50. Plan Your Week With Me!

Today, I'm giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how I plan my week. I walk you through my simple step-by-step process using real-life examples and offering strategies to make planning work for you. Want to watch while listening? Then be sure to join the SLP Support Group so you can see exactly what I'm doing to plan my time.

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Transcript

This is Your Speech Path: Mindful Time Management for the Busy SLP, my name's Theresa Harp, and as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be if you're an SLP, who's overworked burnout and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. 

Hey, SLPs, today's episode is a recording from a Facebook Live that I did in the SLP Support Group. I decided to take this audio and share it with all of you here on the podcast, because it holds incredible value. And if you want access to more content like this, then be sure to join the SLP Support Group on Facebook so that you never miss a thing. The link is always in the show notes. Can't wait for you to join us.

Okay. Hi everyone. Whoever is listening, I am doing something a little bit different, so I'm recording a video right now that I'm going to be sharing on the podcast. You might also be watching this in the SLP Support Group. So it is a video and audio. The audio, of course, will get uploaded to the podcast, so you might just be listening. And if that's you, if you are listening and not watching, highly, highly encourage you to pop into the SLP Support Group. There's the link in the show notes if you haven't yet joined, because I'll be sharing the video there in the group. And I think that, especially for my visual learners, I think that this video is going to be helpful for you. So that's one thing I wanted to say before I tell you what's happening.

Another thing that I wanted to offer is I've never done anything like this before. I didn't really think this through in advance. I just sort of had the idea and decided to hit record. But what I'm going to be attempting to do today is walk you through the way that I do my planning. So one sort of, uh, what's the word, um, secret that I guess I want to reveal here. It's that I'm recording this on a Monday for a pot--for the podcast episode that's going to get released tomorrow. So I'm recording this podcast episode the day before, sharing that in full transparency, because I think it's important for those of you who are listening to know that I don't do everything well in advance, and I don't even expect my coaching clients to be necessarily getting everything done well in advance. And that's a topic for a whole other show, a whole other episode, but I just wanted to be totally transparent about that. And then the other piece of that, the other reason why this is important is because it's already the week has already begun, like it's Monday, the week has started, and I'm just now sitting down to plan out my week. And I share that with you, because I see so many of you, especially clients who I coach, where we think that if it's not done, quote, unquote, right, there's no point in doing it right. How many times have you heard that growing up or just said by other people? "Well, if you want it done right, do it yourself. And if you're not going to do it right, then don't do it at all." Well, what is "right?" What is "wrong?" I would I have preferred to have this planning of the week done before the week actually started, sure, but it didn't. And so rather than make that a problem, I'm just going to go ahead and plan what I can Okay, and I would encourage you to do the same thing. So if you're somebody who is curious, nosy about how people plan their weeks, about maybe how I plan my week, then you're in for a good episode or a good video training today. If you're someone who just struggles to sort of map out your week, or you feel like there are maybe different approaches that you can take, or different strategies you can use when it comes to planning awesome listen and watch, because I've got something for you. And if this is if you're somebody who is like, I'm never one that plans out my week, and I think that that's pretty impossible, or it takes too much time, or it doesn't ever work out, then definitely stay with me, and let's explore that together and see how you feel at the end of this episode. Okay, one more thing that I'm going. Say before I start actually doing the planning is, this is the way that I plan out my weeks when I plan them. However, this is one way you can do it. And the point of this episode or of this video training is not for you to plan your week the way that I plan my week. You can certainly try it. You can try out this system I'm using the time bucket system, which some of you may have heard me talk about before. You can try it. But I'm not suggesting that this is the one and only way, the best way, the fastest way for you to do things. So you can sort of observe and see how this might work for you. If you might want to take elements of this, but you can also just disregard the method that I'm using, and if you have something that works well for you, then use that system. Okay? You don't need to recreate the wheel, all right? I think I said everything. I need to say you can take a sip of water. I'm Oh, by the way, one more thing. Keep saying, one more thing. I believe that this is going to be episode 50 of the podcast, which I'm pumped about. That's a milestone. And when I say episode 50, I'm talking about the your speech path podcast. Obviously, before that, you may have heard me talk about there was I had the podcast. It was just under a different name. Those episodes are no longer available. But for this podcast, Fresh Start your speech path. This is episode 50. So woohoo, yay. I'm excited about that. Okay, so without any further ado, let's let me walk you through it. Okay, so I am using something called the time bucket system. I'm gonna link in the podcast and in the Facebook group to the resource. It's a free downloadable resource that you can access in case you want to try this out yourself, so you can do exactly what I am doing. You could even do it side by side with me, if you sort of want to take this and do it as you're listening or as you're watching. Okay, but the first page, and I legit have a clipboard. I'm a nerd. Those of you that don't know me, you wouldn't know this, but I was voted most studious senior superlative. So that's me, okay, but the first thing I do is I start with the brain dump. And I think this is probably going to look backwards to those of you that are watching, I don't know, again, I did not think this through. I just figured, let's impulsively, just try it. So I have a brain dump, and it's a sheet. And so I, what I do is I sit down and I think about, okay, what is anything that's floating in my head in terms of a to do list, a to do task. I just put it on the list. I don't think about it. I don't, you know, ask myself, like, when is it due, or what do I need to do for it? It just it pops in my head, and then I put it on paper. So in no particular order, these are some of the things I'm not going to do everything for the sake of time, but these are some of the things that would be on my brain dump list. 

