#09 Creating Your Ideal Minimalist Week

Lesson 9 Creating your ideal minimalist wig Now that you know what to include in your life,

Now that you have done your creation,

It's time to fit all these things in your wig so that you can start making progress.

In this lesson we will share with you a very practical and visual way to create a wig that you will love.

Look at your creation and reflect about all the things that you brought down.

These things are important to you and you want to make time to work on them.

Doing this exercise will help you to include these things in your weekly plan.

If you don't have a weekly plan,

Don't worry,

I will show you how to create one.

The idea behind this exercise is to help you be realistic and intentional with your time.

We humans tend to be very optimistic when it comes to time and how many activities we can do every day.

By having to fit those activities into a real wig,

You will become aware right away of what you can and can't do.

Once you become aware of this,

You will then become more intentional scheduling only the things that are important to you and you will feel more confident saying no to other things that are not important or not a priority for you right now.

So let's get started with this exercise.

The first thing that you will need is a piece of paper and a pen.

So we are going to write on the top,

We are going to write Monday,

Tuesday,

Wednesday,

Thursday,

Friday,

Saturday and Sunday.

On the left side,

We are going to write the time.

In my case,

I start my template at 6am and I end it at 11pm.

That's what makes sense for me.

If you are a night owl,

You can include as many hours as you want.

Mine goes in increments of half an hour.

The idea behind this is to have all the days of your wigs and all the hours of every day so that you can then fill in the blanks.

After doing that,

You are going to look at your creation and you are going to start writing down the things in blocks.

So for example,

I always recommend starting with the things that you must do.

For example,

You most likely have to go to work if you have a 9 to 5.

So you will write a block,

You will color a block with a specific color if you want.

You can use different colors for every block but you can create a block that goes from 9am until 5pm and that block can be red.

And that block will repeat Monday to Friday if that's when you work.

So you will have a big red block that is called work and that time is already taken by your work.

The next thing that you have to do is I will write down sleeping.

When do you sleep?

We all have to sleep.

So try to write down when do you sleep.

In my case,

I sleep between 11pm and 6,

6.

30am in the morning.

That's normally my regular time.

So I will write a block there,

My block color is green and I will call it sleep.

So now you have your sleeping and you have your work.

What are all the things that you must do?

In my case,

I have a little girl,

18 months old.

So I have to take care of her.

Samantha and myself,

We do 50% each.

So we split our days in half and when she goes to daycare,

We do half and half of whatever time she is with us.

So I will color in Eva's time,

Her name is Eva,

For me is pink.

So I will use a pink color and I will create the blocks of time when I am taking care of Eva.

Then we have to do laundry on a weekly basis.

When do we do it?

We color it.

Normally Saturdays.

We go grocery shopping.

We normally do it on Saturday mornings.

We cook.

You see,

You start putting all the activities and I normally start with the mask because those are the things that are non-negotiable.

You have to do them.

And then after,

In my case,

I have squash,

Playing squash,

Playing tennis,

Playing my guitar.

These are some examples,

Visiting friends.

So you start coloring those blocks.

If you don't have a specific activity,

Think of ingredients.

So you want to nurture your body ingredient.

You want to nurture your mind ingredient.

You want to nurture your social ingredient.

So try to create those blocks in your calendar.

And then you can decide after what activities will fit in that.

Once you do that,

You will have a week with all the different elements,

All the different blocks with different colors.

And it's going to be very visual.

It's going to be a very nice piece of paper to look at.

Majority of the times,

What happens is that you may have more activities than time you have in your week.

When that happens,

That's okay.

What we do here,

That's when we start prioritizing.

This is when we start being minimalist.

You look at everything that you want to do and then you start thinking about what of these things are the most important to me right now?

Because I only have 24 hours a day.

And ideally you won't have every day full 100% because you also need downtime.

You need time for self care.

And sometimes it's just fun to have spare time that you don't know what you are doing and you are open for adventure.

That's okay to do so.

So you start to prioritize the things that you want to see in your life,

The things that you want to work on.

And this is when you start being intentional.

So look at the template and then reflect about it.

And then think from these things that don't fit,

What's more important for me right now?

And then color it in.

Don't worry about being perfect.

Nothing is perfect in life.

This is the first time you are doing this exercise and you can tweak this after a week if you don't feel right with it.

This is just a starting point for you.

Once you have this template,

You get started with your week and then you start to follow through with this template.

If you don't follow through,

It's okay to just write it down,

Just reflect about it.

