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In this post, we talk about why you should use anchors to create your ideal schedule. Then, we go over a three-step process to brainstorm your ideal schedule using anchors and a cyclical calendar.

S2E23 – How to Delight in God: Your Bible Study at Home Guide – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are talking about the basics of how to start a quiet time routine at home. Your Bible Study at Home can be a vibrant life-giving time. By including worship, prayer, and Bible reading, this can become your favorite time of day. You'll learn how to do this and more in this episode. Read more at the blog post: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/how-to-delight-in-god-your-bible-study-at-home-guide/ Get our Bible Study at Home Guide here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.kit.com/99505f5a83 Get our FREE Color the Bible tracker here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/free-color-the-bible-reading-tracker/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. Want to support A More Beautiful Life Collective in the creation of podcasts, posts, and other resources? You can make a one-time, monthly, or yearly donation here. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Hey everyone! Welcome to A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. This is Episode 24 of Season 1, and it is the last episode in our series on getting things done from a godly perspective. We’ve talked about so much in this series: from setting a vision for your year with a theme of the year to creating a system to tackle your to-do list to now creating your ideal schedule.

Today, we are going to be getting practical by going over a step-by-step process to making your ideal schedule. We’ll talk about whether you should create your schedule using time blocks or anchors. And, then, we’ll go over a three-step process to create your schedule. If you would like to learn more about some of the big-picture ideas behind making your schedule, be sure to listen to the last episode to learn those.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this series! You can tell me what you like and what you didn’t like by leaving a 1-2 sentence review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Our Ideal Schedules are Our Blueprint for Our Days

My husband is currently building a house. Each day, he goes out to the job site armed with lumber, equipment, and tenacity as they nail together board by board what will amount to someone’s center of life. We often don’t think about the structure of homes. We take it for granted. You don’t often consider whether or not you can add a new piece of furniture to your living room or host a certain number of people because of the burden weight that will be placed on your walls. But, if you think about the weight that your walls can carry, it’s pretty mind-boggling. It’s all made from a strong foundation of concrete, some lumber, and joists.

As he goes out to the job site every day, the thing that makes building the house possible is the blueprints he brings with him. Trying to build a house without plans is foolishness. You may not have it correctly engineered. You may forget to add certain supports where they are needed. The old adage is ‘Cut once, measure twice.’ You have to follow precise plans if you want to build something sound.

Our schedules give us a blueprint for our days. Annie Dillard says, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.”

In the last episode, we talked about how our schedules are like our budgets. When we create a schedule, we are budgeting our time and trying to steward it well. If we don’t have a schedule, we often mismanage our time. We are careless with it. We waste it. This means that the way that we use our time doesn’t line up with the ideals and priorities we have for our lives.

A schedule is just a way of making sure the way that we spend our time matches up with our values for our lives.

How do you make your ideal schedule?

There are two ways to create your schedule. When most people talk about creating a schedule, they often recommend using time blocks. I would suggest basing your schedule around anchors instead. Let’s talk about the differences between the two and you can decide for yourself.

Time Blocks

You can base your schedule on time blocks. One recent podcast I listened to talked about making a schedule for your homeschool day. Jessica Smartt discussed how she planned out her day and her children’s day in 15-minute increments so she knew what everyone was supposed to be doing based on what time it was. In a time block schedule, you would use the hours in a day, days in a week, and months in a year to be your guide of what is supposed to be happening at that moment.

So if you know that you have to leave your house for work by 7:30, you might have a note to get the kids up at 6:30 to have breakfast by 7:00 and then be dressed and getting in the car by 7:15. In this sense, the clock (or day or date) dictates what you should be doing at that moment. This is the most common way of creating our schedules, with many cleaning routines done by days of the week and goals created based on the name of the month.

Anchors

Time Blocks are not the only way to create your schedule. You can also plan out your time based on anchors. Anchors are basically moments in your day that signify what you are supposed to do next. We use anchors when we talk about creating habits and routines, but really you can plan your whole life based on anchors. The anchors you use are entirely dependent on your family, but I think the most common anchor is related to food.

