Sometimes it feels like the last year has been one challenge after another.
The truth is, struggle is always an option for us, but so is bliss.
When I get worked up because I’ve been focused for too long on the struggle, it’s important for me to stop to practice gratitude.
No matter what is going on, we have all survived hard times before and we are strong enough, smart enough, capable enough to navigate them again.
Here are 3 Gratitude Prompts for you to use as Affirmations or for Journaling to help you shift your perspective on the hard times you may be going through.
✨ I am grateful for the chance to start over each day
✨ Thank you God for carrying me through the hard times
✨ I’ve gone through hard times before and I’m strong enough to do it again
Take some time this weekend to focus on these prompts in one form or another if you are feeling overwhelmed, sad, or defeated.
Brighter days always return to those with a grateful heart 🖤
And of course, if you are experiencing a particularly hard time, please reach out to someone you trust to get support. We are not meant to weather storms alone.
Take care of yourself and I wish you a peaceful weekend.
For years I have been absolutely obsessed with understanding and uncovering the key habits that create a successful woman. Like everything in life, success doesn’t just happen by chance or luck, it happens because deliberate action has been taken strategically. From studying the routines and habits of the most successful and influential women I could find, these are the 10 Habits that I have found set them apart.
🛀 They put themselves and their needs first
🏆 They are clear on their goals
⏱ They establish strong boundaries around their time and energy
🖊 They set daily intentions
🧘🏻♀️ They work on their mindset daily
✔️ They have productive routines
🔗 They create systems whenever possible
🧠 They seek out opportunities for growth personally, professionally, and financially
💡They bring solutions, not excuses
👩🏻💻 They show up and do the work
Now, I’d love to hear from you, which habit are you currently working on?Leave a comment below.
If you have been following me for a while, you have likely heard me talk about one of my major productivity and planning strategies, the Top 3 List.
The Top 3 List is a list of 3 prioritized daily tasks that you need to focus on for the day. Many women in my community come to me, asking how they can get a handle on their never ending to-do list, how they can find focus to ensure they are completing the most important tasks, and how they can make the time to work on their own personal goals alongside tasks for work, home or family life. The Top 3 list is a productivity and planning strategy that I believe addresses all three of those situations. This strategy is so impactful, in fact, that I intentionally design a Daily Top 3 List into all of my Functional Planning Inserts.
It’s a basic fact of life that for most of us in a day, to borrow a line from Elton John, “there is more to do than can ever be done.” Most of us have never ending, ever growing to do lists and when you try to organize your day by your to-do list alone, you will find that tasks are an infinite source of work that can easily drain your energy and take over the precious time you have in a day.
If you are working off this never ending list each and everyday, I can confidently say, I know that there are things you are NOT getting done off that list. And I would bet that some of the things you push off for the next day end up being priority tasks that really should have been completed today.
So, by taking the focus off your complete to-do list and instead pulling just three tasks from it to prioritize for the day, you will begin to see that by choosing those three tasks strategically, you will ensure you are always getting the most important work on your list done.
There is also a fundamental principle of productivity known as the Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule. It states that just 20% of our actions create 80% of our results. That means that 20% of the things we do in a day are leading to the majority of our outcomes. So, truly, there are some tasks that are just higher impact for our days than others, and the Top 3 list gives us an opportunity each day to zero in on those few tasks that will truly yield the most results for us.
So, it would benefit all of us to start using the Daily Top 3 List as a jumping off point for our daily work. By no means does the Top 3 List mean you ONLY complete three things each day, instead these are just the tasks that really need to be prioritized.
Sounds easy, right? Choose three tasks every day and get them done, simple enough!
Well, not quite.
I will say that although this strategy is simple in theory, it’s not as easy as it seems in practice because it requires us to be very good at prioritizing. It’s not enough to choose any three tasks, this strategy only works when we choose the right 3 tasks.
I consider the ability to prioritize our tasks a mental muscle that we need to flex in order to develop it to its potential.
