How to Organize your Day to Get More of the Good
What if I told you there’s a profoundly simple way to organize your day and week around feeling good? We’ll go over what this looks like, how to do it in your real life, and I’ll share personal examples to show how these accessible habits build on one another to create a life that feels good. If you’re ready to fill your week with more care and recharging, then this snackable episode is for you!
here’s a glance at this episode:
- [1:36] Enrollment opens soon for our yearly Feel Good Effect Coaching Certification program. This is our proven habit coaching certification that will help you build a life-changing business grounded in helping others achieve more calm, clarity, and joy through our research-based habit and mindset framework.
- [5:16] Use our 4R framework to think about your day in 4 distinct parts: morning (refresh), mid-morning (revive), afternoon (reset), and evening (rest).
- [8:33] Consider what makes you feel good and recharged when it comes to meals, movement, and mental health.
- [10:07] Plug in the habits that make you feel good in each segment of the day: morning, mid-morning, afternoon, and evening.
- [14:46] Looking ahead at your calendar, insert the things that make you feel good first so they’re prioritized, and then add in all of your other commitments.
links mentioned in this episode
The Feel Good Effect Coaching Certification
read the transcript
Robyn Conley Downs: (00:01)
You’re listening to The Feel Good Effect. How do you organize your day to get more of the good? That’s what we’re talking about right now, let’s make it happen.
Robyn Conley Downs: (00:14)
Radically simple and ridiculously doable. The Feel Good Effect will help you redefine wellness on your terms. Hi, I’m your host of Robyn Conley Downs. And I believe that wellness isn’t about achieving another set of impossible standards, but instead finding what works for you, drawing from cutting-edge science on mindfulness habit and behavior change. This podcast offers a collection of small mindset shifts that allow for more calm, clarity and joy in everyday life allows you to embrace the idea that gentle is the new perfect. I invite you to listen in as we cut through the clutter and find the small shifts that create huge changes in your life. Less striving, more ease. It’s time to feel good.
Robyn Conley Downs: (01:03)
Well, Hey, Feel Good, fam. I am so glad you’re here. This has been a much-requested episode, and we’re gonna talk about how to organize your day to get more of the good. I love this topic so much because it really brings together our whole Feel Good Effect approach and some of the models and framework and strategies that we teach and how you can create these simple habits that build on one another that can create a life that feels good.
Robyn Conley Downs: (01:36)
On that note, I wanted to let you know that we will be opening enrollment for our spring cohort of The Feel Good Effect Coaching Certification in the coming weeks. And I want to invite you to come learn more so you can go to www.thefeelgoodeffect.com/coaching-certification. But really if you just go to www.thefeelgoodeffect.com and you go to coaching, become a coach, you can find out more about the program and then you can get on the list so that as soon as enrollment becomes available, you’ll be first to know. This is our proven habit coaching certification that will help you build a life-changing business grounded in helping others achieve more calm, clarity, and joy through our proven habit and mindset framework. It’s a coaching certification that equips you with the knowledge and skills to coach on habits and mindset. Plus our exclusive Feel Good Effect framework and principles. We do this through an immersive online program that focuses on person-centered coaching skills, behavior change, mindset, and strategies to design an individualized coaching program that fits within your unique life and business. It’s designed for people who either already have a business or a coaching practice and would like to add a focus on mindset and behavior change using our framework, as well as for people who are interested in starting a coaching practice. So if you don’t have a business, but you wanna dip your toe and you wanna know what it’s like to have a coaching business, or to incorporate it into something you’re already doing. And as I mentioned, it’s cohort-based, which means we only open it once a year. At some point in the future, maybe we would do it more maybe twice a year, but right now you have one chance it’s not false scarcity. This is truly what we do to, to support our coaches and to make it the best program we possibly can is we, we ha we open it once. There’s a one-week enrollment period and then that’s a it for the year. So if you’re at all interested, like I said, www.thefeelgoodeffect.com. You can go to become a coach page and all the information will be there. And if you’re listening in the future and it’s outside that enrollment window, go ahead and get on the waitlist. And we’ll let you know when the next period becomes available. Usually, like I said, it’s once a year in the spring, if this resonates with you at all, I just hope that you go check it out because maybe it’s the thing that’s been missing that you didn’t even know was your next step. Or for some of you you’ve been waiting all year for this enrollment to open. You thought about it last year, you weren’t quite ready, and this is your chance. I just really looking forward to inviting our next cohort in. And maybe you’ll be one of those people. You can also find a current certified Feel Good Effect Coach on our website at www.thefeelgoodeffect.com.
