Design Your Day

by Claire Diaz-Ortiz

  Praise for Design Your Day

  I love the message of this book: get more done by doing less. Often, we think that productivity is the result of doing more, but rarely does it turn out that way. If you struggle, like I do, to focus on what matters most, then Design Your Day will be a breath of fresh air. Read it, then live it.

  —JEFF GOINS, bestselling author of The Art of Work

  Who doesn’t need more hours in their day? With so many responsibilities to juggle and hats to wear, it can feel like the days fly by and your to-do list flies out the window. By the end of the day you wonder to yourself, “what did I even do?” and “why didn’t the things I needed to accomplish actually get done?” If you can identify with this, you don’t want to miss this book. I can’t think of anyone better to teach you to make the most of your life than Claire.

  —ALLISON VESTERFELT, author of Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage

  I’m making more than a few changes based on the super-practical concepts in this book. Claire does an amazing job of clearing the air and helping you make the most important things the most important things. I’ve always been a goal-oriented person but this book is helping me take it to another level!

  —JOËL MALM, founder of Summit Leaders Coaching and author of Vision Map

  There are plenty of do-more-in-less-time strategies out there. Claire isn’t about doing that with shortcuts. Rather, she’s all about identifying the right goals, and acting with purpose so that you really can do more in less time, while still achieving the things you value. With clarity and insight, her methods are an antidote to idle busyness.

  —JUSTIN WISE, founder and CEO of Think Digital

  Goals are everything when it comes to business and life in general. Claire couldn’t have done a better job defining how to set purposeful goals for yourself. There are a lot of books out there about goal setting. This one is special. Meaningful goals matter, and Design Your Day helps you understand how to give your goals purpose, and more importantly, how to achieve them using a simple and effective strategy. Bravo Claire!

  —SCOTT WARNER, CEO, Gigg

  Productivity isn’t just about the grind; it’s about the decisions you make about how you work. Work hard to work well. Design Your Day will show you how.

  —ALLI WORTHINGTON, COO, Propel Women and author of Breaking Busy

  © 2016 by

  CLAIRE DIAZ-ORTIZ

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Edited by Pam Pugh

  Interior design: Ragont Design and Erik M. Peterson

  Cover design: Erik M. Peterson

  Author photo: Jose Diaz-Ortiz

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Diaz-Ortiz, Claire, 1982- author.

  Design your day : be more productive, set better goals, and live life on purpose / Claire Diaz-Ortiz.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-8024-1294-2

  1. Time management. 2. Goal (Psychology) I. Title.

  BF637.T5D53 2015

  650.1--dc23

  2015030185

  All websites and phone numbers listed herein are accurate at the time of publication but may change in the future or cease to exist. The listing of website references and resources does not imply publisher endorsement of the site’s entire contents. Groups and organizations are listed for informational purposes, and listing does not imply publisher endorsement of their activities.

  We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

  Moody Publishers

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  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America

  Getting Started: Big Rocks

  PART ONE: DECIDE

  Word of the Year

  How to Set SMART Goals

  Fine-Tuning Your Goals

  Create Strategies to Reach Your Goals

  Keep Your Goals Top of Mind

  PART TWO: ORGANIZE (LESS IS MORE)

  L: Limit Your Work to Your Best 20%

  E: Edit the Time You Spend on Work

  S: Streamline the Work You Do

  S: Stop Working: Know When and How

  Conclusion

  Recommended for Further Reading

  Notes

  About the Author

  More from Claire Diaz-Ortiz

  More from Moody Collective

  Thank you for choosing this Moody Collective title. It is our prayer that this book will help you know Jesus Christ more and love Him more deeply.

  The proceeds from your purchase help pay the tuition of students attending Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. MBI offers excellent Biblical training and free tuition to undergraduate students, allowing students to graduate and pursue ministry work without being burdened by extra debt. These students come from around the globe and graduate better equipped to impact our world for Christ. Your purchase makes that possible.

  Other Moody Ministries that reach out to impact our world for Christ are Moody Radio and Moody Distance Learning. To learn more, visit moodyradio.org and moodydistancelearning.org

  Thanks again,

  The Moody Collective Team

  A part of Moody Publishers

  It is 5:00 p.m. and you’re late to pick up a small, uniformed child at soccer practice. Although the day is mostly over, you feel like it never really began. You vaguely remember an alarm going off in a darkened morning, and a rushed hour of kids and notebooks and cereal flying. A big yellow bus passed in and out of your vision. Then a series of errands and meetings and phone calls paraded by for hours on end—a squashed sandwich in a plastic bag providing you a few minutes of quiet calm.