When you get started setting your Daily Top 3, I promise you, you are going to make some mistakes. You will list out tasks that aren’t actually priorities, you will think something is a priority but then realize your error half way through the day, and you are going to accidentally put projects on your Top 3 instead of tasks (very common.)
But, the more you use this strategy, day in and day out, you are going to improve. You will start setting a better Top 3 List and it’s going to bring you to a completely new level of productivity, focus and achievement when you start getting done the important tasks and letting go of the non-essentials.
So, to help you create a better Top 3 List, I have a few tips or prompts for you to consider when you sit down at your planner each day.
Tip #1:If you could only do 3 things today, which would make the day feel like a success? These might be tasks you are afraid to tackle but know you will feel so good when they are complete. Or these are tasks with impending due dates, or that need to be done before something else that is also important can be accomplished.
Tip #2:Choose tasks that aren’t part of the daily routine you always do. You don’t need to prioritize things that are everyday no-brainers for you because you will likely have some form of self-discipline that kicks in to ensure you get those things done anyway.
Tip #3:Choose 3 individual tasks NOT projects. A project is a collection of multiple steps or tasks that need to be accomplished, and if you put a project on your top 3, it’s going to take much more time and effort for you to complete and will undermine the effectiveness of this strategy.
I hope this post and these tips helps you to start using this simple but powerful planning and productivity strategy in your own life daily. If you are using a planner or inserts that do not give you the dedicated space to list out your Top 3 each day, I highly recommend you check out my Master Plan System of inserts. As I mentioned earlier, all of the Functional Planning Inserts I design, including those in the Master Plan System include a dedicated space for this essential planning and productivity strategy because it truly is a game changer that will upgrade the way you work each day.
Remember, for the month of February I have a discount code FEB2021 for 20% OFF all the planning inserts and tools in TheCharmedShop.com!
Last week I showed you how I create the plan for a new month to make sure I move my goals forward, but I kinda just breezed by two key elements that go into making that plan.
First, is my goal setting process and the second is my project planning process. I’m going to show you my project planning process in a video in just a moment but first let me catch you up on the goal setting part.
At the start of the year, I have an in-depth process I work through to set my goals for the year and to break those goals down into specific smaller objectives. During this process I choose up to three objectives to assign to each month and lay them out for reference on a dedicated insert in my planner.
So, before the year begins I have a skeleton overview of what I am focused on for any given month. In the monthly planning video, you saw me pull my objectives from the inserts they are mapped on, and transfer those to my monthly calendar spread.
That is the first part of my yearly planning process, the actual goal and objective setting. If you want to learn and replicate my process for goal setting, I have it broken out in the You Got This workbook and also in the New year goal setting master class inside the Productivity and Planning Master Mind membership. Next, is project planning.
For some of my objectives it is necessary for me to break the objective down into smaller action steps on a project plan. I don’t make a project plan for every single objective anymore. I did at one point, but I found it was overkill for some objectives and types of projects I do repeatedly and know the steps for by heart.
Let me give you an example.
For January, I didn’t need to create a project plan for any of my objectives but I finished all three. I had to create the master class for my membership, which sounds like a project but I just create a slideshow, handout and inserts so it’s three formulaic pieces that I don’t find helpful to list on a project plan. Since this objective wasn’t turned into a project plan, instead the tasks were written out directly on the monthly master task list for January.
Same applies to the second objective, updating my email welcome sequence. That objective simply required me to read over and rewrite three emails. If I wanted to be particular and break that work into many more pieces I guess I could have. I think we can break anything into minute tasks to track, but for me that strategy isn’t necessary.
I will say, between you and I, I see influencers all the time in the planning community, showing how they break down goals into smaller tasks and often I think it’s overkill just to have more things to check off their to do lists. If having more tasks listed to track inspires and motivates you to get the work done, by all means, please do that. Or if you aren’t someone who knows how to reach an objective by heart, and needs steps broken down for reference and tracking, please, don’t skip out on making project plans because they can be an excellent tool for accountability.
