Improve Your Focus with Theme Days

If you love a good theme party, TRY THIS!

What's the best theme party you've even been to?

My most recent favorite was this 80's 40th birthday celebration for a friend.

Days like these are so memorable because they are out of the ordinary.

For some of us, having an extremely accomplished or productive day feels out of the ordinary too.

But it doesn't have to!

We can leverage themes to simplify our lives in so many ways, not just what to wear to a party.

Simplifying Life with Tacos

Every Tuesday in my house, we eat tacos. We LOVE Taco Tuesday. We mix it up with our protein and keep the toppings interesting every week, but the core meal is the same - tacos.

I never realized how much mental energy I was exerting to just come up with an idea of what to make for dinner until we started this routine. Making every Tuesday Taco Tuesday has simplified life. I don't need to think about it.

This theme saves me energy and time.

Simplifying Your Week with Themes

We can apply this same concept to our weeks.

The goal of creating a theme or category of work for a day helps you know where to put your focus.

You save time figuring out what to do with the day and can get right down to actually doing the work.

What's even better about theming your days is the creation of intentional containers for your highest leverage work - the work that moves you forward when you do it every week.

Sample Themes

So what could theming your days look like?

For entrepreneurs, it might include:

• Creative
• Financial
• Administrative
• Client/External Meetings
• Internal Meetings

For team leaders, themes might be:

• Team/Internal Meetings
• Strategic Direction
• Financial/Analytic Reviews
• Client/External Meetings

Creating Your Own Themes

To make this idea work for you, Ask yourself:

• What tasks do I complete every week?
• What kind of brainpower and mental energy do each of these tasks take?
• How can I group these together into categories or themes?
• What day of the week do I typically have the best energy and brainpower to do each of these?

Then you can start assigning a day to each category or theme of work.

Common Hurdles When Implementing Theme Days

My clients get excited when we talk about theme days, but inevitably the same few concerns surface upon implementation. Let's cover these right out of the gates so you can start leveraging theme day benefits without getting stuck here:

1. I can't dedicate a WHOLE day to one theme. No worries! Can you give it a morning or an afternoon? For example, one team leader dedicates her Wednesday mornings to team member 1:1s. Then she needs to focus her attention elsewhere that afternoon. But by centering her team member meetings in one area of the week, she can channel her energy into showing up well for her team during that time. And they can expect the consistency of her support.
   
   
2. My weeks are NUTS. I CAN'T predict or control my days like this! Breathe, friend. It's not about CONTROLLING them, so much as helping you create more clear expectations around your work. Theming allows us to create intentional containers of time, so we know the most important work has a dedicated time to get completed. Will you honor these 100% of the time? Probably not. But that doesn't mean you can't benefit greatly from starting to think about your work in a simplified fashion. If your work is at the mercy of market or client timing, then start with what you can control. Maybe it's just a 2-hour pock of time on Wednesday afternoons. Start small. We can't optimize what we don't start.
   
   
3. I don't even know where to start with my themes. That's okay! There's likely someone else that does something similar to you. Schedule a brainstorm with a friend and you'll both benefit from the session! Or reach out to me and we can brainstorm them together. I have yet to meet someone I can't help finding at least 2-3 themes to help them optimize their time.

What's Next

With your themes set, create a recurring calendar event to do this work.

When honoring theme days, my clients find they are less stressed about getting their meaningful work done and feel more accomplished at the end of their days and weeks.

If accomplishment and less stressed are foreign concepts for you, let's chat.

In a free 25-minute Double Your Productivity session, I guarantee to help you find at least 2 personalized strategies you can implement immediately to help you get more done.

Because no one deserves to be controlled by their to-do list.

Schedule your Double Your Productivity Session here.

Until next week, may the work you do create the meaning and life you deserve.

I'm rooting for you!

Jenna

👋 Ready to get more SH!T done and create the life you deserve?

You can:

1. Schedule your Double Your Productivity Session here.
2. Sign up for the Productivity Accelerator Workshop.
3. Join the Get SH!T Done Mastermind, a community of doers who want to create a meaningful career and a beautiful life. Let's chat to see if it's a good fit for you.
4. Be held accountable with bi-weekly 30-minute one-on-one sessions with me. Get more done in less time and create space for a life outside of work.