In this 2-part show, I answer the question I get most often - How do I do it?
Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day, through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life.
I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and yesterday we talked about help and today, boundaries.
So, how do I spend my time? What does that look like? Well, I have an ideal week. It’s what helps me prioritize my buckets. You can google search for ideal week online or join my membership for $15/month and there is a section with tools and templates and video that helps you create your ideal week and we always answer questions inside the membership.
I set firm boundaries around my time, what I am available for and how I want to create my best life. That starts with how I create my best day, for me.
We talked about my anti-mourning routine in episode 199. I encourage you to listen, but the gist of it is that my first hour in the morning is not filled with quiet time, meditation, reading and so on like so many of the guru’s tell you how to set up your day for success. I truly believe you listen to your body and know, there are a million ways to do anything, and we need to do what works for us.
So I wake up about 6:45, get coffee and get into my office by 7am where I get a 1-hour power hour to only work on content for this show. It’s when I’m most inspired and alert. At 8am it’s all hands on deck with our daily family meeting where we get the kids breakfast, set them up for their day, chat and have some family time. This is also when we do dishes and tidy up the kitchen. 8:30 I’m out the door driving to school. Back at 9:15 with a 15-minute check-in coffee time with my husband who is still working from home.
By 10am I’m in work mode until about Noon or 1:00 in the afternoon. This year, I’m trying to move my body more, so I have an hour blocked off from 1:30-2:30 to move my body. We’ll see how that goes. At 2:30 I’m doing my workday shutdown routine of closing the loop on emails, social, looking at my day for tomorrow, all the little tasks. And at 3:30 I’m out the door to do school pickup.
After 3:30 I don’t plan on getting more work done. If I need to or I have some time, great, if not, no sweat.
And there you have it, boundaries around my time. You’ll also notice I have built in Intentional Margins® so that I’m not stressed transitioning from one thing to the next. For example, it takes me about 30 minutes for my workday shutdown ritual. But I have an hour, which is super important because when I pick the kids up from school, I want to be intentional about where my headspace is at. I want to be present and engaged when my little guy jumps in the car to tell me about his day - no distractions. That’s a priority for me, so I make sure I have more than enough time to get that done.
Now, I am fully aware that is a luxury and you can hear that and be rolling your eyes thinking - yeah, no way. I get it. But I encourage you to even create a 2 or 3-minute margin as a transition to take a deep breath, ask yourself how you want to show up and what your intention is for the very next thing. I promise this goes a long way.
By setting boundaries on when I work on certain projects (and not check email or social), it allows me to really dial in my time. I’m also pretty clear that it would have to be really important to cut into the 8am family meeting, because that time is a very high priority for me. When you know what your boundaries are, they are much easier to stick to. I invite you to give it a try.
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