I just know for me, that if I over complicate a project with too many tasks, it overwhelms me and I might fear starting it. Instead, just thinking that I have like two or three things to do for an objective actually gets me started and if I have a few extra tasks that pop up while working on the objective, that’s fine because I have the momentum built up of starting. But that is me. Clearly, I’m a projective person who knows how to manage my time and accomplish many objectives and goals in a year, so do not hold yourself to my standards if you aren’t at that level of confidence and self accountability to your work yet! You will get there if you follow my methods and planning philosophy, just trust the process!
So now that you can see I don’t project plan every objective, let’s talk about how I project plan for the objectives that do need it!
I actually have two styles of project planning inserts I use, one is my standard project planning worksheet that comes bundled with the Master Planner or Project Planning Bundle in my shop. The other insert is my Strategic Planning Insert from the CEO Strategy Planner.
Today I am going to show you how I use the strategic insert as I map out an objective that belongs to June. Why are we project planning an objective for June so early? Because I actually need to start talking about this objective now to make sure everything goes smoothly in June.
Watch How I Create a Strategic Project Plan in the video below.
DON’T FORGET
For the month of February, I have a 20% OFF Code for the Planning Inserts and Tools in my shop. Use the code FEB2021 at checkout in TheCharmedShop.com to get the discount!
I hope this information has been helpful for you in understanding better how to create a strategic project plan and how I break down a goal into individual tasks.
A few weeks ago, one of my master mind sisters in the Productivity + Planning Master Mind asked for my opinion on an image she had seen on Instagram. I will post the image here for you to read, but essentially, it was a tweet from the Author Shailja Patel explaining her belief that the concept “We all have the same 24 hours” is nonsense due to income inequality. I thought this was an interesting item to comment on and I provided the following feedback to the group. After our conversation, it was suggested that my response was so poignant that I should share it in a post for my wider community. The following was my response, I have reformatted it to flow better in this post:
This is where I agree with this post- there are people who are systematically underserved in our world, for which doing everyday things takes much more time and effort.
People who cannot afford a car or ride share services, and have to take public transport places.
People who live in areas where grocery stores are further from their homes, so they rely on corner stores where food is marked up in price.
People who cannot afford childcare and don’t have a reliable system of friends or family around them to help with that, so they have to take less desirable jobs with more flexible work schedules and often lower pay.
This is a real issue and it makes life a struggle for them.
Communities of color suffer from this the most.
But I still don’t love this post, because it is comparing those communities on one extreme of the productivity spectrum to those on the other, and it’s leaving out “the middle class”.
I like to use the phrase “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” because on a basic level, it’s true and there are examples of people from every point on the privilege (or non-privilege) scale that do buckle down, do the work, stay focused and become a success (whatever that means for them).
There are plenty of people who come from families of wealth who blow their money, are completely unproductive and end up on the streets as well.
That’s what I don’t like about the post. It’s comparing two extremes and almost giving people with enough resources a built in excuse as to why they don’t have to achieve their goals if they have some barrier that they judge in their way.
When it comes to the “middle class” many of us have enough resources at our disposal to move towards our goals and dreams, if we choose to see them and take advantage of them, and yet, plenty of us aren’t reaching our potential.
What it comes down to for me is mindset.
I know that until systems are devised to help the underserved, it’s always going to be more difficult for a majority of people in those situations to move out of those circumstances, but if you look at this from a mindset perspective, if one person in a bad situation decides they are going to do whatever it takes to go after their dreams, then I know they will make it.
The same thing is true of a middle class mother, the same thing is true of a billionaires daughter.
The only difference between them to me, is that it’s much easier for someone who has endless resources at their disposal to believe they can achieve what they want and go after it.
The middle class mother has less resources, but still plenty of opportunity if she would see it.
The poor high school drop out has even less resources and opportunity, but can still make any dream happen if they are willing to shift their mindset to believe and do the work.
One of the most common productivity conundrums I see is “I know what I need to do, I have made the plan and I have the time, but when the time comes, I don’t do what I know I should do to achieve my goal. How do I fix this?”
The answer is mindset.
In that situation, if you know what you want to achieve and have a plan and even have some time to move it forward, if you are NOT taking action, it’s because of something in your mindset. A limiting belief. And you will never do the work, no matter how good the plan is or how much time you give yourself, until you remove that block and shift your mindset.
