How to Simplify your Schedule & FREE Printable
When moments of overwhelm and anxiety creep in because of a maxed out schedule, there’s little to do but examine every aspect of your life.
Yet, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s life to juggle and rearrange in order to find that precious margin and room to breathe.
So grab your planner and some paper, and have an open mind as we ask tough questions and seek to simplify your schedule.
1, Create a list of your obligations and responsibilities into categories. Be sure to include work, family, church, home, hobbies, and others that make up your life.
2. Under each category, list the tasks you usually do for each category. Here’s a sneak peek at the list I started as an example.
3. Determine if these tasks are permanent responsibilities (PR) or flexible obligations (FO) next to each task.
Permanent responsibilities are the items that are solely your tasks, and can’t be delegated often because they are a permanent staple in your life and routine. {Examples: your marriage, children, health}
Flexible obligations are tasks that could possibly be delegated, re-arranged in your schedule, or have some aspect of flexibility. {Examples: ironing, volunteer work, how you spend your free time}.
4. Once you’ve narrowed down your tasks with these labels, make a rough outline of your weekly schedule ONLY with your permanent responsibilities.
5. Take a look at those responsibilities and estimate the amount of time you spend doing those tasks each week.
6. Add to that list your flexible obligations and the amount of time it takes you to do those tasks.
7. Ask yourself the following questions and be sure to answer honestly for this to be effective and helpful.
– Can I get extra help on or delegate any of my permanent responsibilities? In times I’ve been swamped, I’ve delegated a few of these to my husband and even family members who were willing to help. Sometimes these responsibilities that weigh us down, aren’t solely our responsibility as we originally thought.
– Are all of my flexible obligations REALLY necessary? How do they bless my life, my family or the lives of others? When life gets tough and we are swamped, it’s often because we’ve created an environment of perfectionist chaos, always striving to do more and be more, so we don’t let others down. When we honestly evaluate, it’s clear that some of our stress can be avoided and reduced simply by planning better and lessening our load.
8. Challenge #1: Eliminate one of your flexible obligations by either saying no, delegating the task to another, or finding a way to make it be a non-stressful task. An example would be to send out your husband’s work clothes to be washed and/or pressed at the cleaners. The task would still be done, but you eliminated the work from your own schedule and made more minutes in your day.
9. Challenge #2: Turn one of your permanent responsibilities into flexible obligations. For example, dinner is a necessity, but adopting a freezer meal system or using the ‘cook once, eat twice method’ that I use {I cook enough for two dinners every time I cook to limit the number of meals I cook per week} saves you a ton of time and reduces the stress associated with that task.
10. After you’ve done that once, I challenge you to do it again and again, until you’ve honestly evaluated each responsibility you hold.
11. Make a new master list of weekly to-dos for each day of the week on a piece of paper after you’ve tweaked and adjusted your tasks.
12. Then transfer each item to the FREE weekly schedule planner where you list everything you need to accomplish for that week under the correct day. {Use the bold lines to list your activities each day.}
Download your planner here
13. Notice that are only THREE blanks per day in each category. When you look at a master weekly planner, you may be overwhelmed by all you need to get done, but when you do three manageable tasks maximum per day, the stress suddenly fades.
As you evaluate your schedule, know that it’s a work in progress, just like you.
God doesn’t want you to live in a constant of frantic, as you bounce from one activity to another.
He wants you to find peace and rest in Him, and let Him help you manage every aspect of your life into bite-size pieces.
Learn to put Him first, even above your top priority, and you’ll see how wonderful margin can feel as you rest in His presence alone. You can feel calm among the tasks of life that surround you.
How do you balance and juggle a full schedule?
Please share below what works for you!
This post was shared with Cornerstone Confessions