For instance, during your day, you know you are going to be eating around 3 times. So, you base the following activities with the anchor as the trigger to get you started. So after breakfast, you start work or school. Following lunch, you may have nap time or outside self-directed time. Following dinner, you clean up and get ready for the next day.

None of these activities are based on a time – breakfast could be at 7 or at 9 depending on when your kids get up – but it is the rhythm of your day that you follow. Anyone with little kids will be familiar with this idea because kids have no concept of time. They recognize when it’s dark and light out, and they get in the habit of what to expect if you keep a schedule. But, they don’t recognize that every night at 8 pm they need to be in bed. In the summertime when it’s light outside, they may be a lot less agreeable to that idea than in the depths of winter when it’s been dark for the last two hours. Anchors allow for flexibility and growth while still giving you a schedule to follow.

Anchors are basically non-negotiable habits on which we stack other activities. Eating is something that we all must do, so if we make that an anchor in our day, we can habit stack other things we want to get done onto it. As we continue to build off anchors throughout our day, we are creating the basic building blocks of our schedule.

This idea sounds pretty common-sensical for a daily schedule but can seem a little more far-fetched when it comes to weekly and monthly schedules. We are so tied to days and dates that it is much harder to think in terms of anchors and rhythms.

One clear example of anchor-based schedules is homeschoolers who follow a loop schedule. Basically, they have a series of subjects they complete in order. Every day, they do the next subject. Some weeks they may school 4, 5, or 6 days, but whenever they do their schooling they just pick up the next subject in the list where they left off. You can follow the same in a weekly schedule of activities you are a part of.

In the context of a year, anchors are maybe not as readily apparent but they are still important. Holidays make excellent anchors. You can also make the beginning of the year, school year, or month anchors. Changing seasons can also be an anchor. Anchors in the year can trigger decluttering and cleaning habits, planning habits, and certain family activities. They serve as a reminder to keep up with habits and traditions.

Anchor schedules offer much more flexibility which leads to you being more consistent and effective in the long run. I highly recommend brainstorming an anchor schedule that fits your life.

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Now it’s time to make your ideal schedule

We talked about 4 key biblical ideas for creating our schedule in the last episode: (1) We work out of rest. (2) We need to honor the cyclical nature of our days, weeks, and seasons. (3) We need to have balance in our schedules. And (4) We need (or at least can try) to align our schedules with a liturgical year.

As you start to consider these points, you can begin to create your schedule. As I mentioned before, I actually printed out three large circles to represent my days, weeks, and years. Then, I started to brainstorm what I wanted to include in these points in my life.

If you check out the link in the show notes, you can get a copy of my Ideal Schedule planner sent straight to your inbox.

Begin by using this anchor schedule to brainstorm your days. This schedule is formatted to represent the cyclical nature of our days, weeks, and years, in order to help you see at a glance how balanced your days are.

The steps to create your ideal schedule are:

Determine your anchors.
Mark areas of open time and categorize them.
Identify potential areas for habit stacking.

Step 1. Determine your anchors.

All of our days are so varied, but you can determine some repeated patterns that you must include every day, week, and months, such as meals, work, or family responsibilities. These repeated patterns will naturally vary from person to person. You can go back to your time inventory to identify some anchors, or just pick a few events and write them down.

Since we are working in a very scheduled society, I’ve found the best way to determine anchors is to make pre-scheduled activities some of your anchors, like church times, extracurriculars, and other commitments. When you are making these activities your anchors, they become non-negotiables. Consequently, you may decide that you don’t want to participate in several of these outside, pre-scheduled activities at one time so that you can bring balance back into your schedules.

As you begin to brainstorm your ideal schedule, you may notice that certain things need to be anchors, but they currently are not, like regular meal times or traditions throughout the year. Your first goal is to get consistent with your anchors. This will get you closer to making your ideal schedule a reality in your life.

