From the course: How to Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time

Setting rules to take back your time

From the course: How to Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time

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Setting rules to take back your time

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- It's time to make some rules. I love rules, and I want you to embrace them too because rules will actually make your life so much easier. And that's what I'm all about, living a simpler and more productive life. So let me give you an example of how I'm using rules. I have an amazing business coach. Her name is Andrea J. Lee, and she keeps me on track when it comes to building my business. Whenever I'm ready to tackle a new task or add something to my calendar, I hear her voice in my head, and it sounds something like this, "Hey, is this critical right now to the priority goal we've set?" Actually, she doesn't sound like that at all. She's very sweet. That's just my own tough love narration. Anyway, I want you to remember this too. Andrea's voice brings me back to my biggest priority in my business. For a while it was writing this course. So anything else that came my way during my focused LinkedIn learning course-creation time would have to go on the back burner. It was a non-negotiable and it made my life simpler because I already knew the answer. This is why the work that we did in chapter one of this course is so important. We went through the exercise of finding out what your biggest priority is at this moment. And remember, it can change, but let's just say that your biggest priority right now is sleep, and an activity like watching one more episode of your favorite TV show is going to interfere with that. So then the answer is crystal clear: get to bed and save the episode for another day. You see that? Simple, clean, uncluttered. This is what all your decision-making should look like and why having rules is key. Take a few minutes now to write down some of your non-negotiable rules based on your priority. This could be things like not starting a new project after 4:00 pm, or not letting any new clients onto your roster, or even getting to bed by 10:00 pm every night. This is going to be different for each one of us and that's perfectly fine. Remember, we're doing this so that you can get the right things done and be less stressed. It's worth the extra effort.

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