  Throughout it all, there was the coffee. May I never have to live a day without coffee, you muse. A to-do list, sitting next to you on the passenger seat in your car, has twenty-seven items on it, only two of which you managed to cross off today. You didn’t even really get started.

  “But today was an unusual day,” you rationalize. “So many unexpected things came up.”

  “Tomorrow will be better,” you promise yourself, only slightly wincing.

  It’s not a lie if you believe it, right?

  When it comes to living the life we want to live, there are good days and there are bad days. We all have bad days. Days where the car breaks down when you’re in labor, the puppy eats your college thesis, and the basement floods the Christmas presents away. And sometimes we can’t change these days. But there are many days—like when life zips by in a series of flashes and suddenly you’re on the way to pick up that child from practice and your to-do list didn’t get any shorter—that we can do something about. And learning to change these days is one of the most important lessons we will ever learn. Your particular day might differ—replace the kids and breakfast cereal with lattes and late-night graduate school study groups—but the idea is the same. Whatever it is that matters most to you in life—your family, your health, your faith, your friends—will suffer if you don’t learn to live your days well.

  Many of us have seen the experiment with the rocks and the jar. If you are new to this idea, go get a few big rocks, a ton of small pebbles, and a large glass jar. You’ll find that if you put the pebbles in the jar first and then try to put in the big rocks, you’ll
have trouble fitting everything in. Do things the other way around, though, and you’re golden. Put your big rocks in the jar fist, and then fill the jar’s air pockets up with pebbles. Ta-da! It fits.

  Life is the same way. It’s easy to fill up a day or a life with an endless series of pebbles and then not have the time, energy, or resources to fit in the big rocks. A life well designed is about making sure that the important stuff stays important, day in and day out.

  Days shouldn’t live themselves, and this is a book about making sure they don’t.

  This book takes part in two acts.

  Together, they walk you through the Do Less method, a productivity and goal-setting model I designed to help folks get more done in less time and succeed more often. Close readers will notice that “DO” is not just one of the most used words in the English language, but is also (fantastically, I might add) a word made up of the initials of my last name.

  The Do Less method is about taking back your time, and giving it to someone who really knows what they’re doing.

  You!

  In Part One, we’ll look at the first step, Decide. This is where you’ll think hard about what is important and what is not in the year or season you have ahead. This is where you pare down on the nonessentials and learn to clarify what you really want. Remember that what you want is all about what you value in this world.

  In Part Two, we’ll dive into Organize. We’ll put key productivity strategies in place to reach the smart goals you’ve set for yourself, day by day, year by year. Specifically, Organize follows through four steps: Limit, Edit, Streamline, and Stop (LESS).

  The Do Less method will help you win more often and love your life better along the way.

  “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

  —Yogi Berra

  First, we’re going to decide what matters. Then, we’ll figure out how to get you where you’re going.

  The first step in getting where you’re going is deciding what you want, and thus the Do Less Method starts with a big D.

  Decide.

  It’s time to think long and hard about what you want. We’ll start by setting an overarching theme for the year or season ahead, and then we’ll jump down into creating powful goals for your life and work.

  For the last few years, I’ve done something smart. Now, I’m not always doing smart things, so believe me when I say that this is something to write home about. What have I done? I’ve chosen a word of the year.

  I got the idea from a book, and it’s worked well to bring my life a greater sense of direction and fulfillment. I’m now such a fan that I’ll shout it from my handy nearby mountaintop:

  Each year, you should choose a word to represent the year you have in front of you.

  Think long and hard about one word that will serve as a guidepost for what you want to do and be in the year to come. And remember that a year needn’t start January 1—you can start your year at any time! One word that will remind you of what’s important when you need it most. One word to mean everything you want your year to be, and one word that will be a guiding light when times get tough and you’re not clear on what your priorities are.

  There aren’t a lot of rules. Your word can be a verb or a noun. It can be long. It can be short. A word that has funny sounds in it or a word that rolls off the tongue. Depending on the type of year you’re going for, some examples of great words might be: Breathe, Push, Persevere, Give, Abundance, Direction, Moxie, Contentment.

  The first year I did this exercise, I needed it badly. I was in a season of overwhelm, and so choosing my word—REST—felt like taking a big old breath of fresh air. Those four letters meant the world to me.

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, and I made a lot of mistakes during the year. By publicly stating my word, I also provoked some interesting responses in others. Many folks who read about my word of the year talked about it when they saw me—or, even better, mentioned it when they were asking me to do something! A number of times I received a note or call along the lines of, “I know you said your word of the year was REST, but I was wondering if you could …”

  This alone let me know that something about publicly stating my word of the year was working. And not just for me to know my own priorities, but for others to know them as well. (Yes, they may still have been asking me to do something, but they were at least conscious that I was likely to say it wasn’t the right year for me to agree!)

