Every summer has the potential for at least a few absolutely perfect moments. Watching fireworks from the back of a boat, finally standing up on water skis, seeing your kids laugh by the light of a campfire: it’s all possible in summer.
This is the perfect time to slow down, reconnect with your loved ones and plunge your toes in the sand. But work doesn’t stop just because it’s summer, and it’s impossible to fully enjoy those magical moments when you’re thinking about looming deadlines and drafting emails in your head.
“Nothing else matters until I get this work done,” you might think – or maybe, after years of building your career, you’ve truly forgotten how to get yourself out of work mode. Whatever time management issues are standing in your way, break through them right now to make this the best summer ever.
One Simple Step to Jump Start a Successful Summer
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” says a famed Chinese proverb. Your journey to a joyful and productive summer might begin with a single sheet of paper.
First, let’s back up. I want you to know that you can take a vacation or duck out early on sunny Fridays and still get a promotion or reach a major professional goal. The goal is to get everything handled at work so you can comfortably move into personal time without worrying about what you’ve left undone.
Which brings us back to that piece of paper. (This being 2018, the notes feature on your phone or your favorite time management app works too!) You’re going to use it for the first step of my 5-step strategy to bust through procrastination and overwhelm:
Recognize what’s overwhelming you – and write it all down. Take just a few minutes each day to jot down all the work tasks that are weighing on your mind. Your list might include everything from immediate actions like “Call the sales rep” to the big-picture problems that keep you up at night.
It sounds so simple, right? And it is! Anyone can do it – but not everyone will.
The key to making this step work is to repeat it every day. It’s a way to unburden yourself so you can fully focus on your personal time when you leave work and writing down all those must-do tasks helps you clarify your- goals and become proactive about tackling them. Making this a daily habit has another purpose, too. It allows you to track your overwhelm, to notice patterns and identify the stumbling blocks that are really standing between you and success. Before you can navigate a path over those stumbling blocks, you have to be able to see them.
I also like to call this step “find the beast.” We all have emotions that contribute to procrastination. Boredom, annoyance, fear, doubt: they can all drive time management issues. Unchecked, those emotions can wreak havoc on productivity. Be conscious of the feelings that bubble up when you’re putting off a certain task or struggling to focus on the work at hand. I compare these emotions to a dragon. You can either tame and contain the dragon, or let it run unchecked until it destroys everything in its way.
What are you most looking forward to this summer? A long vacation or a staycation in your own backyard, maybe? Clear your path of obstacles and get everything done at work by putting a system in place that works for your specific needs. Writing down the things that are overwhelming you is just the start – I have many more tips and tricks to share.
Ready to start? Join my Jump Start Your Productivity Program! During this four-week course, I’ll coach you to break through the obstacles that are holding you back and wasting your time.
You’ll learn to:
- Immediately figure out where you are wasting time and make changes to get more done
- Create daily and weekly routines that allow you to know that the important things are just handled
- Set up and follow a consistent weekly planning process that works for you
- Use my tips to plan for success and keep your productivity going
Enroll in the Jump Start Your Productivity Program now!
Want to SAVE 50%? To give you a little bit of extra support this summer, I am offering a 50% discount on this program if you enroll by July 31st, 2018.
Here’s the deal, Use the promotion code SAVE50 when you register for Jump Start Your Productivity and you’ll get 50% off if you register before July 31st, 2018.
I only do this promotion a couple of times a year, so register NOW if you want to take advantage of the discount!
- Time Management Strategies to Help You Land the Big Clients You Want - April 17, 2024
- Stress Management for a Productive Spring: Are You “Normal”? - April 4, 2024
- 3 Things Realtors Can Control in a Busy Spring Real Estate Market - March 15, 2024
