[PODCAST 225]: Big Life Changes Made Easier with Projects, Routines, and a STEP System

In today’s guest podcast, my husband and I share how we’re approaching some huge life changes and trusting our STEP systems to help us make everything happen. My husband, Josh, will be graduating from college in April (yay!) and will be starting medical school this fall. We are preparing to declutter our whole apartment, establish better family routines with our baby, move several states away, create family memories with some upcoming travel, and accomplish some work/personal goals. It’s starting to feel like a lot! Can you relate? Instead of feeling bogged down by the details, we did a mind sweep and got everything out of our heads. Here’s a snippet of what was on that huge mind sweep: Talk to the landlord about moving out a month early Get quotes on moving pods and learn how we can store our things for two months Create a budget for our upcoming moving/travel/family expenses Research what activities we will do as a family while traveling Have dinners with friends and family before we leave Finish scanning family photos Talk to current medical school students and get ideas for moving/prepping for school Celebrate upcoming holidays and birthdays with loved ones Attend a few community events before moving Sell some furniture on FB Marketplace Use as many ingredients and food items in our apartment as possible before moving and on and on and on We then determined how each of these items would fit into our STEP system. Most of these items are large projects (or huge projects with several subprojects), but some of them were routines. As we determined what category each item fell into, we could start creating a plan and a timeline. All of our moving-related projects, for example, couldn’t be done all at once. We had to figure out details with our landlord first before making plans to move out. Then we could start calling for quotes on moving pods and storage. Then we could start decluttering parts of our apartment that we wanted to start packing up first. Slowly but surely, we started completing one project after another! By prioritizing our projects based on their deadlines and importance in our lives, we could easily decide what would make it onto our Current Projects Lists. As we broke each project up into Next Actions, we were able to delegate things to one another and share the workload. For example, I like to do more of the phone calls, emails, and online research. Those Next Actions became my responsibilities, and other home, family, and errand-related Next Actions became Josh’s. It’s tempting to add everything to our list at once–we want to get everything done and see that it’s right there, front and center, on our to-do list. However, this is when we usually start to get weighed down and feel like everything is accumulating into a mountain that is impossible to tackle. At LearnDoBecome, we recommend not having more than 7-8 projects TOTAL on your Current Project List at any given time. These 7-8 projects span all areas of your life, and when new projects come to mind, they can be added to your Next in Line or Someday Projects List. These lists have been incredibly helpful for us because we’re human and we know that it’s just not possible for us to do everything all at once. Instead of feeling like we aren’t doing enough or we need to add more things to our lists, we know that those future projects will be waiting for us! They are safe and can be adde