Why am I not following through?

Is it because the activity that I put in here is not working?

I don't want to do it.

Is it because it's the wrong time to do this kind of activity?

Is it because my energy level is not right at that time?

Is it because an emergency came and I couldn't do it?

You start reflecting,

You start seeing what's happening,

And then you will start tweaking this template to fit better in your life.

So the following week,

You will try to design,

Tweak this and design it.

So I was doing this with a client and we did it digitally using a Google Calendar.

You can also do it digitally.

I strongly recommend doing it by hand at the beginning because it removes all the distractions and allows you the time and the space to actually think about it.

And there is also studies that say that pen to paper activities,

When you write things down,

It triggers things in your brains that when you type in your phone or in your computer,

It's not the same.

That's why I recommend you do this and you can include this in your journal if you have a journal so that you can look at it.

And also you can put this template in front of you in the fridge,

Maybe in your bedroom,

Maybe in a place where you are going to see it every day so that you are constantly reminded of what you wanted to create.

Okay?

So with this client,

We did this in paper and then after she migrated all this information into her Google Calendar.

You can use colors,

You can use names,

You can do everything there.

As days were going through,

She was writing down in the calendar and tweaking the blocks that she wasn't completing according to her plan.

So by the end of the week,

She had the realistic week that she experienced,

But she has the template for the following weeks.

So she can tweak it and then the following week,

She can try something different.

As you see,

This can be something very flexible and this is a work in progress.

It's not something that is set in stone.

And life goes by.

If there are emergencies and you are sidetracked by someone or by something,

That's okay.

But when you are done with that,

You have somewhere to fall into again and you can be on track again very quickly.

If you are unsure of how you spend your time currently,

You can use this template to audit your time or you can use an app to track your time like Taggle.

So what's the idea behind this?

Some people are not comfortable.

I myself wasn't comfortable doing this exercise at the beginning because I didn't even know where my time was going.

I am self-employed and every day was different.

So I used the blank template and every day I was filling in the blanks with information.

What am I doing right now?

Okay,

I am working.

What am I doing?

I'm doing emails.

Okay,

What am I doing now?

I'm going to play squash for an hour.

Okay,

Playing squash.

What am I doing?

I'm cooking dinner.

What am I doing?

I'm going to bed.

I did that for an entire week.

And then after that week,

I was able to look at my template and I was very aware of where my time went.

Then after doing that,

I was able to batch things.

I saw myself,

For example,

Checking emails maybe 10 times a day.

So I decided,

No,

I'm going to check emails maybe three times a day instead because that way I can be more intentional and I can do it faster.

And then I saw myself,

Oh,

I was on social media maybe every 10,

15 minutes just answering quick messages,

But maybe I can batch that and create a blog that is called social media and it's only one hour a day or maybe two hours a day.

It depends on your needs,

Or 15 minutes,

Three times a day.

It depends on your needs and how intensive a task is.

You may require different amounts of time.

But you see where I'm going here.

You are becoming aware of what you are doing.

You are being intentional.

You are minimizing everything that you don't need to do.

And you are starting to create the minimalist lifestyle that you want to see.

Okay,

So this exercise is really,

Really important.

And I recommend you do it.

We also do this exercise,

Samantha and myself,

We do it every few months.

Again,

Every time we feel unproductive,

Every time we feel that what we have is not working,

We are frustrated.

We sit down together and we assess the situation,

What's happening,

When are we frustrated,

Why.

Maybe a new activity came in,

Samantha wanted to do yoga on Wednesday night,

For example.

So I will cover her that night with Eva so that she can go to yoga and maybe I want to go to play tennis the following day.

So she will cover me.

It's all about communication,

Compromise,

And creating a plan that we can all benefit from.

You see?

Remember the steps for communication and remember compromising and creating this plan allows us to be intentional,

Allows us to have a great life.

And we are both very happy.

We all have a very clear picture of what are we supposed to do and when,

And this allows us to have a great lifestyle.

So I really recommend you do this exercise.

You can also print a template if you don't want to do it by hand.

You can just go online and just search by weekly template and then you can just print a template that makes sense to you with the timeframes that are,

That suit you best.

And then you can get,

You can color in your blocks.

So I hope you enjoyed this exercise.

Take the time to do it.

And in the next lesson,

We are going to learn how to say no,

Because most likely you have way more activities than time.

And now it's time for you to learn and be confident about saying no to the things that are not feeding your lifestyle right now.

So see you in the next lesson.