  The next year, with great deliberation, I chose a new word: RENEW. After a year of rest, I was ready for balance, and looked for a guidepost to help me carefully choose what I would take on in my personal and professional life in this time of measured growth. I wasn’t resting, but I wasn’t going hog wild either.

  This past year, I mixed it up, going digital with my word of the year and choosing not a word, but a hashtag.

  #BanBusy

  As a digital gal, living in a digital world, the act of choosing a hashtag seemed more me than ever before. The point’s the same, after all. It is one short, powerful idea promising to revolutionize the way I think about what I do. And so #banbusy aimed to help me be mindful of one of the scarcest resources I have: time.

  #banbusy was my aim to help myself. And, as in past years, it did just that. On really bad days, I’d wear the #banbusy necklace someone sent me to remind me of just what I had signed up to. And, day-by-day, I worked hard to be a steward of my time, and a minder of not making my life too full.

  The first step in deciding what you want to achieve or how you want to feel is about framing all those larger decisions as part of a larger theme. This theme is your word of the year (or your word for a season).

  Think hard about a word that will help guide you in your upcoming season of life. Find a powerful word that encompasses the things you want to accomplish, yes, but the way you want to feel as well.

  Don’t jump into things. Try one word on for size. Then try another.

  Give yourself time to find the right word (or, yes, hashtag) to express what you want the year ahead of you to be.

  This process may take days or it may take weeks. You may start with one word, try it on for size, and discard it for another. That’s fine. That’s good, in fact! More than anything, you need to find a word that feels right, sounds right, and means right.

  Find the word of the year that’s the word of you.

  IDEATE

  Once you have an overarching word in place, it’s now time to begin the process of setting and then reaching your goals in the season ahead.

  There are “rules” to goal setting. You can do it right; you can do it wrong. We’ll get into all that, I promise. But first, it’s time to brainstorm. I want you to think of anything and everything under the sun that may or may not be a goal in your life. Then we’ll prune them down. We’ll separate the goals from the non-goals. We’ll separate the dreams from the goals from the Words of the Year. We’ll choose what’s this year, and what’s another year.

  Let’s ideate.

  GET AN IDEAS NOTEBOOK

  Goals start with ideas, and we need a lot of them.

  We’re about to go through a process that requires you to think big, and to have bold ideas about where you want to be. Think long and wide about the next few years ahead of you and what you want to do, accomplish, and feel in your work and your life. To do this, you’ll need a lot of ideas.

  Luckily, each one of us—whether we’re teachers, doctors, mamas, programmers, businesspeople, tennis coaches, politicians, or cartoonists—has tons of ideas every day. Every hour, often. Every minute, sometimes. The challenge, however, is in effectively capturing those ideas.

  When you have an idea in the shower, do you write it down? No. (Although SkyMall used to sell something to help you with that.) When you have an idea while tossing and turning at night, do you write that down? Not likely. When you have an idea in the subway, do you type it into your phone? Sometimes. The problem is not in coming up wit
h the ideas, but in systematically documenting them.

  So get a notebook. A tiny one. Not your regular hefty journal, and definitely not your phone. A real notebook you can touch and look at and think, this is for all my terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad ideas. (And some of the good ones as well.)

  Carry it around. Use it just for ideas.

  Don’t listen to the part of your brain that says that you don’t need one more notebook just to write down a random idea in. For years, I told myself I could use my regular journal. For years, it never worked. I didn’t want to lug it around. If I did, I didn’t want to take it out to write just one line in. It never worked until I designated one spot for just such content: a separate notebook just for ideas.

  Get yours today.

  BRAINSTORM

  These days, that notebook isn’t just going to be for incidental ideas. We’re going to be actively courting them, and you’ll need it to ideate on potential personal and professional goals you might want to pursue.

  Brainstorming is a tricky art. Some folks can come up with five hundred mostly terrible ideas in fifteen seconds and some believe that ideas must be “good” before they see the light of day.

  In Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving, Alex Osborn set out the rules I follow when I brainstorm. Osborn’s work holds that there are four basic tenets of brainstorming, and that they are important to ensuring that any brainstorming session results in positive, helpful ideas.

  Here’s how they work:

  1. Focus on Quantity: Whoever said, “It’s not quantity, it’s quality,” wasn’t thinking about brainstorming. In brainstorming you want as many ideas as possible. This isn’t always easy, so one way to do this is to motivate yourself by setting a specific number you want to come up with—say, twenty. Then, go a step further and commit yourself to coming up with those twenty ideas in a short period of time—five or ten minutes, say. This will help you to not overthink your ideas, and to keep on track with the next tenet.