Today I really got a good understanding of the importance of having a Routines list. Routines with a capital R!
I didn’t get to work much today because I had to take George for a procedure. It was a few hours long and I had to wait while it was happening.
But over the last week I’ve been setting up my STEP system (from LearnDoBecome.com) and I have set up a great routines list.
Actually, I’d started doing the STEP program several months back, but never made it all the way through. I HAD made it through setting up a routines list before, and have since used the idea to set up a monthly biz Routine’s List in Trello, and holy moly, it has been a LIFE SAVER.
So, when I started back over with STEP last week, I really focused on honing in on the Routines List, and making it work with the rest of my productivity/organizational strategy.
I fleshed out what I need to do on a regular basis, but then went back and simplified it as much as I could. I also thought about the things that I keep putting on my to-do list (‘projects’ in STEP), that are actually routines, not to-dos. I didn’t realize how much this routine stuff is cluttering up my mind. And my biz has grown so much over the last couple of years, that there really is a LOT of routine stuff to try and remember now.
Anyway… I had set up a Routines board in Trello, with my monthly biz routines, but now I’ve got a daily routine added.. and then I added other lists, like every Friday, every payday, every year.. etc. (okay, not in that order but I’m typing fast here).
It helps SO much to get it out of my mind, out of my ‘to-do’ list, and onto this permanent list that I can go back to every day.
So now, all I’ve been putting in my daily planner is ‘Daily Admin’ (that’s what I’m naming those things I’m doing every single morning… or ’TRYING’ to do every day, but not always getting done, because it’s been overwhelming to try and remember it all every day…. it started to feel like I was just re-writing the same undone things down every day.)
This morning, when i knew I had to leave early to take George, and I KNEW I’d be gone for a big chunk of the day.. I ran through my routines list and did as much of it as I could. I didn’t get every single thing done, but I’ve got the list in order of most important to least important, and so I knew I had all the most important things covered before we left (plus it was off my mind… because everything, even the undone stuff… was all listed out).
Also, I’ve got it set up so that when I finish something, I just drag it to the ‘DONE’ list, and that way if I can’t finish it all at once, I can come back and begin where I left off.
Then tonight I ran through the rest of it.
Today was not a productive day all in all, because i didn’t get any ‘project’ work done. I didn’t feel overly stressed though because I’ve got all of those things also organized (on their own Trello board) and off my brain.