Having trouble checking off your to-do list this summer? Try these [three] tips to be more productive. There are a lot of things to love about summer — backyard barbecues, trips to the lake, family vacations. Summer seems to be non-stop. Which is awesome. Except when you’re trying to work!
How can we get our to-do list checked off with all the summer distractions?
1. Figure out your spaces.
We can’t work unless we have a time and a place to do it in. For many of us, our spaces change during the summer. This is especially true if you have kids who are normally in school. Even if you don’t have kids in school, though, the summer still provides endless distractions and changes in our schedules. And when our routines change, it can take a while to adjust if we are not intentional about creating new routines.
If you’re struggling to find time to work, you might need to sit down and look at your calendar and figure out when and where you can create space in your schedule for creative work.
Start by looking for regular intervals of time. If you have consistent days and times when you can work, this makes it easier to build summer work habits, which will help you get more done in less time. Are there times during the week when the kids are out of the house? Or napping? Are there activities you were involved in during the spring that are off during the summer? If you don’t have enough time currently available, you might need to think of ways to give (or buy or barter) yourself more time.
2. Give yourself the power of small wins on your to-do list.
Don’t just look for big consistent chunks of available time. Check your calendar at the beginning of every week to see what small spaces you might have available.
Then, give yourself the power of small wins by breaking your project into small chunks that you can complete in your small spaces.
Having a big project can sometimes be frustrating. If your only goal is “get the whole thing done,” you probably won’t feel much of a sense of accomplishment until the whole thing is done. And if you’re working for weeks at a time without feeling a sense of marked accomplishment, this can be demoralizing.
But if you break up your project into smaller sub-goals, you can more easily measure your progress and feel a sense of accomplishment each time you complete a small goal. And feeling a sense of accomplishment every day helps keep us motivated to keep going.
