6-7 Group Your Tasks into Buckets - TMM Module 6 Tue, 3/22 10:46AM 9:22 SUMMARY KEYWORDS tasks, appointments, bucket, schedule, week, brain, friday morning, tuesday morning, grocery shopping, cleaning, running, air filters, doctor, filling, house, monday, home, picking, friday, depending SPEAKERS Patricia Sung Patricia Sung 00:00 Hey there successful mama. Welcome back to module six. Oh, my kids comprehend the six. There we go, module six. Patricia Sung 00:06 And now we're gonna group our tasks into the buckets, and then the buckets go into the pockets. It's all coming together now. Okay, here's what we're doing. Oh, no ahead, just keep in the way. All right, there we go. So filling your buckets is that you've looked at how many open packets of time you have, how many hours or minutes are in those. Patricia Sung 00:30 Now you got your different groups of tasks. And remember, I said like, this is a rough grouping, you're going to figure out now what fits where this is the part where you're starting to gnash those two pieces together to figure out like, where do the puzzle pieces fit, right? Patricia Sung 00:47 So in your bucket types, all these different groups of of tasks that you have, that you're trying to keep track of these ones with the asterisk, I would say, are probably more likely to be helpful for you, you probably want to have these, I'm not going to bore you. But these are ones you probably want to have. And then these are ones that are likely helpful for you. But you may not need depending on your situation. Patricia Sung 01:14 

Patricia Sung 01:14 So inside each bucket of tasks, that's going to vary week to week, you're not a robot, you're not going to do the exact same thing every time. But we want to start defining these parameters around it. Because if we know for example, for me, my home, like taking care of my home bucket is Monday afternoon, and on Monday afternoon, I know that I'm going to tackle things around my house, that means like picking up all the crap that got like left out over the weekend. And if I have things like I need to change the air filters in the house, I'm going to put that on Monday. Patricia Sung 01:54 I need to check the Bode like go check the sprinkler timer. I think something's off on it. I put it on Monday. Because when all those things are popping up in my brain, and I'm feeling anxious, because my brain is like, Oh, don't forget this. Don't forget this. Don't forget this. It is exhausting. So when I think of those tasks now that my brain knows, okay, I handle things on the House on Monday, I immediately can go to Monday, write down that thing that needs to happen for the house. And there it is. And I know that I'm going to be at home, I don't schedule other things on Monday afternoons, I don't go other places. Patricia Sung 02:34 My brain knows like, I will be at my house and can handle these things on Monday. When I get to Monday, and I look at my bucket of home tasks, I'll be like, Okay, what really matters today, what has to get done today? You know what? Click air filters can wait till next week, not a problem. Patricia Sung 02:55 What are the things that I have to do today? Okay, well, I definitely need to fix the sprinkler timer, because I'm getting rained on every time I walk to school, faster house. So let me fix that. That matters to me today. Let me deal with that. And by creating a home for these things, it allows our brain to like turn off the mental clutter because our brain knows, okay, cool. Patricia Sung 03:15 Don't stress about this task, because it's going to happen on Monday, when you do your Monday home tasks. And so like your home things, your cleaning things all can be grouped together, or they can be separate, you can have a separate cleaning bucket and a separate home bucket. And if you're like if you have rent, maybe you don't have as much home stuff to do. Patricia Sung 03:39 But you still have cleaning things to do. You have a group for like errands and grocery shopping, running to the library dropping this thing off picking up dry cleaning, when you're already in the car and out and about running, handling all those things is a lot easier than like, 

