Much like driving, the fastest way to reach your goals is by taking the best route. Careful planning is necessary to think through the rest stops and shortcuts along the way: What do you do here? Which resources are available there? What will you do if something causes you to reroute?

Begin your analysis by writing your goal (or final destination, if you’re really into analogies) in the center of your paper. Use the remaining space to brainstorm all of the potential steps (or stops) you’ll need to take in order to maneuver toward your goal. (If you’re more of a kinesthetic learner, try writing each of your steps on Post-It notes. Visual learners might prefer using various pen or Post-It colors to group their thoughts.) Here are some questions to help you think through potential steps:

• What do you need to do to prepare for your goal? What classes, activities, or calls will you need to make in order to bring your goal one step closer?

 

• Will you rely on anyone else to achieve your goal? Who will you need to work with in order to make this possible?

 

• Does your goal have a deadline? When will each smaller task need to be completed in order to meet your goal on time?

• Do you see any possible red-flags or detours in your task list? How do you plan to respond if your paperwork is lost in the mail, you miss the gym because of extended illness, or your sales don’t reach their benchmarks?

Recording all these thoughts can feel overwhelming, but relief is coming. Now that you’ve completed your initial analysis, it’s time to put the steps in order to create a path to success! You can do this a few different ways. I recommend numbering your steps OR cutting them out and physically moving them around to establish your order. (If you used Post-It Notes earlier, then you’re in luck — no cutting for you!) This arrangement isn’t set in stone. Give yourself the freedom to re-order, delete, or add tasks during the process. Life rarely goes as planned, which is why we prepare for detours.

Now stand back and look at your task list in all its glory. What is your first step? If it isn’t easy-peasy, and quite honestly “laughable”, then break down that task into smaller steps. Research has proven that if the steps we want to take require too much effort, we will choose defeat and derail our goals. Instead, make it easy for yourself to change your habits and work toward that wonderful goal.

The other derailer is perfectionism. When we get caught up in the nitty-gritty, must-do-it-perfectly mindset, we lose sight of our end goal. Don’t go missing in the abyss of the unattainable. Realize perfection isn’t helpful, but progress is! Keep moving through your steps, even if you’re dragging one leg behind or the deal didn’t close as smoothly as you had planned. Progress will help you push through unavoidable detours and delays as you advance toward your goal.

Here’s to a successful year!

This post originally appeared on The Good Life.

Today we’re talking about how to avoid overwhelm (and ultimate panic) as we enter the holiday season.

Tip #1: Dump All the Ideas
That’s right. Dump them. Onto paper or online, but get them out of your head. All those spinning plates and random thoughts only contribute to a mounting sense of anxiety. Let a web of written (or typed) thoughts manage those instead. While brain dumps come in a variety of forms, you should know that whatever works for you is your best option. For the creative type, an old fashion brainstorm or idea web will work perfectly. Start with your event circled in the center and simply jot down all the random things associated with it. Don’t worry about order or priority, simply get them out. If you want to amp up your game, jot the ideas down on Post-Its so that you can prioritize and organize later. Type A folks would do well with lists that can later be numbered and rewritten. Trello is an excellent (and FREE) online app that helps you manage all those ideas as they process from to-do into to-done!

Tip #2: Break It Down
Once you begin to free up some RAM within your brain, you’ll realize that each idea you jotted down requires multiple actions. Now that you’ve got the big ideas out, go ahead and task analyze each. If your event is Thanksgiving, one of those big ideas will be the menu. Begin to break that down. What’s your main course? How many sides, appetizers, and desserts do you want to serve? What will those be? How long will those take? Who will be responsible for each? Are there food allergies/aversions to consider for your guests? Breaking down your tasks into manageable, achievable chunks will help you to feel successful before you’ve even taken your first action step. You’ll also REALLY enjoy crossing all those things off!

Tip #3: Do What You Can, NOW!
There will be items on your brain dump that can be taken care of within the next week even though we’re WEEKS away from any big holiday parties. Send an email to guests asking about allergies/aversions. Shop for the dry goods and pantry supplies you’ll need on-hand once the cooking is underway. (I hate getting caught without enough butter….that just ruins everything! So stock up now…before everyone else is shopping for the same thing!)

Tip #4: Work Backwards
Review the tasks that need to be completed closer to the event. How long will each task take? Assign a minute value to each. If we’re talking about when to put the turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving, we need to know how long it will cook. Once you’ve given it a time estimate, start with your intended time to SERVE the food and start working backwards. If the turkey needs to be on the table at 4pm, it needs to be out of the oven by 3:30pm, which means it needs to be in the oven at 10am, and that you’ll need to preheat the oven at 9:45am. You’ll also need to start stuffing that bird by 9:15am so that it goes in on time. Working backwards helps you to know when you MUST begin. Late starts and delays cause some of the most undue stress! Don’t get caught in that trap.

