October Part 2 - Your Schedule Inventory

Week Two

Welcome to Part 2 of October’s focus inside The Simplified Year!

This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on your days so you can actually see where your time is going. Not just the appointments on your calendar, but all the obligations and time-wasters.

For the next few days, we’re going to track, observe, and name every single commitment, invisible obligation, and sneaky time-stealer. Think of it as finally turning the lights on in a room you didn’t realize was cluttered; instead of tripping over boxes, you’ve been tripping over your own schedule.

You can’t simplify your schedule until you know what’s in it. This week is all about creating a brutally honest inventory of how your hours are currently being spent. Once you see it all laid out, you’ll start spotting what’s necessary, what’s optional, and what’s outright draining your energy.

How intentional are you with this?

If the thought of “tracking your time” already makes your shoulders tense, just hang in there. We’re not judging or shaming here. We’re simply gathering data so you can make better choices later. Think of it like stepping on a scale before starting a new fitness plan. It’s just information, not a moral grade. And you don’t have to do it naked, first thing in the morning before the first sip of water or bite of food. Imperfect IS perfect. Just do your best to capture what you can. More will come in time.

This Week’s Focus: Your Schedule Inventory

This week, you’re going to list everything that makes a claim on your time: the scheduled events, the daily must-dos, the chores you keep forgetting, the “I’ll just do it really quickly” busy tasks, and those mysterious time-suckers that somehow eat whole hours (*cough-cough… scrolling*).

We’re not here to cut things out yet. We’re here to notice. To hold up your schedule and examine it without the usual autopilot mode. By the end of the week, you’ll have a “schedule map” that tells the truth about your life right now, so you can start choosing intentionally.

Why This Matters (Mindset Reset)

A cluttered calendar is just as exhausting as a cluttered house. In fact, it’s worse… because your calendar follows you everywhere.

When your days are jam-packed with commitments, your brain never gets a chance to exhale. You start rushing from one thing to the next, leaving half-finished tasks in your wake, and wondering why you’re always feeling behind.

This week’s work is to create awareness, because you can’t declutter something you can’t see.

Invisible commitments like “remember to buy milk,” “help with the bake sale,” “catch up on laundry,” or “check emails 20 times a day” pile up quietly. They don’t make it onto your Google Calendar, but they steal just as much time as your big-ticket events and full-time job.

Over-scheduling yourself doesn’t just tire you out, either. It lowers your productivity. Every time you switch from one task to another, your brain loses precious moments (or minutes) recalibrating. The less time you spend dedicated to a single task, the less of a deep-dive you get to take. Multiply that by dozens of switches a day, and only doing surface-level work each time, and it’s no wonder you feel like you’re running in place.

The goal isn’t to schedule every second or become a productivity robot; that word seems to have become a curse-word in the wellness industry, but productivity to me isn’t about squeezing as much as you can into every minute. It’s about simplifying, clearing out the fluff, saying no… and when you’re only doing what you want to and need to do, you get so far, so fast.

This week’s goal is to see the truth so you can design a rhythm that lets you work with focus and rest and play without guilt. Because the thing is, productivity is a skill, and like any skill, it can be learned. And the first lesson is that rest and play are not wasted time.

Keep reading for instructions, new habits, tips, and details about your goal this week.