Saturday, January 8, 2011

I Love...Planning, Organising, Systems, Routines!



For many, many years I have loved systemising, routines, getting organised and been on a journey to finding the perfect daily organiser.

I have so many ideas and ways that I am still on the journey to implement and really see what works for me and what needs to be tweaked. I just read a post that Gala Darling wrote about routines and I thought I should finally post mine too!

There will probably be a series of posts about this, but I want to start somewhere. So I've decided to start on Routines because I've already created my Ideal Routine for 2011. The pics that accompany aren't the best as I took them with my iPhone, but I'll clarify and it should give you a good idea.

There are many different types of routines you can create, write down to having a Morning Routine (which I love - have a look at flylady.net for cleaning and great morning and evening routines!).

The overview I've created is trying to be realistic and not over planning a million 'ideal' actions that I will never get around to doing every day/week/month year and end up feeling like a failure. Here is a snap of my routine that encompasses day, week, fortnight, month, quarterly, 6 months and yearly actions. It is still a work in progress.

1. Before you create your routine, its good to be clear on what your goals are as there are repetitive actions that can be incorporated into your routine.

2.I started with thinking about the actions and tasks that would help me achieve what I wanted to do and how I wanted to feel. Not all of them will go into the routine, some of them will be guiding principles. I wrote down the two lists below that would help me develop my routine.

HABITS I WANT TO CREATE
Write more - Morning Pages/Journal and Blog
Complete tasks
Put things away
Capture moments with photos and thoughts in journal
Exercise
Breathing Freely
Get more artistically creative
Slow down and be present with the person/situation in front of me
Focus and stop 'busy work' distractions
Do what I say I will

THINGS I WILL DO DAILY
Get up early
Exercise
Write my Morning Pages/Journal
Look at my goals
Review and plan with my diary/organiser then take action
Take a photo daily
5 minutes of decluttering/clearing
365 day, 1 sentance journal
Zero Inbox
Clear work desk at the end of the day
Gratitude and Breathing

3. Then think about things you have to do because you're a human being (cleaning, food shopping, dentist etc)

4. Grab a scrap piece of paper and write the headings down of different timelines that work of you (daily, weekly, etc). Then start writing down the different activities under the different headings. You can make it all organised and pretty later. A lot of the activities from my two lists above can be put into tasks of the different time frames.

Here you can see my Daily Activities (pretty much the list I wrote above) and Fortnightly.

FORTNIGHTLY ACTIONS
Hair treatment
Date outing
Artist's Date
Cleaning Session
Creative time
Massage
Contact Dad

5. I also created an ideal work day breakdown that I put below the weekly schedule. I don't know why the pic won't go the right way up! But I've written:

IDEAL WORK DAY
6am-7.30 Exercise
7.30-8 Get Ready
8-9 Morning pages and breakfast
9-10 Emails and Zero Inbox
10-12 Project work and phone calls
12-12.30 Lunch
1-3 Project Work
3-4 Creative Work/Planning Work
4-4.30 Ad Hoc
4.30-5 Plan Next Day
5-5.30 Emails and Clear Desk


6. I put the things that i want to do weekly into a Monday - Sunday schedule with a general idea of when they can be done - refer to the 1st pic to get an idea of the scheduling.

WEEKLY ACTIVITIES
Management meeting
KPI's
GTD Planning
Blog Roll and Reading
Shopping
Plan next week
Week in Review
Write blog
Date Night
Errands and Appointments
Cleaning
Plan Meals
Shopping
Family Dinner Night
Face Mask

MONTHLY
Finance summary
Monthly Dreams/review
Friends catc up
Mani/Pedi
Pamper session
Newsletter
...

7. Then you make sure you diarise the different activities on a regular basis and refer to the routine regularly during the day to keep on track.

8. You can always revise and tweak on a regular basis to make sure your routine is working for you and you're not setting yourself up for failure with the tempting task of overscheduling!

9. The most important thing for us 'Planners' is to TAKE ACTION. Do it!

Make it as your wish SSSs!
Arienne xo

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...