Tip #5: Make Time for the Unexpected
Let’s go back to the bird in the oven illustration. There will be certain non-negotiables; things you can’t fudge on without throwing off the entire schedule. That’s inevitable in any event. However, it’s good to think through those things….like what if someone didn’t start thawing the bird 2 days prior? What if the store is out of lemons and you need a different stuffing or rub recipe? Creating space for mistakes, interruptions, or oven fires will enable you to feel calm even when crazy comes knocking at the door.

As your events approach, take a deep breath and get organized so that you’ll look and feel like a pro on the big day!

This post originally appeared on The Good Life.

Whether you work from home, operate on the go, or sit a traditional office setting, staying productive is easier said than done. We get by on auto-pilot while our minds wander. Our level of output may rise when a new or exciting project crosses the desk, but for the most part, we’re stuck at status quo. We don’t want to be….but most days, we are.

Like any relationship, our workspaces need us to care for them to keep the magic alive. Here are 3 tips you can use to increase your productivity at work.

It’s difficult to know HOW to get your home organized when you don’t know WHAT to organize. Today we’re talking about bare minimums.

Sure, I want you to go full out and organize EVERYTHING, but let’s be realistic.
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We know that an organized space can save us time and bring happiness. I’ve got the solution for the greatest impact on your time and sanity when your schedule is insane: bare minimum weekly organizing schedule.

Doesn’t it feel like time is slipping away? Like there just aren’t enough minutes in a day to clear your checklists and feel like you actually DID something?

Busy professionals and stay at home parents have this in common: there just isn’t enough time to get it ALL done.
In the beginning of a week, we’ve got high hopes. We’re making lists of ALL the things we WANT to get done and ALL the things we HAVE to get done. A part of us believes that these lists can be knocked out in the next seven days. Hashtag we believe! ;)

But then something happens. Life. It interrupts our checklists and douses our motivational fires. We quickly realize that “it just won’t happen this week” and that we’ll have to try to knock those tasks out “another day.”

I’m not going to argue with this reality.

However, I want us to consider something for just five minutes. Can you spare 5?

We don’t have to do EVERYTHING on those lists.
We don’t.
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In fact, we just need to do the tasks that are due NOW. We must prioritize our lists and crop them down to manageable, achievable jobs. 
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So here’s your solution.

Grab your massive to-do list for this week and circle all the tasks that need to be done TODAY. Not tomorrow. Just today. These are the items you’re going to make time to complete.

But how do we MAKE TIME when it’s clearly ticking away even as you read this? It’s not as hard as we think.

Jot down how many minutes it will take to complete the jobs next to each circled task. Ignore the uncircled. You’re not focusing on those because they aren’t DUE TODAY. (Once you finish your tasks for today, you can rewrite your list ---- but take heed that rewriting isn’t just an excuse to avoid completing what’s actually ON your list.)

Now, look at your schedule for the day. Where can you plug in each of these tasks so that they will get finished TODAY?

Write in your to-do list tasks into your schedule. We MUST make time for these activities if we ever want to see them completed. Just having the tasks on a list doesn’t finish them. Planning for them does.

When we’re intentional about our to-do lists, things get done.

Tonight, at the end of your day, look back at your big to-do list. See those circled items that you wanted to finish TODAY? Cross off all the ones that actually got done.

How did you do?

I guarantee that you accomplished MORE because you consciously PLANNED to do more. Instead of hanging out at the water cooler and shooting the breeze, you took those five minutes to order the mosquito treatment on your yard. Instead of getting lost in a day dream in between activities, you swapped out the laundry and folded the first dried load. You started on dinner when you needed to instead of waiting until the last minute. Your child finished his homework without a battle because you were “100% there and aware” to help. You even got that blog post finished and updated all your social media for your business.

You accomplished MORE because you MADE TIME to do more. The minutes didn’t slip away today.

The minutes won’t slip away tomorrow either, if you just continue to prioritize and make time to accomplish what you must.

Need help getting control of your schedule? Check out our post on Time Blocking to get the most out of your daily routines.

Have you ever felt like you’re doing EVERYTHING around the house? Would you like your family to pitch in a bit? Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy a break during the week so you can recharge?

The good news is that you can! You can experience freedom and reclaim joy at home simply by restructuring your schedule. Let me show you how!

The business world has this down to a science. They understand that in order to fit everything necessary into a standard work week, they’ve got to have systems and schedules in place. They’ve delegated company tasks to those who enjoy and excel in specific areas. When we apply the business model of work to the home model, life can change dramatically!

I want to take the next few minutes to share the concept of time blocking as it applies to your home life. Much like the business world, you’ll become more efficient when you group similar tasks together and spend dedicated time addressing each task.

For years, we’ve were told that it’s the bees’ knees to multitask. And it might be, but not ALL the time. Although women, in particular, are fantastic multi-taskers, we’re even better single-taskers!