Begin with your daily schedule. Mark your work schedule, meal times, and sleep schedule. Again, you are not necessarily marking the time, just a general gist of when it will happen. If you are a stay-at-home mom, self-employed, or retired, you can mark other responsibilities that you have, such as naptimes, phone calls, or times scheduled for household chores.
Then, move on to your weekly schedule. Mark regular weekly appointments, traditions, and standing habits. Church services are a great example of anchors that could be on your weekly schedule. We always do a family movie and pizza night on Fridays. This would be an anchor.
Finally, brainstorm your yearly schedule. Consider traditions, vacations, and events you have each year. You may also consider school vacations and other seasonal chores and activities you do. All of the above are anchors.

You want to have a rhythm of balance in your schedule that honors the cyclical nature of our days, weeks, and years. While I was working, this looked primarily like me thinking about what I was doing in my evenings. I tried to have a balance between nights at home with my family and nights with family, friends, and in my community. Now, that I stay home, I try to have a balance between days out and days in.

You may realize that your ideal schedule doesn’t have balance, so you want to add more anchors to your schedule. If there are other habits or activities you want to do, you can also make those an anchor. This could be a solitary nature walk for your alone time, a weekly hike with your family, or a class you are taking with your best friend.

You could make ‘standing plans’ with others as an anchor for your week. This means if you see you need time in adult conversation with someone, then make a plan with your friends to get together every other Tuesday for dinner and games. Or a playdate at your favorite playground with your bestie for a coffee. Or a Sunday dinner at your home or a nearby park with extended family. The best way to make sure you get together regularly with your friends and family is to say that this is just what we do on a certain day. You establish it in your schedule as a nonnegotiable, and if you can’t make it one week, you know that the next week (or month) you’ll meet and do the same thing. When you make standing plans, this becomes an anchor in your week.

Step 2. Mark areas in your ideal schedule of open time and categorize them, giving a general description of what you will do then.

Once you have marked your anchors, you’ll have a sense of markers that define times throughout your days, weeks, and years. The next step is to look at the time in between the anchors and determine what will happen then. By doing this, you can flesh out your ideal schedule.

If you are working at a very structured job, you may only have a couple of hours before and after work that is unstructured time that you can mark as “Getting ready” or “Relaxing.” Simple as that.

If you are a stay-at-home mom or work flexible hours, you may need to give a more defined sense of what you’ll be doing then, such as naptime, chores, and school.

Going through this process will give you a general idea of the rhythm of your day. Keep in mind the cyclical nature of your day, scheduling a wake-up time, a work time, and a generous time for rest.

You can repeat this process with your week and year, scheduling time for work, rest, and preparation.

Step 3. Identify potential areas for habit stacking.

If this is your first time creating an ideal schedule, you may start to identify some areas at this point that could be improved or eliminated. You will also start to notice anchors that provide the perfect opportunity for habit stacking. You can begin to add other habits to your anchor that help you reach your goals. For instance, if you want to add morning pages to your day, figure out an anchor in the morning to attach that routine to, like your morning coffee. Then you can utilize habit stacking to consistently do that routine.

In the context of your week and year, you can choose events to which you could add other habits. For instance, if you’ve been wanting to host people at your house, you could ask them for lunch after church on Sundays. Or if you have been wanting to declutter your home, incorporate decluttering into the time that you utilize to put away Christmas decorations. The anchor (aka Church or Christmas) can be the catalyst to plan other activities that you know you need to do.

Now it’s your turn! Brainstorm your ideal schedule.

Let’s Review: Today, we’ve talked about how you are going to make your ideal schedule. First, we talked about the difference between making a schedule using time blocks and anchors. Then, we talked about 3 steps to make our ideal schedule. Step 1 is to determine your anchors. Step 2 is to block off open times to get tasks done from your to-do list. Step 3 is to identify areas for potential habit stacking. You will add all these to your cyclical schedule plan.

We’ve talked about so much in this series on getting things done from a godly perspective. I’m praying for you as you work to add habits to your life that make your life better and routinely complete projects to further God’s kingdom. Don’t forget to visit our shop to download resources and planning sheets that will help you implement this system in your life today.

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Next week, we will be starting a new series on how to deal with winter seasons in our lives. I hope you join us! Keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

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