Okay, so I have a particular client I need to reach back out to, so I'm going to write her name down on here. Actually, I'll just put some initials, M, J, L, and another M. Okay, so I have to reach out to them. I need to do a check in for a Thursday client, and I need to order gift cards for teachers for end of the year. As I'm recording this, they are sitting in my shopping cart on my phone. I need to pull the trigger on that. I also need to order a gift card for myself for something, well, really for the kids. They need new clothes. I am going to, let's see follow up on a coaching class that I just took and confirm that everything is finished. And I also need to schedule, reschedule my daughter's doctor appointment. I need to schedule dentist appointments for my kids. I need to order a birthday gift for--two birthday gifts--for birthday parties coming up. I need to...what else...update, or, let's say, adjust storage for Zoom. I have a bunch of Zoom recordings that are taking up the full storage on my Zoom and I need to figure that out before my deadline. I need to upload a new podcast episode. I need to update my scheduling link. This probably doesn't mean anything to you all, but it means stuff to me. Update my scheduling link for my availability. Okay? And then let's just put one more thing on here. I need to create and schedule the posts for the SLP Support Group. Okay? 

Now, this is chicken scratch, right? I just write it down right on the paper, and that is a working document, because I will think of things, inevitably, I will think of things, and I'll go back and I'll add them to the list. Okay? And this is not a complete list, by the way. This is just an abbreviated version, so you can kind of walk, I can kind of walk you through what this looks like. 

Now, Step One, that was Step One: the brain dump. Okay. You can do this in different ways, different orders, but what I tend to do is then look at that list, and I start plugging those things in, into the buckets that they belong in. Okay, so let me tell you what I mean. If you're not familiar, I use this system that I created. It's called the Time Buckets System. And basically every sort of aspect of my life, like big aspects where I play a specific role or have lots of responsibilities, gets its own bucket. Okay? You get to decide what your buckets are, just like I get to decide what mine are. So there probably will be some similarities for across different people, but there's also going to be some pretty significant differences. So for me, my buckets are work, and let's say I tend to do these as two separate buckets. So coaching is one bucket, and then teaching is another bucket, just because, in my mind, they take different skills, they have different responsibilities. It's sort of a different dynamic of how I show up in that. I mean, there's a lot of similarities too, but it's a bit of a different role, right? When you're playing a coach, playing the role of coach, or showing up as a coach, being a coach, versus when you're playing the role, showing up and being a teacher. So I separate those out into different--into two distinct buckets. So I'll have Teaching, and I will have Coaching. And then my other buckets that I have are Home, like household, Family (my kids, my spouse), and then I have a Personal bucket. The one thing that I'm going to strongly encourage you to do, if you adopt this system, is to include a bucket for yourself. Because if you've never done this before, and you're just doing this with me, and you're brain dumping things, and you look at it, and then you start to put them in the corresponding buckets, I could pretty much guarantee that you will have nothing or close to nothing in the personal bucket. Like most of the things that you've got running around on your to do list are about other people. They're not about you, and that's a problem because you count too. You need to be able to do stuff for yourself. And if we don't have a designated spot for that, to write that down, to outline that, or document that, block it off, then it doesn't happen. Okay, you get to decide what your Personal Bucket looks like. It could look like scheduling a doctor's appointment, if that's something that you typically put off, but it's something you need to do for yourself. Great. It could also look like taking a day off, going getting a massage, getting a manicure. Or having lunch with a friend, or reading a book or watching a show, right? Don't underestimate the power of putting something on there that seems arbitrary or just seems sort of like, "Oh, I would do that anyway. Why would I put Netflix on my bucket?" Well, if you're somebody who has difficulty spending time on yourself, or if you're someone who struggles with ignoring all the other things that, quote, unquote, didn't get done when it's the time that maybe you would sit down or like, the only time that you have for yourself, and you can't settle in and take that time for yourself, because you tell yourself that there's so many other things you should be doing, then you are absolutely the type of person who needs to write something like this down, okay? Because otherwise you won't do it. And even if you write it down, you still might not do it. And that's again, that's a topic, another topic for another episode. 