Let me give you an example: meal planning. In total honesty, I HATE meal planning. Cooking isn’t a task I’m particularly excited about. Although I enjoy a good tasting meal, the prep work behind it just doesn’t get me excited. But, meal planning is a crucial part of running a home. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t know what to buy at the grocery store. If you don’t know what to buy at the grocery store, you’re just shopping for things that taste good. And if you’re just shopping for things that taste good, your dinner will consist of pie, hummus, and tortilla chips.  Not gonna cut it if there is more than one person living under the same roof.
 
When meal planning for the week, we must get 100% focused on the task in order to knock it out quickly and completely. If we can sustain our attention, we might even be able to plan an entire month using this free printable. High-fives all around!

If we multitasked meal planning, we'd be busy checking social media (which may have some good meal ideas on it….and the latest gossip….and the latest political argument…..), folding laundry, feeding the kids, and trying to remember where we put the elusive cup of coffee. The simple task of planning meals would take 4x longer than it needed to. Because, when we multitask, we stretch our minds thin. Sure, multitasking helps us GET THINGS DONE, but are we getting them done in the MOST efficient manner that uses the LEAST amount of energy in order to prevent overwhelm? Probably not.

One strategy is time blocking. The best way to understand why you’re exhausted is to visually observe what’s wearing you down --- on paper.

Step 1: Download this Time Map.

Step 2: Start by writing the first hour of the day when you TYPICALLY wake up. Time Maps are not exact. They are general reference points that help us better understand where our energies are going throughout a typical week. My map begins with 7am because that’s when I wake up.

Step 3: Write down the times every 30 minutes until the time you TYPICALLY go to bed (7:00am, 7:30am, 8:00am, etc). For me, bedtime looks like 12am. No, I’m not proud of that, it’s just life. Maybe one day bed time will look like 11pm on a regular basis. A girl can dream.

Step 4: Write in any long-standing and regular appointments or activities for each day. This includes your morning routine (Wake, Shower, etc), meals, school/work schedules, family time, and/or religious activities. (As a side note, if your “work” activities are occupying MOST of your week, you might consider time-blocking your individual work tasks to help you be more efficient in the workplace and spend less time in the office. This might look like only answering emails 4x a day or only working that specific proposal from 2-4pm.)

Step 5: In the spots you have left, pencil in the OTHER activities you need and would like to accomplish each week. These might include: laundry, meal planning, grocery shopping, carpool, dusting, mopping, taking out the trash, lawncare, hobbies, exercise, and plain old rest and relaxation. Be realistic about how much time each activity takes so that you can give it an appropriate amount of time on your map. Also, consider dividing up your cleaning tasks into specific days rather than cleaning specific areas. This will prevent you from trying to dust different rooms each day. Instead, just dust on Tuesdays and vacuum on Wednesdays. If you miss Tuesday dusting, at least you know Tuesday will come around again in 6 more days. Additionally, instead of getting out the Swiffer duster day after day, you’ll only be getting it out and putting it back ONCE a week.

Step 6: If your map is overflowing, you NEED to delegate. Delegating is hard for people. We like control. We like things done our way. But other people are just as capable as us. The end result might not be EXACTLY the same, but the differences are worth the ENERGY you were able to conserve by handing off that job to someone else. Case in point: cleaning baseboards. I’m not a stickler about this, but I like to make sure there isn’t a ton of dust left in clumps. My kids like to clean baseboards too. Their standard of “clean” is very different. But if I let them do it 3 out of 4 weeks a month, three magical things happen:

• I save myself the energy.
• They have a good old time with my Norwex cloths.
• The baseboards get cleaned more often. I know I’m not alone in this. If I demand on doing the task all on my own, I might not actually get to it at all for several weeks on end because I’m busy. But if I let others help me, at least SOMETHING is getting done and some is better than none.

Let go of the pride, share the responsibility with others, and quit complaining about how much you have to do all by yourself. Sure there are things only you can do, but those are few and far between. LET GO and don’t look back. Simply enjoy the extra 15 minutes you found today because you released control of a task that really wasn’t life and death.

Some other tasks you can delegate are:

• Laundry (collecting, sorting, loading, running, swapping, folding, returning)
• Meals (meal planning, list prep, grocery shopping, putting groceries away, getting out ingredients, meal prep)
• Vacation Planning (identifying available dates, scouting hotels/restaurants/activities, packing, driving/flying schedules)
• Bill Paying (collecting the mail, sorting mail, identifying bills to pay, paying, filing/discarding)

If you've got preschool or school-age children in the house and are curious as to what tasks would be age-appropriate delegated activities, check out these lists by CleanMama.net. In order to hand off some of these chores to children, I recommend Norwex cleaning products that are safe for children. 
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As you delegate, be mindful of the systems in place. Your spouse, partner, roommate, or child may use a different system than you to accomplish the same task. That’s OK. If you want to curb overwhelm, you’re going to have to be teachable and gracious.
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For more information on Time Blocking in the office, check out this short video and this blog post.