13 steps to completely declutter your schedule

As you follow along in this post, find the interactive PDF’s you can print off and scribble on or type directly in. You can find this in my shop at www.theartofpureliving.com/shop.

If you were to visit my apartment, you’d see notebooks around the room filled with lists. I love being organized, and I’ll admit I sometimes spend more time organizing my lists than actually completing them. I have lists of things to do, ideas I’ve thought of, things I should be doing but I’m not, and tasks I’ve forgotten to get done. Looking back at some of these lists, I realize I haven’t finished half of them. Seeing all the undone tasks overwhelms me, and I’m scared a lot is falling through the cracks. Does this sound like you? Often in life, we bite off more than we can chew. Society yells at us to be more productive, make more money, lose weight, alongside a million other expectations. It’s easy to add more and more tasks and goals to our already overflowing schedules, especially if you want to be the best in every area of life. But, being the best employee, friend, poet, child, wife, volunteer, philanthropist, humanitarian, and entrepreneur just isn’t possible. No one has enough time to do all of that. As a result of us wanting to be the best, we add tons of tasks to our schedule that really don’t need to be there. If this sounds like you, it’s time to take a step back and declutter. You can find a section similar to this in my book, The Art of Finishing Guided Workbook, coming November 2018. In this post, I tailor it to specifically decluttering your schedule, but in my book, I talk about this in depth in the specific context of goal setting. You can also find the same principles in The Art of Finishing Planner coming December 2018. Both these books will be found in the shop at http://www.theartofpureliving.com/shop/.

Dusting off priorities

Follow this simple step-by-step guide to start decluttering your schedule right now. If you do, I promise, the overwhelming feeling to finish the impossible and endless to-do list will soon be gone. You’ll prioritize the truly important responsibilities so that you don’t waste time on useless tasks. You can find this worksheet as well as a schedule in my shop at www.theartofpureliving.com/shop. This is printable and an interactive PDF, so if you prefer the digital side, download the PDF and type straight into the boxes.

1. Imagine your ideal life

If your schedule is cluttered, that means your priorities may be getting a bit dusty. You might not be showing them the love they deserve. Time to pick those up from the highest shelf, dust them off, and start again. Begin by imagining your ideal life. What would your ideal life look like? Would you be doing the same things you already are? What is most important to you in life? What kind of work/social life/family balance do you want to accomplish? In imagining this ideal life, I find that it’s important to imagine a simple list full of purposeful items. The ideal life most likely isn’t running from one important activity to another without taking time to breathe. Pick your top priorities to fill your time, but leave time to breathe. There is no room for time-wasting tasks. Before moving on, star or highlight your most important tasks.

2. Assess your current life

Let’s look at your current life and responsibilities now. What responsibilities do you have with work, school, family, friends, hobbies, church, health, side projects, or volunteering? Are there any recurring events you do at intervals other than a week? It is helpful to look at your current planner or calendar to see what you may be missing. This list may get quite long, and you may find many responsibilities in other categories I haven’t listed. That’s totally fine.

3. Organize the current tasks brain-dump

Now that we have the important information dumped out on the page, let’s get it organized. If you’ve looked at self-improvement or productivity books at all, you’ve probably come across Steven Covey’s method of prioritizing tasks. He separates all tasks, projects, and responsibilities into four quadrants based on their importance and urgency. Look at each current responsibility, task, etc. you listed in step two. Judging if they are important and/or urgent, sort them into these four quadrants.

4. Organize the ideal tasks brain-dump

After sorting all the items, do the same for your ideal life. All these items should be important, and the majority should be not urgent, though don’t worry if some are urgent. I’ll explain more about these quadrants in a moment.

5. Note any differences

Seeing these two boxes side by side, do you notice any major differences between the two? What do you need to change in your life to make your current life reflect your ideal one? Take a moment to write your thoughts.

Decide what stays and what goes

6. The unimportant and non-urgent

Keeping everything you’ve learned so far in mind, it’s time to assess the value of each task. Those in the fourth quadrant are unimportant and not urgent. Really, these tasks are just time wasters. Any of the tasks in this quadrant should be cut. There is no reason to waste your time on tasks that aren’t important. Because they aren’t urgent either, just cut them out. Draw a nice, big X through the whole box.