Okay, so back to the buckets. Mine are Coaching, Teaching, Household, Family, Personal, in no particular order. So what I do then is I look at my brain dump list, and I start taking these things and placing them into the actual bucket. So again, if you are listening to this episode on the podcast and you're not watching, come join the Facebook group, SLP Support Group, so that you can see what I'm doing, and this will make more sense. So I've got a couple of things that are really easy to identify, which box they go in. So with coaching, I'm going to write down email, and then I have the first initials of those people who I need to touch base with. I also need to I can put my accountability text in there. I do accountability check ins with clients, but I do them in different ways, depending upon each client. We have different sort of agreements, and so I have to put that down on the list so that I make sure that that doesn't slip through the cracks. I also need to, let's see ordering gift cards is...I count that as family. So ordering gift cards for teachers and then for our family, okay for the kids, then we've got and I just kind of check them off, like I'm going down the list of the brain dump, and I'm checking these things off. Excuse me, I'm checking them off as I am putting them in the appropriate boxes. Okay, so those are done, and then I'm going to put coaching class follow up.

Then I need to schedule, reschedule the eye appointment. That's family. It's not my eye appointment, reschedule eye appointment. Schedule dentists appointments. There's so many, actually that reminds me. I have to schedule one for myself as well. So I'll put that in my Personal Bucket. Um, order the birthday gifts. I'll put that in Family. Oh, and see, here's an example of me remembering something. I just remembered for Teaching. I have to grade assignments. There's an assignment that needs to get graded for students, and so I'm going to put that on the bucket itself, in the bucket itself, right up here. You could do it there. You could add it to the brain dump list and then put it in the bucket, whatever works best for you. Okay, adjust storage. So I'm just going to write, Zoom storage, and then I've got podcast episode. Now I wrote, upload podcast episode, but actually more than that, I need to first edit it, make sure that the intro and the outro are where they should be, and then I need to upload it to the podcast platform. I have to write the show notes, title and show notes, and I also have to upload it to the to my to my website, Theresaharp.com. Upload to website and repurpose into a blog post. I use AI for that to save me time. All right, then I've got two things left. So it's scheduling, link--update schedule availability. I have a link where you can go to book a consult if you wanted to learn more about coaching. So I have to up, I have to go in and make sure that my availability is up to date in there. And then last but not least, let's put the Facebook posts for SLP Support Group. 

