40. Create Your Very Own Ideal Schedule.

Hey, sweethearts! This is a great piece of advice. I know that I’m tooting my own horn about it, but in this case it may be justified.

This one is a little related to the miracle morning advice, but we’re going to go deeper. This is all about scheduling your entire day and week to fill it with as much open-mouthed awesomeness as possible.

What’s the alternative to you setting an ideal schedule? It’s controlled chaos. It makes what you do subject to haphazardness. When you do that, you can end up spending the entire day doing stuff , and then wondering where the heck the day went after it’s all done. It’s the difference between being proactive and reactive. If you wake up and don’t have a plan of what to do once your eyes open, then life will intrude. You’ll probably do what the majority of the country (maybe world by now) does and look at your phone. You’ll see texts, or emails, or things that you need to REACT to, instead of charting your own course for the day and being proactive. And that’s just the morning .

During the day, with an ideal schedule, you’ll be able to do more. You can have a chance to focus on each individual thing versus all of the things hitting your tired psyche all at once. If you have a set time where you work on projects, you can turn off your phone for that time and get hyper-productive on just doing that. It’s better than trying to fit things in after the fact, where the important things often fall away to the trivial. It puts things in their place and gives you time to create.

Here’s the idea: a set schedule sets you free. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out on this. If you don’t need to think about what’s next, if it’s automatic and no brain-power is used, then your mental energy (and actually physical energy) is saved for things that really matter like conversations, innovations at work and creative pursuits like writing. In fact, I’m writing this in the midst of my own Ideal Schedule right now, during my “writing” time.

Now, if the idea of a set schedule gives you the shakes and makes you want to run, this is an important idea: It’s only to be used as a guideline. I don’t like things forced on me, even if it’s a schedule that I’ve made myself. I know, weird, but my schedule got a whole lot better when I wrote at the top, “only to be used as a guideline.” That’s funny, but it gives you the freedom whether to follow it or not, and the choice makes all the difference to me.

Optimizing your schedule can be one of the best things you ever do. It’s a way to determine what’s best in your life. You can decide what’s best for you, what habits help you out, and how you’d script your day if everything were perfect. In fact, have you ever had a day when you listened to one of your favorite songs, got all excited and pumped up and as a result, and had a pretty darn good day? I think that we’ve all had those. Well, how would you like to start every day like that? Of course, you can, and it’s actually pretty easy to do, but very few people actually do.

Let’s not be like those people. Let’s take the time to actually do a little work in designing that Ideal Schedule, to be used as a guideline and subject to constant improvement as you see fit. Then your days will be easier and you can get more done, or if you schedule some YOU time (Friday MY Day, or Monday, Fun Day), you can make sure that you have a good time each and every week. It’s just a better way to live—not that I’m biased.

“But, Dad . . .” you say as you’re rolling your eyes and arguing that this doesn’t apply to you, because you’re in school or at a job for eight hours a day.

Well, then I’d say it’s even more important, because you have less hours to yourself that are discretionary. You’ll start to see this as you get older, but there’s a saying (I’ll mention it again in this book, because it’s profound and true), “The days go slow, and the years go fast.”

Your days on a regular job will melt into each other and turn into weeks, months, and years that just seem to pass with a blink of an eye. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in a rat race running each day just to make a living and pay the bills, rather than living and doing something extraordinary, or something that you absolutely love and that lights you up like you can’t believe.

And the way to get from scraping by to living in freedom and abundance lies in what you do with your time. So, take that seriously, and don’t leave it to chance. Create your Ideal Schedule and include the important things on it. Make sure that you have date time with your loved ones (like your dad) on it, or time with your sweet brother. All too often, if you don’t make the time for that, these vital blocks of our lives are swept away by the deluge of the daily.

Keep the important things in your routine. Make sure you do what you should and want to do. Create, try, adjust, and then stick to your very own Ideal Schedule.

Have I sold you on the importance of it? I hope so. Now, let’s get into how that’s actually done.

Advice in Practice:

• Get your journal, or Evernote, and do an Idea List of all of the things that your Ideal Schedule should have in it. Think big rocks first—the really important things in life. Here are some of the things you might want to include:

• Quality time with your loved ones should go at the top.
• Rest and rejuvenation time should be included and made a priority.
• Creative time is so important. Even if you’re at a ‘regular’ job, you should probably have some type of side “hustle” going where you are continuously creating the life you want.
• Exercise. Hopefully something that you enjoy.
• Self-development time. Like time to read this book, journal, or meditation. In fact, you can and should do your entire miracle morning and put it into your schedule.
• Learning/Studying time (I imagine that so few people have this as part of their regular routines).

Then get fun . . .

• Do you want to take a scheduled nap? Put it in there!
• Want to listen to your power song every day to get you revved up? Include that into your schedule!
• Fun times are discretionary. Right now, my latest version of the Ideal Schedule makes Friday, “my day.” I only do things on “my day,” that give me joy! I’m a movie buff, so that’s when I can sneak away to one and enjoy someone spending $200-million just to entertain me (that’s a bargain)!
• Do you want to cultivate friendships? Put that in your schedule, too. Meet for coffee or lunches on Wednesdays. . . whatever! You see how things like that could slip or be left up to chance without building one of these?
• Times for romance, dates, and surprising your dearest one. If it’s in your schedule, guess what? It actually gets done.

• Use your Idea List to get everything that you can think of that you’d like to include. Don’t stop with what I’ve given you here. Use that beautiful noggin of yours to come up with all the building blocks of a perfect week. I don’t think that I’ve mentioned this, but I like to do mine in the form of an ideal week as this usually gives me enough of a canvas with which to paint my masterpiece.
• Now that you have those times you’d like to include—it’s time to start organizing them and putting it out on paper or a screen. I’ve used Microsoft Excel to do the schedule before, but for the latest versions I’m using Google Docs and making up a Google Sheet that can be edited and improved upon.
• When you get it done and ready, remember that it’s a work in progress! It’s not set in stone unless you decide that it is. I just added swimming to mine today. I’m exercising, but it feels like I’m playing, and I get to go into the hot tub when I’m done. Nice. Now it’s a part of the Ideal Weekly Schedule. So, yours can morph throughout the years to better suit you and what you want to do. Just wait until you get kids. Whew! That will set your world on its ears in a very cool, but quite momentous way! You’ll need to update your schedule when that happens!

Of course, if you need help be sure to ask your dear ole’ dad for that.

You know what I’m going to say, right? I friggin’ love you. Write that in your journal.