The 1-2-3 Method for Prioritization Simplifying Your Life and Boosting Productivity

#288 - Do you ever feel like perfectionism is holding you back? Join me as I reveal my personal journey from the shackles of perfectionism to the freedom of embracing efficiency. In this episode of Organized Chaos, I unravel the 1-2-3 method—a simple yet powerful tool for prioritizing your life and reducing stress. Learn how identifying your core priorities in areas such as family, health, career, and personal growth can transform your approach to time management, making you more productive and less overwhelmed. By focusing on three key tasks each day and eliminating or delegating low-value activities, you'll experience meaningful progress and a sense of accomplishment.

Want to know how to seamlessly integrate business activities into your already busy schedule? I've got you covered. Packed with practical strategies, this episode offers valuable insights into balancing various responsibilities and making time for what truly matters. Plus, I share a fantastic resource! Just click here to download my free workbook. And don't miss your chance to connect with me directly via a special text link for Apple Podcast users, where you can suggest new topics or simply share your thoughts. Get ready to prioritize effectively and achieve your goals—tune in and simplify your life today!

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Transcript

Teresa 0:09

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show.

Teresa 0:41

I really love to simplify things for myself. I want to make things easier and less complicated, and sometimes prioritizing can feel like it's really complicated. I have struggled with perfectionism, like feeling like I have to do things perfectly in order for me to feel successful or feel happy, and I've come to realize that I want to focus more on efficiency, because with efficiency, you're still allowing for mishaps and mistakes and missteps, and I want to really be able to work with what I have. So, whether it's my time, my energy and just the things that I have going on, I want to make sure that I can just focus on the things that truly matter. So, welcome to the show. Today.

Teresa 1:36

I have a really simple method to share with you, and it's called the 1-2-3 method for prioritization, because I want to help you simplify your life and boost your productivity. So why is it important to prioritize? For one, it's a way to manage your time, reduce your stress and ultimately achieve your goals, and that seems like a dream, right? But if we don't have our priorities straight, then that can lead to overwhelm, burnout and just a lack of progress. And it's really hard sometimes to come up with priorities and to really focus on your priorities, because we have a lot going on, we feel like we have many responsibilities, but the impact of not truly prioritizing our lives and our tasks can be distractions. It can lead to multitasking, which is not a good thing, and then there's a lack of clarity. So when we feel like this, that's when the overwhelm comes in. So I want to share with you this method because it's something like I said, I love to simplify things and I think that this is a really great way to get started If you feel like your priorities are out of whack and your life is kind of a mess right now and you want to hone in on what truly matters to you.

Teresa 3:08

So this one, two, three step process is really simple. I keep saying that because I really want to emphasize how you can do this right now, even though you feel like or you may feel that like intense overwhelm. So step one is identifying your core priorities. So this is different areas of your life what is truly important to you Now? It can be your family, it could be your health, it could be your career, it could be your own personal growth.

Teresa 3:43

Now I want you to take a moment to reflect on what truly matters to you and if what aligns with your values and long-term goals is something that is present in your life right now. So one tip I can give you is to just make a list of the top priorities for your day, for your week or for your month, you know, depending on how far you want to go, and I want you to categorize them by urgency and and by importance and whether or not they align with your goals. Now, this can take a little bit of time and you have to be real with yourself because, especially as moms, we can think that everything is a priority and everything is urgent, and it's not necessarily the things that really matter to us. It's a lot of things that matter to other people. So if you find yourself putting out fires or if you find yourself putting aside your own needs to help other people, this is going to be kind of like a realization for you when you sit down and actually write down what truly matters to you.

Teresa 4:56

All right, step two is to simplify and to focus to you. All right, step two is to simplify and to focus. Now, how can we simplify these tasks and narrow down our focus so we can lead to being more efficient and effective with our time and our energy? So I love the concept of less is more and focusing on like fewer things to do that can actually lead us to better results, like in our business. This is kind of like a philosophy that we have really held on to. How can we make more money by doing less? And it really opens up our mind to all of the possibilities, like all of the opportunities out there where we're not putting more on our plate. We're actually taking more off of our plate, but the results are more because we're so focused on the most important things.

Teresa 5:56

So my tip for you would be to actually select the top three tasks for each day that align with your core priorities. So, of course, first you have to have what your priorities are and then pick the top three tasks that you need to do each day that align with those priorities and focus on completing those first. So I'm not saying that you're not going to have more tasks on your list, but I want you to focus on those top three because that is going to help you. If you stay consistent with it, that's going to help you really hone in on the most important tasks for the day so that you don't get caught up in the minutiae of the rest of the day. So you can either start eliminating or delegating some of the tasks that don't really align with those priorities or that are low value.

