During our last week in the Creating more time series, I want to help you prioritize the wants in your life over the what-I-think-I-have-to’s you have. First I want to do a little recap on how we got to thing point so far:
- Week 1 we learned You Can’t Do It All, and by accepting that you can start to write out all of your obligations you already have to see which ones suck your time away the most, and if they are truly something you want to do.
- Week 2 we learned You Control How Busy you Are, we took the list of everything we wrote out and cut 25% out of the next two months scheduled things we do! I think this is the hardest step but once you do it you feel like a weight was lifted!
- Week 3 we learned the power of Saying No and How it Can Change your Life! By saying no to some things you are actually saying Yes! to the things you truly care about and want to spend your time on in the first place.
- And last week in week 4 we learned to Stop Over Committing, and tried a new way of “spending” you time for each week.
Now in this last week, similar to You control how busy you are lesson, we are going to be Sorting Through the Wants in your Life with 5 simple steps! 
- First, make a list. On this list should be a line right down the center of the paper, one side write “Have To” on the other side right “Wants and Commitments”, now fill each side as full as you can. Some things that would probably make it to your Have to side would be “Go to work” and “clean the house”, some things that will end up on the Wants and Commitments side would possibly be “go to book group” and “Take Tina to Soccar practice, music practice, art lessons, library programs, etc”.
- Once you have that big ole list done, and if your like me you might have had to use two pieces of paper (YIKES! Overloaded!) I want you to set a timer for 5 minutes and quickly go through the entire list in that time and without thinking to hard on it, cross off the first ones that jump to your mind as “I don’t want to do that” in the Wants and Commitments side. This will probably quickly eliminate 15% of your items right away! That can be from a couple of hours to half a day of regained time!
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- After you’ve done that go through that same list with another 5 minute timer and highlight all the things that you truly want to do on the Wants and Commitments side. These are your priority items, these things show what you really want to invest time into doing! Now I want you to re-write all the items that weren’t highlighted or crossed off in the first two rounds on a new piece of paper. Spend another 5 minutes highlighting (in a different color then the top priorities color) and crossing more things out until everything has been either highlighted or crossed out.
- Now write the Wants list with the first highlighted priority items first & the second priority highlighted items second. For me hands down the (Blue) Priority top part of the list was full of the things I truly want to spend more time on! and the second (Green) Priority colored list reflected things I would like to do OCCASIONALLY.
- Now take a planner or schedule printable you have and write in all the Have To items first, then around those, begin to fill it first with Blue Highlighted items and after you have used all of those to your satisfaction sneak a few green highlighted things onto each month
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Try this for 3 months and I bet you will love your new schedule and lifestyle again! And have a whole lot more fun doing it all! Thank you so much for going through this Creating More Time process with me! We deserve to do more things we love, and dare I say it but we need to put a bigger priority on our needs and our spouses needs before our kids wants!
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