What do you want more of?

What can you let go of?

Use this 4D process to help you get clear and make space to live intentionally.

Living intentionally goes deeper than work/life balance. 

It is a balance of energy and accomplishing what you want out of life.  Work is only a part of that.  For many, living intentionally is often a mindset shift, setting boundaries, and building new routines and habits.  For almost all of my clients, it is about taking their time back to do all the things that they wished they had more time for.

One of the tools many of my clients find helpful is the 4 Ds of Time Management, which was originally published in The Power of Focus written by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt.  In my career in Human Resources, I was often told to pay attention to the tasks that were “barking the loudest”.  The challenge with this was that some of those barking tasks were really not as urgent, and many important tasks were neglected in the process.  I found tracking the tasks and using the 4Ds to be helpful in managing multiple demands and projects.  The 4 Ds of Time Management are Do, Delay, Delegate, and Delete.

Do:

• Quick Tasks - Do the things that take only a couple of minutes.  I recommend creating a time block at the beginning of your day to take care of these tasks, but not let them run over your entire day.  This could be reviewing your email, responding only to the messages that require a brief response, and flagging the emails that will require longer than a couple of minutes.  It could also be organizing and prioritizing your to-do list, or really any task that can be knocked out quickly.  This helps you build momentum and have the immediate reward of feeling productive. 

• Focused Work Time – Use this to move specific projects you are working on or tasks for specific goals.  Use the prioritization to keep your projects moving.  This is also a great tool for the emails you have flagged that will require action, research, or follow-up.  Set an intention for what you will accomplish in each focused work block.  Turn off all distractions, and set a timer to get it all done. 

• Commitments – When you make a commitment to someone for a meeting or an appointment, make sure you plug this in your calendar, so it gets done, and you do not double book yourself.

Delay:

• Future Projects: Projects that do not need to be done immediately.

• Shiny Object Syndrome - New project ideas.

• Other’s monkeys - New requests that do not need to be fulfilled immediately. (Tip: always ask “how soon do you need this done” when receiving a new request where appropriate, so that you can easily gauge where this task/project will fall in your priorities.)

Delegate:

• Automate – Anything you can to streamline and reduce unnecessary tasks to free up your time for the items that do require your specific expertise and/or skills.

• Assign – For anything that cannot be automated, and does not requires your expertise and/or skill, delegate it out.  If you do not have a team and are not ready to bring on a team, look at getting a contractor to help with the tasks.

Delete:

• Junk Mail – unenroll or set up filters to remove junk mail from your inbox

• Non-Vital Meetings – If you do not feel you add value to the meeting, or the meeting is valuable, delete it.  Updates can be made in different ways.

• Extra Work – Maybe you love to help, and now people keep asking for it or asking you to cover.  Practice saying no in a way that feels good to you.

• Time Wasters – If you are not sure what they are, track your days for a week or two.  Keep a journal or a log of your day’s activities to find the opportunities to cut down on time-wasters – like interruptions, distractions, social media, etc.

Try challenging yourself to reflect weekly on what it is your want, and how your can use the 4D’s to make more time and space for all of those relationships and activities you have been wishing for more space to attend to.  To support you in this, I have created a worksheet to help you with this tool. 

Download it free below.