Okay, so this is interesting, because I put, now I do, I put all of the coaching stuff in one bucket. I purposely made recently. This is a change I just started trying, is I made the work bucket, the coaching bucket big, because what I was noticing, this is something I plan to record an episode about. I was noticing that I lately have been avoiding doing the work for Theresa Harp Coaching, I just I have been avoiding it. I haven't been as consistent and efficient as I normally am, and I've been prioritizing everything else above it. And sometimes, excuse me, sometimes that's okay, sometimes that's by choice, by design, and sometimes it's not. And this is one of those cases. This is one of those times where it's really not so one of the things that I'm trying is as an experiment. Oh, if I make the bucket bigger, it's the first bucket. It's a whole page, that sort of visual representation of this being the quote, unquote, top priority. It's not exactly the case. Obviously, my family is more important to me than coaching, but hopefully you get the idea. Okay, so I've got all my coaching stuff here. Now, when it comes to these buckets, I've got one thing for Teaching. I've got nothing in the Household bucket. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, things in Family and one thing in Personal. So this is a perfect example of how we often are out of...what's the word...there's just a sort of disconnect in terms of how much time we spend on certain things over others. Now, having said that, this doesn't always mean that it's a problem, okay, but one of the things that I often struggled with, especially when I was building my private practice and growing my family, was I felt like I would make a lot of progress in one area and not a lot in the other. So I've said this many times before, but I would focus and my time and my energy and my effort and my attention on my private practice sound speech, and then would fall behind in the things that I would need to do to run a household. And for me, that never felt good, primarily because I wanted to have...I had an idea in my head of what sort of semblance of order I wanted and needed to feel my best, to feel calm, to have peace of mind, and to feel like I was proud of the way that I was showing up as an SLP and the way that I was showing up as a mom. And so that's essentially how this Time Bucket exercise or program or system came to be because as I started brain dumping all the things I spend my time on, I noticed that there was very few things in some of these big buckets, for example, personal, right? Like, there just wasn't stuff that I was doing for myself. I could see that. I mean, you cannot deny it when you look at this, right? So it becomes super obvious. Now, another thing that's helpful about this, or another example sort of on that topic, is my Household bucket, right? That has zero things in it. It's partly because it's it's not because I'm not. To be doing anything on the House this week, right? It is more so because as I was doing my brain dump, I just wasn't thinking about those types of things. But what would happen then, right? Is, if I neglected that area later on, at some point this week, I'm going to decide that I want to, I don't know, clean out a drawer or a closet or something, and I might not have factored that time in. I might not have factored that into my plan. So this is an opportunity for me to look at the roles that I value, coaching, teaching, household, family, personal, look at those sort of roles and responsibilities, and ask myself, Is there something that I've missed? Is there something I want to do so that I can make some progress in each of these areas? So what I'm going to add to the household bucket is, I'm just deciding I'm I'm either going to add, there's two things I've been needing to do, shampoo the rugs. There's just, just one rug in particular that really needs to get cleaned, so shampoo the area rug. And then the other thing is mulch. I've been putting off mulching our garden. I have the mulch. I have everything I need. I just haven't done it hasn't been necessary or the top priority, so I'm just going to put those two things down, and then I'll decide later what I'm doing and when. Okay, so I've got these things in their buckets, and as I go and add things during the week, or think of things, I might add them to my brain dump list, or I might just put them within the direct the exact bucket itself. Now what I would do next is look at these things and highlight or circle or annotate anything that's on there that I decide I do not plan to do this week. Okay, some people might do this right after the brain dump and before they start plugging things into their buckets. Sometimes I do it that way, but sometimes it's not very clear which things I do or don't want to do until the items are in their buckets and I can see where things are at a balance, so to speak. So you can do it either way, but I'm going to look at these and I'm going to say, Okay, there's probably two things on here that I will not do this week, and so I'm just going to put a line through them, the dentist appointments, they don't have to happen, but they might. And then there's one thing on here on my coaching bucket that can wait until next week, so I'll cross that out. 

Okay, alright, now I have an idea of the things that I want to get done at this point, I have an idea of the things that I want to get done this week, because I've got everything outlined in its bucket. I've been doing this long enough that I can stop there, 9 times out of 10, I can just stop right there and hold on to these and refer back to them throughout the week and get them done. Okay, but it wasn't always like that. So what I would encourage you to do at this point is to start plugging things into your schedule, and the best way to do this would be to try first to use the system you already use. So if you already have a system where you maybe have a paper calendar, or maybe you use Google Calendar, or maybe you use Google Tasks, right, plug those things in so that they have a designated day and time for them, because as you're getting used to this, whether it's this Time Buckets System or any type of planning system that you might be practicing or exploring, you're not going to be able to just do these things right away. You're not going to be able to just arbitrarily get them done at some point during the week. So what I would then do is go into my phone, which I don't have here, so I'm not going to do it on my phone right now as we talk, but I use Google Calendar, so I would go into my phone on Google Calendar, and I would plug these tasks in to the days that I think I might do them. Okay, so that's one option, is you can schedule each task individually on your calendar, whether you schedule it or write it down as an event or as a task. Google Task. So on Google Calendar, you can add an event, or you can add a task. They're two separate things. I often will do the tasks, and I'll just enter it as a task on Google Calendar, and then it's there. And what I love about it, what I love about it is that if I don't complete the task, it shows up on the following day, and it continues to show up each subsequent day until I check that task off as completed. So that's one way that you can do this. 