The factor I think we all often forget when it comes to achieving goals is that, multiple people can have the same goal and take completely different routes to achieve it. That’s what having the same 24 hours in a day means to me. Not that we are all going to execute the same strategy to reach the goal, or that we all need to be on level playing ground to make our goals happen. Instead, it’s understanding that we all have our unique place in the world where we are right now, and still we can all reach the same destination if we choose to take action and believe we are capable and worthy of our objective.
Until we acknowledge that mindset is the deciding factor in success, we are always going to be focused on the wrong elements, leaving more people of means reaching their potential than those with less, and a heck of a lot of people with “enough” believing they aren’t enough.
So, what do you think? Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts.
Today, I want to show you how to plan and organize your month to achieve your goals. Specifically, I want to walk you through my monthly functional planning routine, which is the routine I use to create a big picture view of my month, understand and set reasonable expectations for what I am going to accomplish and ensure that I am moving my goals and objectives forward. This routine is not how I plan out my weeks or my days specifically- those are completely different parts of my routine with their own process and intentions. For me, the monthly routine is where I get a chance to align with my goals and ensure process is being made on them.
First, I’d like to explain the inserts I use for this process. I am currently using the Month on 2 Pages inserts that come bundled with the Master Plan System. You can purchase these inserts a la carte as well. Although these inserts are called Month on 2 Pages, it would really be more accurate to call them Month on 4 pages because there are two full spreads, 4 total pages thatI I use to write out my monthly plans. The first spread is the dated 2 page calendar, and then second spread is the Monthly Master Task List and Monthly Tracker.
Now let’s talk about how to plan and organize your month to achieve your goals!
The first thing you need to know about planning your month, especially if you have goals you are aiming to hit, is that you need to have your goals broken into objectives ahead of time. At the start of the year, I set my goals, I break them into objectives, and I map those objectives out in my project planning sheets and with my CEO Strategy Planner inserts. So walking into any month I always know what I am going to be working on as long as I don’t need to change my plans. Click here to learn my entire goal setting process.
Now, I might not create the complete project plan for each objective at the start of the year- I prefer to do that as necessary at the start of the month. So if any of my objectives require a project plan, I will create one at the start of the month so I know all the tasks I need to accomplish for an objective, and then I transfer them to my Monthly Master Task List. Instead of keeping a complete list of all the things I know I need to do, I keep my lists broken out by month so I am only looking at the tasks that belong to that month.
So here you can see, this Monthly Task List is everything I expect to do in February. Does that mean, it’s every single thing I will do and nothing not on this list will get done? No, of course I know things pop up throughout the month, but for now, walking into the month, these are all the tasks I know I need to focus on if I want to accomplish my goals!
Once this list is populated, the second thing I do in my monthly planning process is to populate my monthly calendar.
On my monthly calendar, I will mark off important dates and scheduled tasks I have across the month. This by no means will be an exhaustive list of every single scheduled task I have, because there is not enough room in the boxes for me to list every call, errand or appointment, but if it’s something important, or a key element of a day, I have it scheduled in.
So you can see, I schedule things like giving my dogs their meds, holidays, birthdays, I put when credit card payments are due. You’ll see I don’t love to decorate in my planner but I do like these little page flag stickers to help me highlight a day in my calendar. I make those flags myself with my silhouette machine.
My monthly calendar is also where I put my editorial calendar for my content, and marketing information for my business. I post content onto one of my platforms everyday, and I have that schedule marked off, and then as I populate content ideas I write them in and highlight them so I remember what I need to post each day. Most of my content is processed in bulk. I write all my blog posts on one day, I create my Instagram posts for the week in one day, so that is why the editorial calendar itself isn’t fully populated yet. I will write in the posts when I create them and I use a content brainstorm insert from the CEO Strategy Planner to list out all my content ideas. I have gone through periods where I would outline all the content for my editorial calendar at the start of the month, but I would often switch up posts and come up with even better ideas at the last minute so the plan would change. It’s easier to just have the skeleton right now for me and then populate the posts as I solidify the content.
