Our first question comes from Clarissa. Clarissa asks, "I do a daily schedule, but how do I avoid feeling like it's redundant? Sometimes I don't need to change things around and I skip scheduling my time block and then it snowballs into one day and then two days, the next thing you know, it's a week." Well, Clarissa, let's focus in on this issue of falling off the habit of daily time block planning and how that can snowball to many days without it.
Typically, it's a sign that you're overworked. There's too much going on, your mind is exhausted. So I think it's actually an important signal. It's not a failing, it's an important signal that maybe we need to pull back on commitments so that the amount we're doing each day is less and try to get more time off.
Your mind needs time off and it's getting it informally by just refusing, mentally speaking, to do any planning. The thing I'm going to recommend that you do persist with, even during these periods, is some sort of bare bones tracking. So for me, it's the metric tracking space in my time block planner.
There's certain key metrics I write in there every day. I never skip that. That's Sacro saying. Now, this takes 20 seconds and you just do it at the end of the day, but it keeps you at least in a mindset of, I am being intentional, I'm keeping track of my life.
I have not just given up on intentionality in my living altogether, even though it only takes 20 seconds. And even if what you're writing down is really bad. So if there's things you track, like, did I read today? Did I eat well today? Did I exercise today? You're not doing all of it.
You're writing that down, saying that you didn't do it. Bad or not bad. That is like a bare bones fallback plan that I'm always doing that, even if I'm not getting around to my time block planning. And then it makes it much easier. So okay, well, now let me actually go back to doing my time block plans.
So do the fallback mode. So I have the very basic behavior, the metric train tracking, you never stop doing. So you never leave the mindset of I control my life. And I care about what's happening in my life, even if it takes 20 seconds. And then two, if you're consistently skipping time blocking, take that as a signal that you have too much going on.
That's okay. It's an important signal. You need a day off. You need earlier shutdowns. You need to take three things off your plate. It's useful information, not a sign that you're doing something wrong.