Week 1: Stop the Multitasking Monster
As workers, parents, friends, housekeepers, etc we are frenetically multitasking to manage everything – not realizing that multitasking actually makes us slower, more prone to error and getting less done, while making us way busier than necessary. In this week’s session, we’ll stop the multitasking monster and replace it with some easy habits that will immediately make you feel more in control.
Week 2: Minimize the Time Vampires
There are so many ways to let time drift, to waste it, to just let it go by. This week is devoted to becoming more aware of how and where your time goes, and how to avoid the various time vampires, both technological and human.
Week 3: You Have More Help Than You Know
All to often, we get everything done ourselves, or find it simpler and faster to do things ourselves rather than give them to others. This week, we’ll focus on how and what you can delegate – I guarantee you there is more you can delegate than you are already doing, and who to delegate to. You most likely have a lot more help available than you realize, including low-cost or no-cost help.
Week 4: Start Doing the Right Things
How does your to-do list and your schedule fare when compared to your priorities? Probably not so well, if you are like most people. So this week we’ll focus on eliminating from your schedule and to-do list all those things that are taking time away from your priorities and values.
Week 5: Schedule Yourself for Productivity
What you do is important for a peaceful and balanced life, but when you do it is just as important, so this week we’ll create an ideal weekly schedule for you, one that saves you time, is aligned with your priorities, and makes you super-productive – including when “productive” means running your errands and driving your children around efficiently.
Until now, we have focused on your day-to-day tasks, and how to get them done quickly, effectively, and choose the ones you want to get done and the ones you want to let go of. This is a crucial step to achieve a peaceful life and work-life balance, but it is only the first step. If you stop here, you will have a more efficient life, but not necessarily a happier, more peaceful one. We need to inject some other elements to make it happen, namely goals management, and resources management. The first to ensure that your life goes in the direction you want it to (a critical factor for that feeling of peace, accomplishment and balance), the second so that you don’t run yourself ragged doing all this.Week 6: Get Those Big Projects Done No Matter What
In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it is easy to forget the big projects, or to think that you don’t have the time for them. That’s how it takes two years to paint a piece of furniture, or to get the driveway repaved, or that five years elapse before you realize that you never applied for this certification program you have been meaning to take. This week gives you the answers as to why this is happening, and how to ensure that your long-term projects, which often are the ones that give you the life you want, happen. As a matter of fact, if you apply everything we’ll cover in this module, your projects will seem to happen all by themselves.
Week 7: Create Time for Yourself
It is impossible to create a balanced life without Me Time. Me Time is where you get to recharge your batteries, rest, relax so you can be 100% the rest of the time; yet, especially if you are a caregiver, this is the last thing you think about, even less put on your schedule. So this week we’ll inject Me Time into even the busiest of schedules.
Week 8: What to do With Your New-Found Me Time
Now that you have created some Me Time, what will you do with it? You can always watch TV, but is it really the best way to use your Me Time? We’ll figure out what is your Me Time recipe together this week.
Week 9: What to Do With Your New-Found Me Time, part 2
And since this is such an important, often-overlooked, and charged subject, we’ll devote another week to it. And talk about rest in general as well, while we’re at it.
Week 10: Get Rid of Any Remaining Stress
By now, your overall stress level has gone down quite drastically. However, there will always be moments when it spikes back up, such as by your child’s third tantrum of the day, or when your boss asks you today to do something that was due yesterday. You’ll discover some amazingly effective, yet very simple, techniques to cut off your stress before it has the time to affect you, and you’ll get to choose your personal favorites techniques to adopt.
Week 11: Have Plans B at the Ready
One often overlooked element of a peaceful life is Plans B. There will always be emergencies: a child gets sick; there is a fire in your building (I read recently that one in three people will be affected by a fire in their lifetime); etc. You don’t know when they will happen, but it is quite likely that they will happen at some point. So thinking about them this week, and designing alternative solutions, will save you a lot of stress, anxiety, time and possibly money down the road.
Week 12: Wrap-Up
On this last session of the program, it’s your time to ask any question that you haven’t asked yet, to share your remaining struggles (if any) so you can get a resolution before the end of the program, and to rejoice in the wonderful successes you have experienced throughout those three months.