With the calendar populated, the next thing I do is transfer my top 3 monthly priorities to my monthly calendar page. I use the lined note section on the bottom of the spread for that so I know what the 3 most important projects are for my month. This is an example of what I mentioned before, that I have my goals and objectives broken out for the year ahead of time, and during this yearly goal planning, I assign 3 tasks to each month to be my focus. This system has served me well, helped me to properly plan out what I am working on when, and ensures I complete my objectives and goals for the year.
Next, I use the notes column at the start of each week on my monthly calendar to allocate tasks from my monthly master task list to my monthly calendar to ensure that I have time set aside for when I will be doing the work I said I wanted to do. This practice is great for setting reasonable expectations for ourselves because without this little step, it’s easy for me to push off tasks or just put too many tasks on my to do list and then get overwhelmed and fail to complete my objectives. So this helps me balance my workload for sure.
The final part of my monthly planning process is to populate my monthly tracker.
As part of the Master Plan system you get a monthly tracker that you can use to track whatever you please. I actually like to use it to track habits, tasks and my income in one place. You can see, I can write in the habit in the largest column, there are 7 columns for the days of the week, and I can leave space in the rows for the number of weeks in the month. I put the date of each Monday in the left side column when I lay out the tracker this way. Then I make an area for Income, I can track the weekly income in my shop, then the total income from a few of my main income sources. This tracker page is great because you can lay it out a number of different ways and track many different things.
That is everything I wanted to teach you about my monthly planning process and how I create monthly plans that help me achieve my goals. This process even makes planning my weeks and days easier because I’ve laid out a lot of information in just the calendar spread alone. This really is a great monthly spread. If you’re monthly calendar doesn’t give you this much space on such a relatively small piece of paper- this is half letter paper- It may definitely be time to upgrade your planner to the Master Plan System.
For the month of February I have a special discount code to share with you that will give you 20% any Productivity Tools and insert in my shop. The code is FEB2021 and it expires at the close of February so if you have not found planner peace yet or have a system of inserts that make planning a daily routine for success, purchase your copy of the Master Plan System TODAY!
We are getting close to the one year mark of our world-wide shelter in place orders and I don’t know about you, but I have been needing a change in my home office situation.
So, instead of working from my office at a desk- I kid you not- I have reverted back to working from my bed a few days a week and I have been really loving it.
Of course, for the sake of your productivity and mental health, working from your bed is probably not the best choice for an ongoing daily habit, but I will say, it’s kind of fun and great for those days when you need to get stuff done behind the computer screen and really want to have grace with yourself.
This setup might not be for everyone, but if you have the right kind of work to do and the right mindset around this, it really can work.
It all started for me about a week ago when the shine of the New Year wore off (as it always does) and I was feeling very caged into my current routine. Wake up, get ready, sit in office, do work… was getting to be too monotonous for me. BUT I had work to do and a business to run, so out of sheer laziness I grabbed my laptop and brought it right back to bed with me.
My initial goal was simply to indulge my laziness while getting a few essential tasks completed. I told myself “finish your top three and you can be lazy and lie in bed the rest of the day guilt-free.” So, I sat in bed with my laptop and unexpectedly completed my tasks in almost no time at all. Propped up by pillows and still wearing the oversized t-shirt I had slept in, all the mental resistance to my work faded away and I found clarity. It felt so good and so freeing to just give myself permission to stay in bed to work, and so I worked from my bed most of that week. It was the grace I needed that week to keep myself feeling sane and in control.
So, I’ve taken to calling this home office setup Business In Bed- highly imaginative, I know! But I put together a little roundup of tools that made my Business In Bed experience even more convenient for me and I wanted to share the inspiration with you all!
I hope this post gave you some inspiration for your new favorite work space! Let me know in the comments how you have been switching it up as you shelter in place and work from home.
