun to look at how you can increase your mental energy. Just like how decluttering your house reenergizes you physically, reclaiming your mental energy involves clearing out mental clutter that drains you, distracts you and holds you back with unfinished business. We’ve already tackled your to-do list in previous posts, so today we’re going look at all those projects you have sitting around.

One Thing To Think About
A project is something you’d like to create or accomplish that requires multiple steps. For example, drafting a financial plan or redecorating a room. Most of us keep an inventory of uncompleted plans in our minds. But having all that unfinished business hanging over your head can suck the energy right out of you. It can also leave you feeling anxious and depressed. This creates a vicious circle, since the energy drain this creates leaves you too tired and too stressed out to work on any of your projects.

The simple act of getting your projects out of your head, sorting through those you are committed to versus those that no longer make sense for you, and prioritizing what remains can be incredibly liberating. Couple that with committed, consistent action and your energy level will begin to soar.

One Question To Answer
How many projects do you have up in the air?

Work
Do you have any pending projects that you keep putting off or that you never manage to get around to? Keep a particular eye out for projects that don’t align with your normal responsibilities, your work priorities or your scope of expertise.

Home
How many unfinished or unstarted home improvement projects, organizational tasks, landscaping or gardening plans and so on are waiting for your attention? This includes things like major or specific cleaning projects, attic sorting expeditions and making plans for an automobile upgrade.

Personal
What sort of personal projects do you have hanging around in limbo?  What about that half-finished Spanish language course, or those craft projects you never get around to completing? This also includes personal plans such as setting up an exercise routine or a self-care regimen.

Family
Are there any unfinished family plans or projects hanging around making you feel guilty? Maybe you still have a camera full of photos from your last vacation waiting to be downloaded and printed, or perhaps that family trip you keep putting off planning.

Community/Friends
Do you keep “forgetting” to make plans for a girls’ night out, no matter how many emails the group sends you? Or maybe you’re supposed to be working on a project for your favorite charity, but just haven’t gotten around to it.

One Challenge To Take
Take inventory of the unfinished projects in your mind. Get them on paper and evaluate them to determine if they’re still meaningful to you. If they’re not, give yourself permission to put them to rest. You have a right to change your mind! If they are, get clear about what you want the outcome of each project to be—for example, a completed financial plan—and decide why this end result is important to you. Meaning creates momentum, so the process of connecting with why you’d like to accomplish the goal at hand will energize your actions.

Once you’ve identified those projects that you’re committed to, prioritize them. Decide which you’ll do first, which second, and so on. Then, begin working through the steps you’ll need to take to act on your first priority. Decide to commit a specific amount of time to the completion of your enterprise each week and follow through on that commitment. Work on one project at a time, giving yourself permission to move slowly and steadily.

Until Next Week,

Kim

Welcome to Week Eleven of The 52 Week Remodel Your Reality Challenge!  Last week we started the process of taming your to-do list.  I asked you to clear your mind of the many tasks and projects you had stored in your mental inventory by moving through a brain dump, and writing down every item floating around in your mind.  I also challenged you to create some structure around these items, by grouping similar tasks.  Today we’re going to put that structure into your calendar.

One Thing To Think About

Last week we organized items on your to-do lists into two groups; repetitive activities and one-time activities.  We’re going to take three steps to incorporate both activity groupings into your life. We’ll do that by integrating them into your calendar.  First, a few words of advice:

Repetitive Activities: An effective way to manage repetitive activities is to establish a routine around their completion. For example, if you know you need to pay bills weekly, the most effective way for you to make this happen is to pick a day of the week (even a time of the day) you will do so.  Schedule that appointment into your calendar, and show up to complete this task every week.  While you may need to make exceptions occasionally, this is by far the most effective tactic I’ve used in helping my clients work repetitive tasks into their calendars with ease.

Another helpful approach to managing your repetitive tasks is to take advantage of outside resources.  For example, could you make a standard grocery list, and use an internet grocery service to deliver food items to your house each week?  Is it possible for you to have your dry cleaner deliver to your home, instead of having to make the trip to their store each week? Investing a small amount of time to set up a system that supports your repetitive errands can simplify your process.

One-Time Activities: When addressing occasional errands, it’s most productive to group them together and attempt to complete them within close proximity to one another. While this is not always possible, your willingness to consider this new approach can support you in managing your inventory of tasks.

One Challenge To Take
Okay, it’s the moment of truth.  No more overwhelm.  No more excuses.  It’s time to take control of your to-do list.  You’ll do that by taking control of your calendar.

Step One: Get your calendar out.

Step Two: Pull out your list of repetitive tasks.  Pick one item, and make a standing appointment with yourself, where you will show up to address that task each week.  (I understand you will have multiple items on your list.  It’s okay to get your structure started with just one of these items.  If you feel incredibly ambitious, you can develop a structure for all of them.  Yet, even committing to one will put you well on your way to success).

Step Three: Consider your list of repetitive tasks.  Does any item lend itself to delivery?  Can you set up an internet grocery delivery or delivery of your dry cleaning?  If so, make an appointment with yourself for the upcoming week to complete that process.

Step Four: Pull out your list of one-time errands.  Put them in order of priority.  What has to be done first, second, third?  Now, pick two to three items to complete this week, and schedule an appointment in your calendar to address them.  Next week, come back to your list, and select the next few items to tackle.

I know this sounds simple, and it really is.  Taking control of your to-do list can be successfully accomplished when you combine structure with routine.  Now you just need to show up to work your routine!

Until Next Week…

Kim

Last week I challenged you to identify and eradicate at least one time waster in your life. I hope you were able to define and delete at least one thing in your day-to-day reality that was taking your time without contributing to your dreams. This week, I want to challenge you to reclaim some of your new found time. (more…)

The most frequent complaint I hear from men and women around the world is “I don’t have enough time to _________.” No matter what you want in your life; whether it’s a successful business, financial independence, a loving relationship, a fit body, or any combination of desires, you must make time in your day-to-day reality if you want to bring your dreams to life.

The truth is; you’re never going to find time to do the things that matter to you. (I assure you, it’s not hiding). You must make it. That means you must sit down with your calendar, and schedule regular appointments with yourself to focus on your dreams and goals. (more…)

Welcome to your Compass Map (Monthly Action Plan™)! This month we are going on a journey to Take Back Your Time and reclaim your life! (more…)