Part 2
Life Rhythm Challenge
Week 1: Make a portable, tangible to do list of reoccurring events. Reoccurring means happens weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly without fail. If you are techno-nerd using your PDA is ok too. This isn’t a sit down on Sunday evening one shot deal. In order to make this work, you need to list all of the tasks you need to have done every week. Please do not assign dates to these tasks, only list the tasks. The reason for this first part of the challenge to be a week long is the opportunity to remember what I know you will forget.
Week 2: Prioritize this list. After all, picking up Jon from the gym is a bit more important than stopping at the store to grab dinner. Both are important, but one more time sensitive than the other. Use a scale of 1-10 to allow enough variation in level of importance.
Week 3: Assign days of the week to your tasks. You know how long it takes to get where you need to go and how much time you need to do what needs to be done. We are all adults here so no hand holding through this task. Please assign tasks to allow for 6-8 hours sleep. People think there are 24 hours in a day! Pish-shaw my day only consists of 16 production hours, 50% of which is spent at work.
Week 4: By now you must see where I am going with this. At this stage in our challenge you need to sit down and “calendar-ize” your list. Not categorize… calendar-ize. Get a blank calendar template or go buy a brand new one (of course the technically inclined can use their PDA’s) and assign tasks to each day leaving room for the pop-up’s that occur in our lives as often as they do on an ill protected PC.
It is not necessary to allot time frames and walk around with a clip board and stop watch. It may not even be necessary to write out everything week to week, but I do recommend it for the first month. The amount of time you find yourself having been wasting trying to “keep it all straight” will boggle your mind. You will notice that I allot a full month to ramp up into this process. I do this to allow you to customize your plan and find your own rhythm. Maybe you only feel you need this at work. Maybe you need it at home , and maybe you need it both places. Maybe only your weekends are crazy, or maybe you have a vacation coming up, and you want to be extra productive. Having a plan and executing it will leave you feeling in control and satisfied. Please accept this challenge and give it your all. When your life sounds more like a song and less like a pots and pans band made by your toddler, you will know what it is to have rhythm in your life.
Katherine Forbes 2007
