- "Good morning, Good Life," friends,
it's time to prepare for the week,
and there are a few things I like to do
to help me stay motivated, be a bit more productive,
and prevent procrastination.
I can't assume I'll feel like doing hards things
throughout a crazy week,
but when I make my plans with this ritual
I'm much more likely to follow through and do my best.
After all, our friend Benjamin Franklin once said,
"When you fail to plan, plan to fail."
There are a few checklists to go over,
so I try to spread it out over a few days
at the end of the week so I'm not trying to do
all my weekly planning in one single day.
Let's start with calendar review.
So the biggest thing with my calendar
is I have to use Google Calendar.
It's electronic,
it has everything documented that I've ever done,
and it's how I communicate with other people
about getting together or getting work done.
But with that said, it gets really, really overwhelming.
So when I'm looking at what I need to focus on for the week,
that's when I like to write things down in my planner.
The things that get written down
are the things I need to do when it's time to focus.
One of the most important things that I need to map out
is the baby blocking schedule.
So Bianca's only in daycare part-time.
So part of the work week Vincenzo and I
split responsibilities.
So we block out time during those days
when we can schedule things for work
knowing that the other parent is going to be on baby.
So, I have to block out those times
and then I can look at the days that she's in daycare
as a little bit more free and less restricted
for different types of work.
By the way, my friend Natalie Sisson really inspired me
on the baby blocking schedule.
So if that pertains to you,
I highly recommend you check that out.
I'll link to it in the description below.
So now that I have my digital calendar
a bit organized and top of mind,
this is when I really dive in with my planner
to set those priorities.
I have three slots for daily priorities
which helps me get straight to the important stuff
when it's time to get to work.
If there's something on my calendar that I need to attend
it's going to get a spot on the priority list for the day
because timed commitments need extra attention.
Other priorities are often associated
with relevant deadlines.
Admin that's easy to procrastinate on,
like proposals or updating my online shop,
and of course quality time.
My planner tells me exactly where my attention needs to be.
My next planning habit is ritual reinforcement.
(relaxing music)
Ritual reinforcement is so, so important,
I take it really seriously because any variation
in my schedule is not good for me
feeling like I'm ever in the swing of things.
We already have enough variables as it is in our lives.
So things like sleeping at the same time every day
and doing the same things when I wake up each morning
for my morning routine really help me
to feel like I've got a little bit more control
over my day than sometimes I actually do.
This is probably one of the best parts
of the "Good Morning, Good Life" planner,
if you haven't seen it already, is the timeline map.
Just mapping out how much time do you actually have
for a morning routine?
How much time do you have for your evening routine?
When does it need to start
in order for you to go to bed on time,
go to sleep on time, and wake up on time?
Your morning routine starts the night before,
so doing the timeline map is something that you must do.
It's in the monthly section of the planner,
but I like to review it every week
and just make sure it's still working for me.
And another way that I check that
is by reviewing my aura ring data.
So I use a sleep tracker in this ring,
I look at my app and it tells me what my weekly report is.
Which will also give me a little bit of back check
in terms of am I going to sleep at the best time for me
and how is my activity affecting my readiness?
Calendar review and ritual reinforcement
are things I try to do at the end of the day on Friday.
This way I can relax for the weekend
knowing that Monday will be slightly less scary
with most of my predictable schedule ready to go.
Hello, Sunday, it's time to make sure we feed the family.
Meal planning is one of my biggest weaknesses.
I used to just eat whatever, whenever
and did not worry about planning it.
That is impossible with a 15 month old.
So around here, we make food plans now.
For this part of my ritual,
I like to use our family whiteboard
and a food planning notepad.
First step is to take a quick inventory
of what we have in the house.
I hate losing track of meat or produce that we have
when it's perfectly good and does not belong
on my shopping list.
Those items are gonna be first up to get planned to be used.
Dinner is our most important meal
because it's the one when we're all together.
So Bianca's meal plan will match
whatever we're eating for dinner.