7. The unimportant and urgent

Those in the third quadrant are merely distractions. They are urgent, which makes them seem like high priorities even though they aren’t important. Try to limit these as much as possible. Cut what you can and delegate the rest if possible.

8. The important and urgent

Tasks in the first quadrant are important and should be taken care of. However, these tend to be crises and pressing problems that make you feel like you are constantly putting out fires. These are tasks to finish quickly to keep from burning out. Avoid spending too much time on these. Also, try to avoid adding too many of these tasks to your list, but don’t cut any. They are still important, so if you really feel overwhelmed, delegate them out.

9. The important and non-urgent

The second quadrant is the best quadrant to spend quality time in. These tasks are important but not urgent which means you have the time to finish them in a quality way without a rush. Completing these means you are working ahead of the deadline and on top of everything. However, these are easy to procrastinate because they aren’t urgent. Scheduling these specific tasks in your week can help avoid procrastinating.

Start scheduling

10. The third quadrant

So, let’s get to scheduling! You can find a printable schedule in my shop. I recommend printing this out so you can scribble all over it. It is also an interactive PDF, so if you prefer the digital side, download the PDF and type straight into the boxes. You should have delegated or deleted almost every task in quadrants three and four, so we won’t take time to schedule these. However, feel free to block out a time to contact those people you are delegating to. If there are any tasks you couldn’t delegate or delete from the third quadrant (hopefully, not many), block in that time now. Be generous in your estimation of the time it will take so you don’t add undue stress.

11. The first quadrant

Schedule your quadrant one tasks first. These are those important tasks that you have most likely procrastinated, and, therefore, made them urgent. Schedule these so you can get them out of the way. Work hard to get them done efficiently in a quality manner. If you complete those and always work hard to get the quadrant two tasks done ahead of time, you’ll never have to worry about the stress of last-minute, important tasks.

12. The second quadrant

Schedule your priorities in quadrant two next. Again, be generous with your estimations of the time it will take. These priority tasks are non-negotiable, and you must make time for them. As well, schedule these during the time of day that you are most effective. For me, this means creative tasks get evening hours and less creative get morning slots. If you don’t know when you are most effective, try out one way consistently for a week and change if it isn’t working. To avoid these non-urgent tasks from wandering into quadrant one, try to get them done ahead of time. In college, I loved the feeling of getting my homework assignments done a few days early. I didn’t stay ahead as often as I would have liked, but let me tell you, it makes a world of difference for stress levels.

13. Self-care

Hopefully, you have some time left over. This can be time for getting things done you didn’t have time to during the week, or it may be time for yourself. Remember to always take time for yourself and spending time with those you love. Schedule that time in right now if you struggle remembering that. Treat yourself to a good book, taking a walk, or creating a work of art. After all, you will have had a productive week. Reward yourself for a job well done! And, if you already knew that self-care was a priority for you, good for you! Feel free to schedule that extra time for anything else you’d like. When my life schedule needs a bit of a tune-up, I turn to this method. If you’re curious as to what my weekly schedule looks like, here’s a typical week after going through these steps myself.

You may notice that I have quite a few white spaces. I like to plan out my weekdays and have freedom on the weekends to do whatever I feel like. Most of that white space is spent with my husband or family, and I like to keep that spontaneous. Feel free to keep some time free and other time blocked out completely. Honestly, it depends on your personality and what works best for you.

Scheduling future weeks

After this initial week, your weekly scheduling will proceed in a slightly different order. You won’t have to worry about any unimportant tasks. And, with the urgent tasks out of the way, you can start by scheduling quadrant two first (the important and non-urgent tasks). Always try to stay ahead, so they don’t fall into quadrant one. Ideally, you won’t have to schedule anything past this, but life isn’t always ideal. Your next step is to schedule any important and urgent tasks from quadrant one. Remember, you can always say no to requests for your time. Obviously, it’s great to help everyone you can, but make sure you don’t take on too much. If a good friend’s basement floods, just because helping her would be in quadrant one or three doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help her. This scheduling is for the ideal week, and life may pop its head in every once in a while. If you follow this way of scheduling, however, you’ll find that you get so much more done – the right tasks this time.

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