This week we’re going to do something different than originally planned. I’m going to take you through a quick little exercise that will actually help us out more in the long run. This week we’re going to make 3 lists. If they aren’t super exhaustive as you start feel free to add or change as you go along.

The first list we’re going to make is a list of everything you do in a give week. If you want you can add some extra spots for things that happen every month or even things like yearly events or holidays. The point is that we want a pretty good idea of what you spend your time doing. Once you have your list of items I want you to also include 3 more columns next to the list. In the first column I want you to put how many hours or fractions of an hour you spend on that item in your list. In the second column I want you to put whether or not the item gives you energy or takes energy away from you. In the 3rd column I want you to add whether or not that activity is dependent on any other activities (for example, if you take a yoga class but don’t go to yoga if you go to a cycling class that day, those would be conditional items).

So at the end of list one you might have some items that look like this:

Yoga class, 2 hours a week, gives energy, don’t do on same day as cycling

Reading, 3.5 hours a week, takes energy

Dance Party, .5 hours a week, gives energy

For the second list, I want you to take items from list one and this time only include the items that you are required/mandatory to do. Also make a second column with time. Make that if you didn’t include it on list one that you include things like preparing/getting meals, chores, work, sleep, hygiene habits.

The third list we’re going to make you might be able to expect already, but it’s everything else that is on the first list that didn’t make it on the required/mandatory list. So this would be things like reading, watching Netflix, etc, most of the chosen activities.

At this point you don’t really need list one anymore unless you want to use it to start over or keep track of how much time you were using/wasting/not spending, etc. I’d like you to do for this week is answer two questions. From list 2 are there any items that you believe are mandatory that you might be able to not do and what would be required to make that change? (For example, if you felt you were required to mow the lawn, you could potentially hire someone else to do it for you, so it would cost you whatever that person’s rate is vs however much time you put into mowing). The second question is, are there any items from list 3 that you put time in that in reality tends to take energy from you and isn’t that fun for you, if so, why are you still doing it? From the list above for example, reading took 3.5 hours but took energy, that might be something that person might want to scale back on.

Now with both of these questions I’m not telling you that you’re going to find any time, but if you found 30 mins a day, what would you use that on do you know? Or maybe you’ve never considered how energy and time can change how you schedule (Is that why some people love working out after work and some people hate it???). Next week we’re going to start looking at how we can start taking this two lists and creating a schedule just for you that helps you build and use energy while being efficient and still helping you do what you want to do. Hope this helps, as always let me know if you have any questions or comments.