Teresa 6:54

Now I really want you to think about this because, like I said, we pretty much always put like everything at the top of our list, but sometimes some of those things do not produce the value that we want them to produce. They're really like low level things that we don't necessarily need to be doing. Maybe they do need to be done, but not necessarily by us. So this is where the delegation comes in, and now step three is create a daily routine and stick to it. So it's important to create a daily routine that really supports your priorities and make sure that there's consistent progress. So the role of consistency and discipline is super important to work towards your long-term goals, because if you do this every now and then and if you're not consistent with them, then you're not going to see the results in the long term. So consistency and discipline really is important. So I want you to think about it this way I want you to create a structured daily schedule that includes time blocks for your top priorities yourself.

Teresa 8:09

So throwing in self-care, but also having the flexibility when unexpected things pop up, because we know for a fact that they will pop up. Now, this is something that when I first started, I didn't take that into account, because that was the perfectionism coming and it was like, okay, I have this plan, I have all my priorities, this is what I want to do, and I didn't consider things that would pop up unexpectedly and that would throw me for a loop. And then that would pop up unexpectedly and that would throw me for a loop, and then that would get me off track, and then I would beat myself up about it and it was like on and on and on. It's just this vicious cycle. So If we plan for it, we're much better equipped to deal with it when it pops up. So you know how you stick to a routine and all of that is important. But also knowing that it's not always going to go as planned will make you take care of some of those things better than if you hadn't thought of them at all. It'll allow you to make adjustments as needed without like losing sight of your priorities.

Teresa 9:21

Like I said, like I've tried this and I've made it so that it's simple for me to kind of go into this and focus on my priorities without it feeling like this overwhelming thing. So I've really had to, you know, take this method and break it down into smaller pieces, and that's why I wanted to kind of just just have three steps to it. So if you're just getting started, if you're feeling like you know everything is out of whack and you want to start focusing more on the most important things, then this is the way to do it, because it's going to feel less stressful, it's going to help you with your productivity on a daily basis and you're going to feel like you're actually accomplishing something, even if it's small steps. And when you have those, you know mini victories each day. That is going to improve your confidence and it's going to help you stay more consistent each day. That is going to improve your confidence and it's going to help you stay more consistent.

Teresa 10:21

But I do want to talk about, like you know, some of the things that may pop up and which is why prioritizing is so important. So, you know, we can fall into kind of like these different pitfalls of like over committing and kind of allowing distractions to kind of take over. So you do have to kind of keep that in mind where you don't want to over commit, because that's just piling more stuff on and we want to take more stuff off of your plate, right? So making sure that you're not over committing and this is, you know, this is where the people pleasing the work on people pleasing comes in just being comfortable with saying no, like you know, you don't have to do it all, you really don't have to do it all, and you can say no and not give any explanations for it. You know what? Just, you have a lot of shit going on. So it's like I don't want to do this or I don't have time to do this, because it doesn't really align with my priorities and it's okay to say no, it's okay to set that aside for a later time.

Teresa 11:26

And once you start doing this and once you're consistent and you have like this cadence for yourself and you feel like you've really focused on yourself, then maybe start adding on things that you know are more important for other people and you know you can be there for other people, but let's focus on you first. All right, so what are some of the like long-term effects of really putting this method together for yourself? For one, you're going to be able to prioritize, obviously, but you're going to feel a greater sense of productivity and efficiency over time and it's really going to start to help you make some significant steps towards your long term goals and not feeling like you're, you know, taking one step and then having to take two steps back, like this is going to give you a better, better consistency and moving more towards your goals, and it's also going to contribute to like a better work-life balance by making sure that your personal and your professional priorities are in harmony. So you're going to be able to maintain that balance, you know, even as your priorities shift, and you know things happen in life, because it's going to happen. That's just part of life, so, but this is going to give you kind of like the structure for you to be able to do that Now. If this feels like, okay, thanks, this is simple but it's not easy to implement, then you can reach out to me and I can help you with this. But this is a really great way to start to even just plan it out. Even if you don't do anything with it right now, just planning it out will make you feel better and then, once you're ready, you can jump into it.

Prioritization and Business Incorporation Tips

Teresa 13:16

All right, that's all I have for you today, but I hope that was helpful, and if you want that additional support, I have a getting focused productivity workbook that you can download.

Teresa 13:32

That will actually help you in part to kind of put this together.

Teresa 13:36

There's a part in it that helps you with prioritization and it's really focused on how you can actually start working on your business and kind of like incorporate your business, you know, into your busy life. So I'll actually put that in the show notes so you can go ahead and download it and, you know, see if you can start working on this piece by piece and if you want to give me some suggestions on any other topics that you'd like me to cover, or if you want to just send me some random message, you can actually do that. So if you're on Apple Podcasts, you can go to the show notes, and right above the show notes there's a link that says send me a text. You can actually send me a text message. Don't worry, it won't go to my phone. It'll go to a system that I have and you can share anything that you want with me there. All right, I hope this was helpful. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I'll see you next week.