already in the car and out and about running, handling all those things is a lot easier than like, Oh, I forgot to go mail this package. And it's like, there goes another trip you're getting everybody's shoes on in the car over to the you know, dry cleaner, the post office coming back. That is an inefficient use of time. That is like an ADHD tax that we have because we are trying to do these things as we think of them and as we realize we forgot about them and it creates a huge mental load for us. Patricia Sung 04:24 So we're putting those like tests together as much as we can to use that momentum in our favor. I do lists these separately because like for example grocery shopping is a pretty large task and may need to be by itself it may not work with other errands. But if you generally don't have a lot of errands, then maybe it's fine to run to the post office when you go grocery shopping because it's not that big of a deal. Patricia Sung 04:56 Andokay, weekly preparation. I do that one on Friday after noons you, most people will do it either like Friday, Saturday, Sunday in preparation for the week ahead. But that's the time where I sit down and I'm like, Okay, what do I need to do for next week? What does it look like? What appointments do I have? I actually fill out my weekly template and go through and figure out, what does this next week look like? It also gives me I like to on Friday, because then I have the weekend of like, oh, right, this thing's happening, I need to make sure that i Hey, actually, I forgot to go to the store and pick up the president for that party or whatever. Patricia Sung 05:29 It gives me a couple days to like, get my brain wrapped around and prepped for that upcoming week. Communication is anytime you have to like keep up with other people calling doctors of offices and making appointments, sending emails, and filling out paperwork for a doctor's appointment, any kind of like exchange of information here communicating, I like to put them all in one spot, those emails that I keep putting off because I don't want to deal with them right now. They get done in the communication back. I'm like, cool, let me snooze that for Wednesday, they'll happen then appointments, when you have a designated point in your schedule to do appointments, you know that you're not going to have other conflicts there. Patricia Sung 06:13 And immediately when you're trying to make an appointment, it's like cool. I know that Tuesday morning is open for appointments. So whatever I need to get done. I'm gonna try to schedule that on Tuesday morning. Obviously, it's not a perfect world, it's not always gonna work out that way. Maybe you have a backup time of like, okay, Tuesday mornings is really when I try to get all that scheduled. But if I can't, you know what, Thursday afternoons over to? The good part is is that see that doctor only has an appointment on Friday morning. You already know 

generally what happens on Friday morning. And how big of an inconvenience is it going to be for you to then change your schedule around and move? Appointment bucket is now going on Friday? Patricia Sung 06:58 Okay, well, Friday morning bucket is usually housecleaning, okay. Well, that's cool. I can move house cleaning. But if that's usually swim lessons, okay, that's a problem. So having that preset? Like, thing in the way that your schedule runs? Immediately, you know whether or not you just created a giant hassle for yourself. And at that moment, you can say, is seeing this doctor worth the hassle? Or is it not and and go from there. Patricia Sung 07:28 Make sure that you make space in your calendar for having fun and resting. And spending time with your family like having either family time or your family meeting where everyone checks in and perhaps like that might be part of your weekly prep, it might be a separate thing. If you have older kids, especially the more that you can involve them in the planning of the week, the more that they will buy into that. And so these are the things where I assume you will most likely need these things not all the time, but fairly certain. Patricia Sung 08:04 And then on this side, I've got things that may or may not apply to you. So what are the times that you're going to do your homeschooling or if you're working from home. If you're doing any volunteer work, I like to have a small section set aside for procrastination tasks, like things that I've just been putting off and I don't want to deal with like, this is a time I'm going to tackle a hard task and I put it at a time in my day where I know I will have the mental capacity to deal with something I don't want to do. Patricia Sung 08:33 Computer tasks may work in like the communication section or it may be something that you need more time for depending on sorry, let's just cut that out. You may need more time for depending on you know the season in your life. Like if it's a back to school time, you may have to do a whole lot of paperwork. Then you can like plan for that. And also meal prep if you are a meal prepper that is a time that you'll want to set aside to like look at your menus, make your grocery store list and and I'm sure there will be more bucket types for you depending on what else is going in your life. Patricia Sung 09:09 So know that this is not like an all encompassing list. This is a starting point for you. Okay, I'm gonna pause there before this video gets too long. And we will continue on with our buckets and buckets in just one second. 

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