Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Art of Getting More Done in Less Time (even with ADHD) | Clutterbug Podcast # 22

Episode Date: July 17, 2017

I have discovered a secret! It is the secret to getting more done in less time! Ok, it isn't really a secret since every successful person ever uses this exact same method, but it does work! Why was I not doing this years ago??? With this simple trick, I now get more done, have more free time and I've been able to accomplish more than I ever thought possible. Give it a try today!  Check out my blog CLUTTERBUG for more information Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So hi and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about the art of getting more done in less time. And I really wanted to give you a disclaimer, first of all, to say that I am not great at scheduling. I'm not one of those people who carries around their planner or puts everything in their phone and is like Uber organized. And the truth is I am just not a naturally organized person. And I really struggle with this whole concept. But that being said, I totally have transformed my productivity. Now, I'm probably not as productive as people who are even listening this podcast. I'm probably not as productive as, like, most of the people I know, but I've improved a thousand times more than I used to. And it's using just a few little techniques in my day-to-day routine that really

have, you know, absolutely transformed my productivity. So I want to talk about me before, I guess, the real cast, the one who, you know, has struggled most of her life, including when I was a mom. And I think that's what it really came to a head. That's when I was really like, okay, I suck at adulting. I am, I just cannot do the whole day-to-day thing. I had Isabel and then I had Abby. I had two little kids and I would forget to go to doctor's appointments, you know, when they had to get their immunizations. And I would constantly lose my keys and my wallet and my purse. And I'd, like, leave the house with a diaper bag and there'd be no freaking diapers in it. And it was late for everything, if I even remember to show up.

So constantly late for birthday parties and appointments and coffee dates with friends. And everyone used to just sort of laugh about it. Like, oh, Cass, you know, she has baby brain or she's so flaky. Everyone called me flaky. And a lot of the times I was, you know, referred to you as Phoebe from friends. Because I just had that type of personality, that forgetful, just ridiculous, flaky, flighty personality. And that's just what I was sort of known for. And looking back, obviously, a big part of that was ADHD.

And I've recently been diagnosed. I mean, not that I needed the diagnosis because, let's be honest, it's pretty obvious. but that's definitely a big part of it. And the other part is just my personality. I mean, maybe that goes with having ADHD, but I just have that type of personality. So I don't take medication and I have found other ways to cope with it. And little tips and tricks that I do that really not only help me focus,

but help me accomplish more in my day. And I had to get real and I had to put on my dog. big girl pants and I had to say like yeah it's time to be a grown up and what are all the people who are grown up and well in your life do you what are all the successful people in your life what do they have in common and I read a ton of self-help books and I just tried to like I just I wanted to know how to just be a human better than I was and what I can't what I really took from it at the end of the day was everyone who was successful was basically doing the same thing, this one thing that I was not doing. I mean, they were doing lots of things I wasn't doing, but this was one that was like really, you know,

it was sort of like the stepping stone for everybody else was doing this and then other things in life on top of this one basic skill. And what that was was scheduling their time. And I'm not just talking about having a calendar on your fridge where you put birthday parties and, you know, anniversaries and important things that you want to get done. While that's important, I mean, that's obviously important. You really need to break it down more and it's about organizing, like, your time management. It's about having a schedule that, you know, you have your yearly schedule, which is your calendar, and then you have, you know, your weekly schedule. And then you break that down into your daily schedule and you get really specific and I always sort of

rebelled against this idea because first of all I'm not great at sticking to schedules and second of all don't put me in a box man that's how I felt I was like don't put me in your box society and I didn't want to be tied down I thought it would sort of make me less creative and make life mundane if I had to stick to like a you know really schedule my hours or my every few hours or my day, I thought that that was just not me and didn't fit my personality. And it didn't, but not doing those things. Didn't actually give me more freedom. What it did is gave me less focus.

