Continuing with the third of the three part series on SUNDAY AFTERNOON PREP.
Sunday afternoons are a great time to make your plans and prepare for the coming work week. Let me rephrase that, Sundays are the greatest time of the week to make your plans and prepare for the coming work week. Now, with being said, what do you do on Sunday afternoons to prepare?
Personally, there are several things that I do to prepare. I am going to share them with you over the coming weeks. I will break them down into their own groups to make it easier for me to write about them. Last week, I talked about ensuring you have a functioning writing utensil and paper at all times.
This week, I talk about the third thing I do to prepare for the work week. I spend part of my Sunday afternoons making three lists. Now while everyone has their own unique opinion about list, list making, and list makers there is still a great need for lists.
I make three lists: Urgent & Important, Not Urgent but Important and Filler.
Borrowing from the Four Quadrant used in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey, I like to use the top two quadrants to start my lists for the week.
Urgent & Important
This list includes those items that need to be addressed no matter what. For example, this week I must get my automobile’s annual inspection done before I can even think about going to get tags for the year. I should have no problem getting it the inspection completed, the trick is making time to go and get it done.
Not Urgent but Important
On this list I would put “Pay for vehicle tag” as this week this item is NOT urgent but it is important. If I do not do it this week next week it will move to the Urgent and Important list. The trick to this list is to not allow things to move into the Urgent and Important because you failed to complete them this week. So be careful with items on this list.
Filler
This third and final list is for those items that I can complete when I have some down time or between projects throughout the day. Typically, these are reminders for me to post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. When to write a blog post, what day to do a podcast (I have three podcast) and anything else that I can fit in.
Now these are the three that work for me. Your experience will dictate what list or lists will work for you. No matter what you use there is one thing that cannot be denied writing things down cannot be beat and that’s non-negotiable.
Until next time,
David Guerra