Get organized so you can "Lean in" to living your life.

By the time Friday afternoon rolls around, I can feel that my body is ready to stop. My focus starts to go onto other things like baking, sewing projects, house shopping, hiking, getting the garden ready....everything else but business related work. Though I'd LOVE to stop and just dive right in to these other projects, I can't do that always. There is an endless list of things to get to in my business. I get even more weird about finishing my week a few hours early because, we're supposed to work until 5pm, AT LEAST, if we want to advance our careers, or so I've been reading. "Lean In" is what Sheryl Sandberg COO of Facebook tells us in her new book. But, all I want to do is lean into some of my red forest cupcakes that I'm dying to make!   

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 Honestly, I don't think we need to work unreasonable numbers of hours in order to succeed. I think you can excel and live a grand life by working little and enjoying life a lot! I'm all about finding ways to advance your career without having to become a zombie due to all the work you've piled onto yourself. I must say, I am so guilty of being a zombie, it's not even funny. (Stay tuned for my next article on how NOT to become a zombie due to work.) That's why I want to share with you some pretty fantastic things I've figured out. During some of my zombie moments, I was thinking to myself, "This is ridiculous! Why am I up so freakin' late and working so freakin' hard?"  I knew I needed to find a way get organized so that I was working smarter rather than SOOO hard. I am a hard worker so I when I am working REALLY hard, I tend not to pay attention to why I am working so hard and just keep barreling through. Thankfully, I did stop to ask myself this recently and decided I was going to make some changes that allowed  me to work smarter and less rather than work harder and more. One way to do that is to get organized.

Friday afternoon is now my "get organized for next week" time. Right around 2 or 3 p.m. I stop what I am doing. I pull out my inbox of stuff, I look at my project management dashboard, my to do list and my calendar for next week, and get super organized around priority work for my business and for my clients. I look at upcoming calendar appointments as well as all of my to dos and make sure I can accomplish everything within the time allotted. If I can't, I shift things around or move it to the following week. I go through my project management dashboard and make notes on what's coming up, which clients I need to call or what tasks I need to delegate. I also make a list of self-care that I will do over the week and make sure to schedule those right into my calendar as well. 

I am finding that if I do these few things that get me ready to tackle my upcoming week, I can spend a few minutes or sometimes an hour more in bed catching up on my sleep. I can more easily pull away from work on a Friday and lean, instead, into my weekend.   So, I want to hear from you. What do you do to get ready for your upcoming week and how do you "lean" into your weekend? Leave a comment below!