Day 2 of the 30-Day Challenge: Creative Movement:
Task: to create a weekday summer schedule (Monday through Friday) that will help organize my days through August 2021.
Reason for Task: As I stated in Day 1, “establishing some organization is incredibly important before undergoing a goal-setting challenge like the one I’m embarking upon.” Since I’m fully aware that I have a tendency to procrastinate when it comes to performing some tasks, I find it necessary to add some structure to my day by following a daily schedule.
The daily schedule will provide a flexible and realistic outline for how my day should go about. (Some days will look quite similar while others will look totally different from one another, depending on the recurring tasks that I’ve assigned for specific days of the week.) However, this general schedule template will still help me to create a consistent routine for carrying out those daily tasks that I’ve set for myself each week. And personally, I find schedules especially helpful when trying to incorporate additional tasks into my already jam-packed days.
If you’ve followed my posts for any length of time, then you’re probably aware that I tend to update my daily schedule whenever there’s a major shift in what my daily/weekly responsibilities will look like for a certain period of time. And those major shifts are usually broken up by major life events — mine being the start of a new school year and summer break. My responsibilities shift considerably during these two life event changes and pretty much work around my 11-year-old’s school and non-school time periods.
At the time of me typing out this post, my son (Little Man) has exactly 5 days of virtual schooling left. So, I think today’s challenge is timely and necessary in order to set some organization to my summer daily list of to-dos, starting next Wednesday. (Furthermore, I’ll be simultaneously adjusting Little Man’s personal schedule as well. However, I won’t be reporting on it in a blog post during this challenge.)
Duration of Task: 1 day
Outcome of Task: I was able to successfully create my summer schedule, which will be flexibly-followed up to the beginning of next school year in August 2021. Here’s where it stands as of today:
5:00a – 5:30a – Time to wake up and see husband off to work.
5:30a – 6:30a – Back to sleep.
6:30a – Time to wake up.
6:30a – 7:30a – Independent Bible studying and audio Bible recordings (my personal studies and devotional time).
7:30a – 9a – “Getting Ready” morning routine (breakfast and getting Little Man to his summer enrichment program and/or prepped for his daily in-home school instruction).
9a – 12p – Early morning content creation and activities where I need full-strength brain power (brainstorming ideas, writing, researching, course work, etc.).
12p – 5p – Household chores, visiting family, running errands and performing household chores for elderly family members (outside of my immediate household), going for outdoors walk or completing indoor exercise workout, preparing lunch and dinner, etc.
5p – 8:30p – Downtime/winding down time (dinner, family Bible study, TV/YouTube, gardening, reading, etc.).
8:30p – 9p – Getting Little Man ready for bed and carrying out his bedtime routine with him (prayer time, reading time).
9p – 11p – Late night content creation activities (finish up content creation tasks from morning if necessary, check emails and work through them, respond to blog comments, read other bloggers’ posts, pin to Pinterest, tweet to Twitter, etc.).
11p – Time for bed.
Practical Application of Day 2 for Your Life: Today’s piece of advice is drawn from a previously-published post of mine, entitled Hourly & Block Scheduling Tips for a Productive Day. You’ll want to read this post in its entirety so its information can be of the most benefit to you. For a brief review of the post, here are the scheduling productivity tips that I discussed:
- You must have a mindset to follow-through with the scheduling process.
- You must strive to stay on point with the time frames provided in your hourly and block periods.
- Build in some flexibility within your schedule to address any “catch-up” periods you may need in your day.
- Establish a wake-up time and a bedtime.
- Look at each day of the week individually and brainstorm all of the tasks that you must get done for a particular day.
- Get the breakdown of your time slots (hourly and block) determined for each day of the week and start assigning your tasks to the appropriate time slots.
- Use organizational tools to keep you on time with the schedule.
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