If you have been curious about journaling, today I have some great information to share with you. In this post, I will explain:
Why you should start journaling
Strategies to consider for journaling
Tools to use when beginning your practice
Building the habit of daily (or regular) journaling
Why you should start journaling
There are plenty of reasons why someone would want to journal, and if you are reading this I assume you are trying to get some inspiration for yourself or you already know why you want to start in some form. I think it’s very important when you start a practice and regular habit like journaling that you know what you intend to get out of the experience. When you have that personal reason why or your intention for it set, it makes it much easier for you to decide the strategy you want to use, stick to the practice and remain accountable to it.
Documented Benefits of Journaling
Mental clarity
Improve your Productivity
Reduced Stress and anxiety
Increased Happiness
Identify and overcome limiting beliefs
Reprogram your mindset
Self-therapy and reflection for self-awareness
Manifestation of goals
Okay, now that you know why you want to journal, let’s discuss the common strategies that you can use to do so. I have seven to share with you and I want to make it clear that you can choose one or more of these types to use at once. I myself often switch between these different strategies of journaling often or I tend to do more than one in a single journaling session.
Strategies to consider for journaling
Brain-dump – write down all the things your holding in your mind to organize and prioritize them.
Stream of consciousness writing – just writing out all your thoughts feelings emotions to release your thoughts and self reflect. See morning pages from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
Gratitude journaling – list out gratitude, good to set your mindset as it’s documented to make you 10% happier.
Journal prompts – guided journaling for self reflection, great for people who get overwhelmed at the thought of having to fill a blank page.
Affirmations – repeatedly writing out affirmations. Stick to 1-3 as to not overwhelm yourself.
Scripting – writing out how you want your day to go for the purpose of manifesting it.
Future writing – journaling as yourself but at a future date in time after some goal or achievement has been met and chronical everything that happened to bring you to that point
Tools to use when beginning your practice
For the most part you can get started journaling with just some blank note paper or even a note taking app on your phone or computer. There is some data that supports writing by hand rather than typing but that is really for specific benefits of stress reduction. So, what you intend to get out of your journaling is key to know when choosing the tools to use.
As an example, a notebook like the Stalogy Editor’s Series gives you a years worth of undated pages to really do any of the journaling strategies we discussed already.
For myself, personally, I get a little intimidated by a completely blank page with no structure or guidance so over the years as I’ve been journaling for various reasons, I’ve designed different inserts for journaling to accompany my planner.
High Vibe Bible inserts are designed for a loosely guided gratitude and manifestation journaling experience
I designed a number of guided journaling workbooks for my Empire Building students and Productivity Master Mind Members with prompts intended to help them in specific areas of productivity, mindset and business
Most recently I designed a day on two page planning and journaling insert based on my previous video 5 Daily Prompts and Affirmations for Making a Plan that Comes True. I’ve been loving this insert even though it’s a little more than I’d normally use in my planner I’ve been enjoying the daily page to supplement my weekly master planner spread.
Building the habit of daily (or regular) journaling
The final piece of the journaling equation is to actually build the habit. Now, it’s up to you to decide if you need journaling to be a daily practice, a weekly practice or just something you do sporadically when you need it. This links back to your why, and ultimately is your choice. You can’t mess up journaling and there are no rules that say you have to journal a specific amount of times or at a specific time of day to get benefit from it.
Is journaling a habit that the more you do, the more you improve… of course! But I want to remind you not to turn the idealization of a perfect journaling practice that is going to change your life forever, into an expectation that you struggle to meet and then end up beating yourself up about. As you get started with journaling, I’d advise you to invest in the tools that make you excited, and then set a reasonable schedule for journaling. Some people prefer journaling in the morning, some in the evening. I aim for the morning but when I forget I have no problem doing a midday reset or even a bed time journaling session.
Start slow, maybe one day a week. And then after a few weeks, build up to two days and so on. There is no reason to overwhelm yourself! Use journaling as a tool for your self improvement. And remember the affirmation I gave you last week what I decide gets to be the path for me this is definitely true of journaling!
Watch the video
I hope this information has been helpful for you in determining how to begin your own journaling practice. In the comments I would love to hear about which strategies you are interested in trying for yourself!
