[Structure Supports Flow]
It has been a few months now since I started writing these Structure Supports Flow tips and I’ve received a ton of great feedback about how much you are getting out of them.
Thank you for reaching out to me, hearing about your big and small shifts and how you’ve put the tips into action in your daily life make me so happy! That’s EXACTLY what I wanted. Yay!
Please keep the emails coming, I love hearing from you all!
On to this week’s tip:
Over the summer, I began to pay attention to a structure that I’d been loosely using and finally incorporated it into my life.
You may have heard about “batching time,” where we group similar tasks or functions into blocks of time and do only that with singular focus. While I’ve been batching my time in short increments for years now, I had yet to batch entire days.
I had been noticing that certain days would be generally focused on a specific function in my business (clients, sales, networking/outreach, marketing, administration). But I was very loose with it, and frankly, wishy-washy.
In anticipation a busy early August this year, I decided to batch my time more rigorously, and set my own boundary about my time clearly to myself and others. This was at the beginning of July, and by late July, I noticed that I was feeling so much more calm and focused.
“Hmm…” I thought to myself, “what did I change recently to create this?” I quickly realized that the only thing new was that I was sticking to my plan to batch my time.
It made such a difference that I’ve been singing the praises of batching time to everyone who will listen ever since.
As an example, here is a general outline of my week:
- Monday: Admin & Organization / Connection Calls & Coaching for me
- Tuesday: Sales / Networking
- Wednesday: Private Client Calls
- Thursday: Sales / Uncork Your Confidence Clients / Networking
- Friday: Marketing & Writing / Sales / Admin
I realize that given the nature of your job or your daily duties, batching every day of the week may not be possible for you. However, take a look at Monday or Friday, which tend to be slightly less hectic for most of us, and see how you could schedule 1 or 2 specific functions or projects on that day.
If that still doesn’t seem doable, then start with one specific task and schedule it on your calendar for the same time every day. I’d encourage you to start with your email time and batch it into two time slots, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Answering individual emails throughout the day is a complete time drain, and it can take us upwards of 20 minutes to get back on task. This structure alone will help you flow with the projects that take concentration.
And, if you’re ready for the “ninja level,” go ahead and start to batch every day of the week. To do so, think about when you naturally want and like to do certain types of work and then write it down and put it on your calendar.
You could incorporate this in big and small ways, starting from where ever you are now.
Whatever stage you are at, be patient with yourself as you create this new habit. The world we live in is full of distractions that pull at our attention, so it may take a little time to get into the groove of it.