Another way you can do this is blocking off time in your calendar according to bucket. So you might look at your calendar and your available time, and might put in a bucket for household and so you might say, Okay, on Wednesday, from, I don't know, one to 3pm or six to 8pm or whatever it is, you just write down Household bucket. And that's when you're working on the items that you wrote down for that particular bucket. That's another way that you can do it. It's sort of like time blocking, but you're blocking out your time according to the bucket. Okay. Those are kind of the two major ways that I that I would do it. 

The third way that I might do this is I might use my project management system. I use one called, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on the name of it. It is called Meister Task. Yeah, MeisterTask. Sorry. They have two. They have two forms of it, and they are very similar. They both involve the word Meister, m, e, i, s, t, e, r, I'll link to it in the show notes and in the in the SLP group. So you have it. I use that particular program. It's free. There's a free version. It meets my needs. It's no, not a lot of bells and whistles. So I like that system. But there's, you know, a million different options that are out there, like Asana and Trello and Monday and you know, you name it, if you have one that you use and that works for you great. If you don't, that's fine too. You don't necessarily need one. I often encourage clients not to use one, especially for those who are neurodivergent, because oftentimes it sends you down a rabbit hole, and it just pulls you away from getting the actual tasks done. But I do sometimes sit down and plug these into my workflow, which is in my MeisterTask, and that's what I use to help me decide what's getting done when you don't have to worry about that right now, I maybe I'll think about doing an episode. If that's something that interests you. I could do another recording on that particular system so you can see one example of how this looks. But I'm a fan of anything that's simple, quick, easy, and that you are most likely to continue to use. So maintaining, right, retaining, maintaining all of that, rather than shiny object syndrome, where you start it for a week and then you don't do it at all after that, and you just feel guilty, or you feel shameful, which no need to. But that's what happens. That's what our brains do. 

So, okay, so that is a very sort of broad overview of how I do this with some real life examples of what this looks like. I think it's a perfect place to stop for today's episode. But what I want you to do is think about what aspects of this system, if any, do you want to try? Do you want to try implementing? It doesn't even have to be this actual system, the Time Bucket System. It can be whatever works well for you. Whether you want to start incorporating a brain dump in your planning, whether you want to start incorporating these different categories of how you spend your time, like what you do to run a household, or what you do in your personal life, and blocking time out for that, maybe the one thing that you're taking away from this is that you now start scheduling planning time for yourself, right, whatever It is. But I want you to really think about what we just went over and ask yourself, what is one thing that you want to take from this episode and try actually implement it and see how it works for you? You can implement it the same way that I did, or you can modify it in a way that works well for you? It's really up to you to decide there is, again, no right or wrong way to do this. So don't get caught up in, "Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong?" Okay, and don't forget, I'm here in the SLP Support Group. So if you're watching this and you're trying it out, or you're hesitant to try it out because you have questions or you want me to clarify something or show you something, just comment on this post, on this video in the SLP Support Group and let me know. Okay, and same thing for those of you who are listening to the podcast, if you have any questions or comments, there's always a link to reach out to me directly via email, you can just tap that button and send me your questions. I will see them myself, and I would love to give you a reply. So I hope this was helpful. 

Happy 50th episode to Your Speech Path. Thank you so much for being here, I truly, truly appreciate you tuning in, watching, listening. If you're not in the Facebook group, go ahead and join. And if you're not subscribed to the podcast, please, please subscribe. Okay, that way you'll know when new episodes are coming. You'll never miss an episode, and it also helps other people who would benefit from the show to find it. So make sure you're hitting the subscribe button, the plus sign, the Follow button, whatever it looks like on your podcast platform. All right. That's it for today. I will catch y'all next week.