Anywhere I can keep it simple, I do,
so I nail down the default meals immediately.
Taco Tuesday, pizza Saturday,
Nona's house on Sundays for pasta.
That takes care of three meals.
Then I fill in the other dinners with what we have
or any new recipes we're gonna try.
From there, I fill in Bianca's favorite breakfast.
Girl loves to eat the same thing, and I'm here for it.
Then I get a little bit more creative for lunches.
Lucky for me, I'm not in charge of making the food.
That's the husband's job.
I just got a plan and buy the food.
Yay for me.
Now I go to my favorite website in the whole wide world,
Instacart.
I love hiring grocery shoppers.
They are wonderful people.
They care a lot about picking out the best food for you,
especially when you communicate well with them in the app.
No, this is not sponsored.
I am a very happy paying and tipping customer.
Now that my groceries are on their way to me,
it's time to go over the chore checklist.
For cleaning, I have A weeks and B weeks.
On A weeks I clean the bathrooms
and on B weeks I clean the floors and I do some dusting.
During my weekly planning
I just try to review which week it is
and add any other cleaning tasks that might be necessary.
Oh, and I make sure I delegate when I don't wanna do it all.
In preparation for this video,
I decided to go to my new friends on the Threads app
and ask them what they wanted to see.
And I got a lot of responses I typically would.
Things like, "How do you stay motivated?"
"How do you stick with your habits"
And, "What do you do when a curve ball comes your way
and things don't go as planned?"
And I think that's why I wanted to make this video.
The things that I do every week are the reason
why I don't have to worry about being motivated.
I don't have to worry about sticking with my habits.
I'm basically making time to put faith in myself
that I'm going to be motivated
and I'm going to stick with my habits,
because I am planning on it.
And what ends up happening
is because I have the list of priorities there,
I'm not asking myself those questions.
My workouts are scheduled.
I'm not thinking, "Am I gonna go to the gym today?"
And by doing all of this pre-work,
when you wake up every day
and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do,
you get to rest on these systems.
And so I really think that keeping with your habits
comes down to environment.
So how are you creating an environment for yourself
that is allowing you to keep up
with the version of yourself that you want to be?
And if you make the time to just have this weekly session,
it can continue to get better
because then you can look back to see,
"Okay, what did I plan for myself
and what did I actually do?"
And you can reflect on what went wrong,
and reflect on what worked,
and reflect on what you never wanna do again
'cause it doesn't work for you.
Are you overscheduling yourself?
Are you keeping Uber Eats on speed dial every night
even though you bought yourself food
and you wrote yourself a meal plan?
Do you have to delete the app?
Do you need to start making some changes?
By having this time to plan and reflect,
you learn pretty quickly about whether or not
you're keeping up with your habits because you want to
or maybe are you self-sabotaging
and maybe there are some other things
that there's an element of your life,
the season that you're in,
that just makes some things not work.
So what does that mean for you?
How are you going to make a change?
How are you gonna choose something different?
Until we sit in these moments and actually plan things out,
then we don't get an opportunity for things to go right.
Everything's pretty much always going to go wrong.
But because you did all of this pre-work,
you have a fighting chance
of getting to a closer version of the person you wanna be
and achieve what you're hoping to.
And if you need an accountability partner,
then I suggest you watch this video every week
when you do your weekly planning to motivate you
to make sure you sit down and make it happen
so that every week it gets better and better.
If you enjoyed this video, thank you.
Please click the like button and let YouTube know.
And it would really mean the world to me
if you know someone who would find this video useful,
if you would just share it directly with them.
If you would like more information
about the "Good Morning, Good Life" planner
and all of the new colors that we have available
you can go to shop.amylandino.com
and I'll link to it in the description down below as well.
We even have a digital version
if you're not the paper, hardcover, pen type.
I know a lot of people internationally
are enjoying the digital version,
so thank you for that.
That's all for today, thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always, remember,
subscribe for good vibes, kiss the ones you love,
and go after the life you want.
Cheers.