Plan Your “Free Days” for 2008

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Today’s Post was written by Fairy Godmothers Carrie & Danielle. Their anticipated book, Style Statement will be available in April.

 

Harnessing time can be especially tricky when you’re creative and ambitious, and when you want to rock your career and have uninterrupted weekends. Quadrants of importance. Priority grids. Sticky notes. Ginko Biloba.

 

Between the two of us we’ve tried every time management and memory improvement system out there. What works beautifully for us is the Entrepreneurial Time Management System. As its creator, Dan Sullivan puts it, “…it allows one’s personal and professional lives to receive an equal amount of attention—indeed, to be in balance—and thus generate energy for each other.” Whether you’re running your own department or running a household, Sullivan’s principles are truly helpful for designing a balanced life.

 

There are 3 ‘Types’ of Days:

 

Free Days: A 24-hour period in which you do not engage in business-related action. You don’t even think about it. The best Free Days are planned in advance.

 

Focus Days: Spend 80% of your day on your most important business-related activities, relationships, and opportunities. This is your day to make things happen, without interruptions and with support systems in place.

 

Buffer Days: “If Focus Days are for performance,” says Sullivan, “Buffer Days are for rehearsals.” Handle all of the details that would otherwise distract your attention on a Focus Day. Catch up, clean up, delegate, brush up on your skills.

Personally, we’ve set Mondays and Fridays for Buffer Days. We return calls, explore, read our newsletters and artsy rags, and prioritize. We indulge in meandering conversation and doodling ideas (guess when our best ideas come to us?). For the mid week we zoom-zoom focus and resist the urge to be distracted by things that don’t fulfill our very immediate objectives. Velocity is our driving intention. As for free evenings and weekends and holidays—we have them! Plenty of sacred, unplugged free-flow time.

 

 

Today’s Magic Wand: Plan your Free Days for the year. What are your desires? More time with your family, a month in Hawaii, a naughty trip to Vegas, or a meditation retreat. Free Days can be also be for the very simple pleasures that you never get around to, like lunch with an old friend or an afternoon at the art gallery. Pencil it in to your calendar, months in advance if necessary. Even if you can’t immediately see a way to get the time off or where the resources will come from, create the space for it so that you and life can start conspiring for your freedom.

 

Funny thing about time…it’s what you make of it.

 

 

 

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