And when I started actually scheduling my time, I gained more freedom. I gained more time for myself. And I started accomplishing so much more. It was like taking the thing that I was lacking in my life, which was focus. and doing it for me. It was like the paper was focusing for me. And I'm going to be completely honest with you. I never accomplish everything that I plan on accomplishing, like ever. I don't follow it to a T. I'm not crazy like that, but just the simple act of writing it down and having it like visual somewhere where I will see it as I walk past it a billion times, like completely

fluttering from one project to the next and being completely unfocused. Having it there, it draws me back. Every time I see it, it brings me back, and I accomplish way more than I would normally, just by simply having it, if that makes any sense. So what I really do is I think about the big picture that I want. So I'll give you an example. The big picture for me is I'm writing a book, and I have two months to do it, which is not a lot of time, my friends. So the big picture is I want to write a book, right? Wow, I want to write a book and that's a goal. But until you've broken down, it's a dream really, let's be completely honest. Until you've broken that down into manageable chunks of little tasks to accomplish that,

you don't have a plan. And without a plan, it's just going to continue to remain a dream. So what I did was I said, okay, I need to write a book in two months, which means I need to have one chapter written every week because I have 10 chapters. and there's 10 weeks. So which means I need to write, you know, a thousand words a day and make three or four printables a day. And then I had to break that down into like, okay, in the morning, I'm going to make three

printables. And then in the afternoon, I'm going to write a thousand words. And then every Friday, I'm going to send it off. So that's how I really broke it down into a manageable thing. And then I scheduled other things that I needed to get done in that day around. the manageable chunks. So it doesn't really matter what your goal is, whether it's to have your entire house organized, whether it's to write a book, whether it's to start your own business. You need to look at the big picture. You need to have your dream and your goal. And then you need to

break it down into monthly and then weekly and then daily tasks in order to accomplish that. And every single morning when I wake up, I take a look at my calendar, so I have a work calendar, which says, you know, what days I make videos, which days I write, which days I do a podcast, which days I do Facebook. You're kind of getting the idea. And then I look at my weekly tasks, so all the things I have to accomplish that week, and then I write my daily tasks. So every morning I sit and I spend just a few minutes writing out the daily tasks for that day based on, obviously, my calendar, my bigger goals, my bigger schedule, and I work all those things in. And like I said, don't accomplish all of them, let's be completely honest, but just the fact that I have

written down and I keep it in a really visual spot. So I have one copy upstairs on my fridge and I have another copy that I keep down here in the office right above my computer. I see it. I see it. I'm reminded and I can refocus again. What I also do to make sure that this is really successful as I prioritize those things. So obviously writing right now is a priority because I got to get it done. I'm on a deadline. So those are the things that I do first. And then the other things like housework, well, those are lower on the priority list. So sometimes those things just don't get done. The grocery shopping, sometimes it doesn't get done. Sometimes, you know, those type of things, we order pizza a little bit more than we probably should. But the main things I need to really

work on, the things that I prioritize, I'm getting done. And what I used to do before I had this method was I would still, I would have so much in my mind, right? I would make like a mentalist and then what I would do because I hadn't had it, you know, in a visual spot and really prioritized, I would waste that time by procrastinating the things I should really do, piddling away with things like cleaning the toilet or, you know, wiping the counter, or falling down a hole on YouTube or Facebook for two hours. and, you know, I'd feel like I was like, wow, I'm really busy, but I wasn't actually accomplishing anything that was important. Anything that could have a significant impact on my life and my future. And that's really the secret sauce for successful people is that they not only create a yearly, monthly,

weekly schedule for themselves, for their goals, breaking them down into manageable chunks, but then they have a daily schedule that they prioritize. So you can prioritize by, you can use a fancy planner page. I have one that's offered on my website. Or you could just have a piece of paper and write like a number one and number two and one and number three beside the things that are the most priority of the things that you should really do. And leave it out somewhere where you'll see it every day.

You will be amazed, you guys. This works for everyone. I have yet to find someone that this does not work for. I don't want you to beat yourself up if you're not doing everything on the list because nobody is. Well, some people, crazy people do, but most of us, we don't. We accomplish like maybe half of what's on the list, but that's still way more than we would have accomplished without the list. So that really is the secret.

That's a secret to you, not only motivation, keeping yourself focused, getting more done, and really accomplishing those things in your life that are dreams for you. Are these huge dreams that feel like monumental and you don't know where to start? That is where you start. You start with making a plan because a dream without a plan is just a wish, my friends. So let's do that today and check out for a new blog post that's coming this week where I will be offering you some free principles for goal planning. So for planning your big dreams and how to break those down into manageable.

chunks and then I'll also be offering my daily planner as a free printable and that again is coming this week as a blog post on my website you can find that at www.cludderbug.m.m. And the title of that blog post is going to be the art of getting more done in less time. So the exact same title of this podcast. So stay tuned for that. And again, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you next time.