The Secret Saturday Ritual – Expanded
Thank you to those of you who experimented with the Simply Saturday ritual I talked about in a previous post. You can read more about it here.
I am grateful for your feedback and inspired by the additional questions you are experimenting with.
I’ve summarized your ideas into three more questions you can play with during your Simply Saturday ritual—community power! 💪🏼
Three MORE Questions. Still Infinite Possibilities.
To go deeper into the heart of “Simply Saturdays,” try asking yourself these three additional questions:
1. What is on my schedule that is neither urgent nor important? 📆
Sometimes my schedule gets crammed with recurring meetings or activities that maybe once were important or urgent, but not anymore.
This is both the brilliance and the curse of recurring tasks and appointments.
At one point, I had a recurring task to check-in with a friend in crisis.
Every few days, the task showed up on my schedule as I didn’t want the busy-ness of the week to crowd out my concern for her situation.
But the crisis had passed and instead of removing the reminder, I continued to check it off.
I moved this week’s Simply Saturday to Friday (yay for flexibility) so I could get this email out early.
Today I reviewed all my reminders and appointments with an eye for keeping only the urgent and important.
Some I deleted, and some I postponed for a couple of months.
Ahhh…can you imagine the freedom and space I felt knowing I wouldn’t be interrupted by the reminder or distracted by the need to decide how to respond to the reminder?
F-R-E-E-D-O-M!
2. How much unscheduled time do I have? 🌱
This is where visual calendars (digital or paper) can really help.
Look at your schedule for the week and/or month ahead.
How much white space is there?
If you’ve got back-to-back meetings, when will you have time to work on your projects?
If all your evenings are filled with activities, when will you have time to let your mind wander? Or let it rest?
This is a great question to ask when you find yourself exhausted, overwhelmed. Another clue is when you consistently respond “I’m so busy” to the question, “How are you?”
3. When do I have time for FUN? ⏰
This is the one EXCEPTION to the previous question.
If you are scheduling time for fun activities like social engagements, hobbies, or self-care, make it obvious that these are FUN/RESTORATIVE activities.
Pick one color or font to make it clear and trying to ensure there is white space on your schedule. Sometimes “space” is found in the FUN activities.
You get to decide.
If you’re not making time for fun activities, now is the time to put those activities on your calendar.
Make a commitment to yourself and a friend so you ensure you follow through on the plan.
Remind yourself that the FUN activities energize your creativity both personally and professionally.
Prioritize the FUN and you’ve also prioritized your creativity.
One Last Review
Once you are done with your key questions, take one last quick review of the upcoming week.
Look for activities that are values-aligned.
Have you prioritized your health and relationships in alignment with what is most important to you?
Freedom in the Framework 🖼️
Don’t let the specifics of this ritual become an obstacle to consistently doing it.
Focus on the flexible framework and its goal:
Reclaiming time and energy for the ideas that will energize you for the week ahead.
If adding questions feel overwhelming, return to using only one or two questions. That’s exactly how I started.
As the Navy SEALs say, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
This is about building a practice.
With any practice, it will feel difficult and cumbersome at first.
As you build the skill and habit of a Simply Saturday ritual, you will see the joy and freedom that comes with prioritizing what’s most important to your life.
You’ll even look forward to doing it.
Give yourself this weekly gift—a gift that keeps on giving, fueling your creative ideas, and opening doors to new possibilities. 🎁
