TSA Weekly: Schedule Your Priorities

Read on for your Thought, Streamline, and Action for the week! (⬅️yep, I’m changing up what these letters mean, but the content will stay the same!)

Thought

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

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I don’t know if you know this, but in addition to running my business and cohosting a podcast, I also work full-time. Fortunately, I’m blessed to be able to do that work from my home office, but it still eats up 40+ hours of my week.

So, when Joelene and I decided to change the format of the podcast after the first season, I was worried.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the new direction we were taking, and I had my own “stack” of books that I’d read someday, but did I really have time for that?

I knew that giving myself deadlines for reading would help because one of my motivation styles is deadlines and showing up for others, but would I really be able to do this?

I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s always easy to keep up…it’s definitely not, but what I’ve learned is that if I follow the wisdom of Stephen Covey, it’s much more doable!

Turns out that as soon as I made those books a priority, I was able to find time to read them.

Streamline

Ok, so how do you streamline prioritizing something new? This is where a habit-building strategy will literally make or break your success. I prefer to use, you guessed it, Trello to plan and even automate my strategy, but even if you don’t want to use Trello (I’ll only judge you a little 😜), you still need a way to track your new habit and get reminders as you begin adding it into your life. A notebook works just fine for tracking, but some sort of automated reminder (alarms on your phone, Google or iCal alerts, etc.) will literally be your best friend as you get started.

Action

So, let me leave you with a little assignment.

Is there something that you tell yourself you should be doing but can’t seem to make the time?

Start by asking yourself, “Is this thing is actually a priority for me?”

Don’t judge yourself if the answer is no; just let go of the guilt you’ve been carrying around for not doing it. Figure out what your priorities actually are by looking at your schedule and what you always make time for. If those things are serving you and your goals, then great!

If the answer is yes, then stop letting your schedule tell you that you can’t do it. Make it non-negotiable and give it that importance on your to-do list.

If you want some extra accountability with this, reply and let me know what you are going to prioritize starting now.

Let it be Easy,