3 Things to Help You Have a Peacefully Productive Year
Raise your hand if the clean slate of a new year makes you giddy? 🙋♀️ In today's episode, I am sharing 3 intentional things that I do at the start of every year to set myself up to have a peacefully productive year.
A peacefully productive year is when your mindset is right, you’re clear on your vision, you know your priorities, and your schedule and routines support your priorities and help you pursue your dreams while prioritizing your mental health and relationships. Dreamy, right? And 100% possible for you!
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 3 things that you need to do to have a peacefully productive year
Now disclaimer and I know you know this but it’s a good reminder: there really is nothing magic about Janaury in the sense that it’s not the only time of the year that you can reflect, reset, and create plans for your dreams, ya know? You can do that whenever the heck you want to: whether it’s January 1, April 14, or October 23…you’re in charge of your life, not the calendar.
BUT, that being said, there is something special about a fresh year to me. The visualization of flipping a metaphorical page and the feeling that comes with that just excites me and I like to tap into that excitement to do some things that help set me up for a peacefully productive year!
So what are 3 things that you need to do to create a peacefully productive year?
01. Declutter and simplify all the things.
There is so much science behind how our physical space affects our mental space. Decluttering and simplifying creates more room in your life for you to focus on things that you actually care about. The less junk you have cluttering up your home, your to-do list, and your schedule, the more energy you have to pour into those things that matter to you.
Here are the things that I spend December and January decluttering and simplifying:
⋒ All of the closets and drawers in our home
I get rid of stuff that we no longer use and try to organize everything so that it’s as functional as possible and supports us throughout the year.
⋒ My schedule
I do an audit of my schedule (including both work and life stuff) and decide what things I can delegate or get rid of. So often, myself included, we just go through the motions week to week doing the same tasks we always do just because we’ve always done them but sometimes things no longer fit with our vision or they don’t really move the needle on our goals so they’ve got no place taking up our time and energy.
I walk you through this audit process in the new Peacefully Productive Schedule course!
⋒ My Catch-All Task Lists
I also teach how I use these inside the PPS course – my catch-all task lists are what I use to house all of my open loops so that my daily to-do lists don’t become overwhelmingly long. At the start of each new year, I go through my personal catch-all task list and my professional catch-all task list and just weed out tasks that either don’t matter anymore or that I forgot to check off the list.
⋒ Email Inbox
Now, I keep my inbox itself pretty tidy all year long but I do have a folder system that I use to keep emails organized, and throughout the year, I forget to clean those out. I like to spend time in January going through all of my email folders and deleting or archiving messages that are no longer needed so that it’s easier to find messages that I do need.
⋒ My Phone
I go through my photos and delete old screenshots or photos that I just don’t want to keep anymore. I declutter apps that I no longer use. And I delete text message threads that aren’t relevant anymore. Honestly, this is a time-consuming process so I like to do it while I’m doing something I enjoy like taking bath. It feels SO GOOD once it’s done and it helps my phone run faster because it’s not bogged down by stuff I don’t use (kinda similar to what I said earlier about us…when we declutter our lives, we aren’t bogged down by stuff that doesn’t matter to us).
So that’s the first thing I think you should do to create a peacefully productive year.
02. Revisit and revise your planning system.
Another thing in life that excites me is having a planning system that supports me. At the start of the new year, I sit down and comb through my current system to make sure that it is in fact still working for me.
If you’re listening in like “K what’s a planning system?” – it’s all the tools that you use to keep track of your schedule, routines, and tasks. Obviously, I use The Hustle Sanely Planning System but the way that I implement it in my life changes based on my needs in each season of my life.
I used to be a hardcore digital planner user but now because of how my business runs what I’ve found to work best for me is a combo of my paper planner, Google cal, and Notion.
If you don’t have a streamlined system to keep your life organized, I strongly recommend it because it’s what allows me to show up every day and know exactly what needs to be done. I don’t have to use my brainpower figuring out which tasks to do each day but instead, I get to spend my energy just doing the tasks.
I use tools like batching and energy-aligned time blocking to create my schedule and the tools I mentioned a few seconds ago to house and keep track of everything.
Inside of the PPS course, I actually walk you through how I apply The Hustle Sanely Planning System to my life and how I use each tool to create my own peacefully productive schedule. I even created a shared Notion hub that has all of The Hustle Sanely Planning System in one place that comes with the course!
That’s number 2, look over your planning system - the tools you’re using to keep track of your schedule, routines, and tasks - and make sure that they still make sense for your life and support the season that you’re in.
03. Make a vision board.
The other 2 can feel tedious as you’re doing them but they’re worth it in the long run, I promise! So the third thing I wanted to tell you to do to help you create a peacefully productive year is something that is more fun…make a vision board!
I used to roll my eyes when I heard people talk about vision boards. Like no, no, no it’s childish/silly/woo/whatever. I am so glad that my mindset has grown and that I’ve learned just how powerful visualization truly is.
Here is a look at my 2022 vision board:
Visualization is a powerful tool – it helps prepare and teach you how to respond to a situation before it happens. It also helps you achieve your goals by conditioning your brain to see, hear, and feel the success in your mind. When we visualize something, our subconscious thinks it’s real. Our subconscious can’t tell the difference between a real and fake experience when we use visualization.
Some tips that I follow when creating my vision board:
~ I use a combination of words and pictures.
Having both words and pictures just helps my vision board to really impact me. I see some people make the most stunning boards but they are just all pictures and I’m sure that fires them up but it just doesn’t do it for me. I need to see my goals and visions written out alongside images.
~ For the pictures, I like to use a combination of stock images and images from my actual life.
Seeing pictures of me, my husband, and our pups on my board really helps me to build an emotional connection with it. When we’re emotionally connected to something, it means more to us and can act as a better tool to support us as we are working toward bringing our vision to life.
~ Use pictures of the actions you’re taking to make the goal happen rather than the end goal itself.
Doing this allows you to really imagine yourself working toward the goal. Sometimes, it can be daunting when we try to imagine ourselves having completed a goal when we haven’t started yet but using action steps on your board is more “digestible” - so for example, if one of your goals is to become a New York Times Bestselling author, instead of putting the NYT logo on your board, try putting an image of you writing at your desk instead!
Vision boards are such solid reminders of what we’re working toward and why we’re working toward them. When I create my boards, I make sure to make them in a way that emotionally connects me to them (by using photos from my real life and weaving in scripture) because then on days that I’m feeling doubt creep in or maybe I’m just in a blah mood, I can look at my vision board and be reminded in a beautiful aesthetically pleasing way that what i’m working toward is worth it.
So to recap, the 3 things that you need to do to create a peacefully productive year are:
01. Declutter and simplify all the things.
02. Revisit and revise your planning system.
03. Make a vision board.
Need help creating a planning system that sets you up for a successful year? We’ve got you:
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 111 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
