Once you are habitually scheduling tasks that lead to consistency with the ability to adapt and be flexible, you may start looking at how to optimize your systems. And once you optimize one system, it becomes a little addictive. I actually became a happier person with optimization. It’s like I was competing with myself and I kept winning! I kept asking, “Can I do it faster? Make it easier? Do it on a different day?” This is what truly productive people do, they optimize. 

Reward of Optimizing

Remember the literature I shared about the Invisible Family Load? It noted three aspects: cognitive, emotional, and managerial. The emotional aspect was negative because of the stress or worry you carry by taking care of your family, but the other two were positive. There’s a confidence that comes from being able to depend on yourself from planning, a happiness that things are getting produced, happiness from finding “me time,” and when you are the one managing it all effectively, that is so rewarding. 

You Can Make New Rules 

I remember when I was trying to optimize my laundry. I tried one load a day, which wasn’t right for me. I tried to get it all done over the weekend, but then I was thinking about laundry for three whole days. THEN, I tried to get all the laundry done in one day and that was it for me! I would do laundry on Saturdays while the kids were cleaning their rooms. This worked for a long time. Then when Abby and I were sharing the machines, we worked out a schedule. Now my laundry is optimized on Saturdays again for this phase of life I am in. This is the beauty of Home Planning Day. It’s the time to look at your current phase and optimize your systems and make new rules. Greg and I are traveling more frequently; that may push me to consider a different laundry day. I will re-evaluate this during the next Home Planning Day. Kids sports, holidays, work, or summer, all these seasons of life can affect the optimization of systems. 

I realized as summer was approaching this year, that Abby would be home on my normal work from home days because she works for the school system and has summers off. This is not really a problem except for the PhD and recording podcasts. I like to be home alone. This forced me to look at my systems and consider what I needed to do to keep my studying and recording optimized. I decided on a few new rules…Mondays and Thursdays I wear ponytails and that shaves a few minutes off of getting ready in the morning. I ended up moving all my PhD stuff to the office and I decided to study there. All of my supplies are in one space now and all work is done at the office. That way “little baby” Grayson can’t distract me either. 

And I will batch record episodes when possible to be 2-4 weeks ahead. I found that when I try to record any further, the energy is off. If it’s January and I’m trying to record episodes about March energy and tasks, my energy is off. I’m more passionate about the message when I am in the same energy, too. I played with trying to record first thing in the morning, but that didn’t work because that’s “Lisa time.” I’m not in the right energy yet. I also found by batch recording episodes, it takes less time each episode. I am more efficient when I sit down and crank them out. I can also reference “previous” episodes because I just recorded them!

These are just a few examples of what I have done to optimize my systems. Decide what needs to be in balance and what can be out of balance in this phase of your life to be truly productive.

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