Has the shine of the new year disappeared yet? Should you not still feel inspired to make big things happen, Dear Readers? So, why are you already frustrated by your lack of time management? When was the last time you felt that you had a good day and were decisively turning your dreams into reality? What’s on your docket today other than work and random lists written on several post-it notes? Are you willing to waste another year, doing nothing to achieve your dream while everyone on YouTube appears to be living their best lives? Keep reading to find out how to break down your day to live a more meaningful life rather than being consumed by work.
Welcome back to the premier hub for branding inspiration! In case this is your first time visiting, this blog is the brainchild of JMStrategy LLC (JMS), a boutique consulting firm that devises tailor-made plans of action to strengthen your professional brand. Now, let’s see how a strategic facelift of your daily routine will make 2020 your most productive year yet!
Dear Readers, this blog does not believe that having a full-time job prevents you from having a purposeful and well-balanced life. To successfully achieve everything that’s on your mind, you must be strategic with your time. While nothing is impossible, everything will require some level of sacrifice. It’s up to you, Dear Readers, to decide what you are willing to give up to be as accomplished as you would like.
Thus, assuming that two-thirds of your day is used up for sleeping and working, you are left with eight glorious hours to pursue your dreams. That is plenty of time to make things happen daily! Consequently, this blog proposes splitting your day into four chunks:
- Morning chunk that would run from the moment you wake up to the minute you arrive at work;
- Working chunk from the moment you clock in until you clock out;
- Soul-feeding chunk to encompass the after-work hours;
- Evening chunk that closes your day and helps you settle in for a good night’s sleep!
Now, you have to decide how you will utilize your chunks to reach your goal. Is binge-watching your show from the moment your workday ends until bedtime the best use of your time, Dear Readers? Maybe?!! Hey, no judgment here, the JMS team knows that sometimes life is so bruising that laying on the couch for hours on end is all one can muster. But, Dear Readers, if that’s what you do every day, every week, every month this year, you will never achieve the goals and resolutions you have set New Year’s Day.
Vagueness is the enemy of success.
Consequently, Dear Readers, this blog is here to help you find a renewed sense of focus and get you fired up to realize your dreams. Firstly, you will have to decide what is important to you. Secondly, you will have to find a systematic approach to integrate what’s important to you into your daily chunks. Thirdly, you will have to keep a detailed account of your actions to measure your progress. In short, you want to be extremely precise with the way you manage your time all day long, from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep at night.
Say, you want 2020 to be the year to invest in deepening friendships and family bonds ahead of work connections. You could use the soul-feeding chunk to socialize with friends or have dinner with the family and your partner every single night Monday through Friday from 6:00-7:30 pm. Thus, morning and evening chunks must host all other necessary tasks for living life. That’s right, Dear Readers, you need to schedule your workouts, meal prepping, food shopping, cleaning, laundry, personal development endeavors, and even catching up on your favorite TV series.
While you know yourselves better than anyone, Dear Readers, this blog would like you to consider relegating intellectually stimulating actions such as studying to the morning chunk when you are probably feeling the most rested. By contrast, you can relay activities that help to decompress to the evening chunk. Please refer to the chart below the JMS team created for a client who works full-time in a small marketing firm and wants to achieve a better work-life balance in 2020.
This JMS client, let’s call her a marketing maven, felt extremely unfulfilled, frustrated, and anxious…. All. The. Darnedest. Time. The career was going well, but everything else was out of whack: no time to work out, no time to spend with family and loved ones, the house was always in complete disarray, living life a 1000 miles per hour at work but nothing on the personal front. Does that sound familiar, Dear Readers?
How will you feel on top of your game, Dear Readers, when the demands of simple living pull your mind into a million and two directions? No wonder you are collapsing under the weight of unsurmountable levels of angst! You are one hair away from having a full-blown heart attack! However, by assigning designated tasks to her morning and evening chunks, we took the guessing game out of the equation. Indeed, we constructed a robust infrastructure that gives her more peace of mind and the latitude to focus on what matters most. That, Dear Readers, is how to use your dailies to be more productive outside of work!
A few takeaways to remember.
Firstly, success does not happen in a vacuum. If you want to crush your goals, you will need to cultivate a certain level of discipline. In the case of the marketing maven, she had to give up binging on her favorite TV shows during the week. No worries, she indulges in her favorite pastime over the weekend!
Secondly, the most effective way to evaluate your progress on specific goals you’ve set is to get into the habit of daily planning. Indeed, our marketing maven quickly found out that she needed to integrate specific tasks into your recurring time slots.
For example, she had to plan targeted morning workouts to make sure that she did not over train a single part of her body. She also wanted to implement a personal development space that allowed her to move from faith to professional based readings in a manner that was not overwhelming. The addition of these morning study sessions fulfilled a need for intellectual and spiritual discovery she had been wrestling with for some time. Finally, she realized that bringing lunch to work every day requires diligent meal prepping sessions and occasional runs to the corner store (or bodega as she calls it) up the street a few nights a week. None of this could happen without daily planning, Dear Readers!
As you see, Dear Readers, a meaningful, well-balanced, successful life does not happen by chance. You’ve got to put in the work, build the infrastructure, and commit to the process consistently week after week to reap the benefits you want more than anything else.
There you have it, Dear Readers! Thank you for taking the time to read today’s publication. The branding24seven community is here to inspire and encourage as you, Dear Readers, are embarking on the exhilarating journey to design the career of your dreams. The JMS team would like to thank our marketing maven for allowing this blog to create an entire series around the work she will be doing in 2020 to have a more meaningful life beyond work.
Dear Readers, we want to hear from you! How do you plan on organizing your dailies in 2020? Did you like this idea of daily planning? Or do you think that it’s too much of a hassle and prefer weekly planning? What did we miss? What else can this blog cover that will motivate you and help you be as successful as possible in 2020, Dear Readers? Let us know below in a comment or by email at jms@branding24seven.com or by mail at:
JMStrategy LLC
21 S. 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA, 19107
This blog hopes that today’s publication has lit a fire within you, Dear Readers! Do not be scared of your dreams. Do not feel discouraged! Only the first month of the new year is coming to an end… There are so many more opportunities to make things happen! Have the courage to chase your goals and visit this blog weekly for practical, actionable tips that will keep you inspired along the way!
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