Robyn Conley Downs: (04:35)
And one of the things that our coaches do is help people organize their day to get more of the good. And so I, I’m gonna talk about that today, whether you wanna become a coach or work with a coach or not, these are principles that you can use to kind of think about it because without that intentionality, I think our days can kind of happen to us. And we can kind of flip the script and say, you know what, I’m gonna take a little more control of this situation. I’m not every day is not gonna by. And I realize I haven’t taken care of myself. I haven’t gotten those good things, you know, punctuated into my day. And so this is like some things to think about and how to make the good, the start versus like an afterthought.
Robyn Conley Downs: (05:16)
So the first very practical strategy I invite you to use is to think about your day in four parts. So you can, if you haven’t, you can grab our, our, uh, self-care guide that gives you the four parts of the day. That’s on the Real Food, Whole Life website. I know we have two websites now, but the Real Food, Whole Life website has all the recipes and it has our self-care guide. And then The Feel Good Effect has all of our, our habits and resources around habits and then mindset, and then also the coaching and the coaching certification.
Robyn Conley Downs: (05:52)
And so in the self-care guide, we have, we break down the day into four parts. So you can use my four R framework, which I’ll share with you in a second. But even if you don’t, I just want you to think about your day in four parts and why that is helpful. There’s two reasons. First, it kind of helps you get out of that mindset of like today is a good day or a bad day, or today is a hectic day, or today is a calm day because you get four chances, four segments to get some good in your day. And so even if you’re having an off morning or a really exhausted afternoon, you always have those like four individual parts to think about getting the good for caring for yourself or doing the, that are supportive for meals, movement in mind. And it helps you get out of that all-or-nothing thinking that we teach as part of The Feel Good Effect, um, mindset.
Robyn Conley Downs: (06:47)
And it helps you get out of that all or nothing thinking because you have like each day, these four segments to get the good in. So practically I think about morning, mid-morning, afternoon, and evening. Those are my four segments. And again, we break that down into the four RS in our guide. Uh, we teach that in the program as well. And that’s morning is refresh. Midday is revive, afternoon is reset, and evening is rest. Again, you don’t have to use the four RS if you don’t want to, but this is so game-changing for clients I’ve worked with over the years because you think, okay, well, I have to get all of my good, whether that’s self-care, whether that’s, you know, things for your mental health, whether that’s things for your emotional health, connection, how you’re taking care of yourself. Like I said, with meals, movement, and mind, you think it has to all happen.
Robyn Conley Downs: (07:44)
And if I don’t have an hour-long routine, then it doesn’t happen and that’s fully false and there’s no reason it has to be that way. And so when you think about organizing your day in these four parts, you can think about: how am I getting the good in the morning (refresh)?, how am I getting the good in the midday (revive)?, how am I getting the good in the afternoon (reset)?, and how am I getting the good in the evening (rest)? So that is my very first practical tip is just instead of thinking of a day as dichotomous either I took care of myself or I didn’t, or, or I did, you know, I did all the goods, not the shoulds, or I didn’t, just think about it in segments, four parts of the day. And then we can plug in some of the good into those four parts.
Robyn Conley Downs: (08:33)
The second thing I want you to consider is what are your goods? So what I teach is to figure out what your goods and not your should. So not what other people tell you you should do, or you think that would look good on Instagram, or, you know, what’s good for your best friend, but truly what are your goods when it comes to taking care of yourself, when it comes to how you’re feeling your body with food, when it comes to how you know you’re moving, when it comes to your mental health and your mindset? And we just did like a whole collection of episodes that you could go back to, whether you look at your good list, your recharge list, your bad day backup plan, we’ve done quite a few episodes. The bad day backup plan was 223. The good list was 224 and the recharge list was 222.
Robyn Conley Downs: (09:24)
So you have these ideas of what’s good. And that’s the most important thing. So you wanna think about your day in four parts, and then you wanna know like, what is the good, I think it can be really nebulous. It can feel like anything you have to just spend the whole day doing things to take care of for yourself. And that’s not true. But if you know that there’s certain actions, behaviors, practices that are restorative, that help you feel more like yourself or that help you connect with your, you know, community, connect with your family, connect with the people that matter to you. That’s what ma that’s, what’s important. Cuz if we don’t know what those things are, it’s really hard to organize your day around them. Right? So now we have two parts.
Robyn Conley Downs: (10:07)
We have thought about our day in four in the four segments. We’ve thought about what our good is and now it’s really just a matter of plugging in. But the third thing I want you to think about is what if you looked at your week and you plug those things in first. So imagine I give you a P big blank piece of paper in for our analog people who like pen and paper, that’s me, pencil and paper, actually. It’s what I like. Or you could do this on like a di imagine a digital calendar and you have seven days columns. You have seven columns for seven days. You have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, along the top. So those are columns. And then you’re gonna make lines the other direction for rows for morning, mid-morning, afternoon, evening. So now you have like a matrix essentially where along the top, you have days, along the left-hand side you have the parts of each day.
Robyn Conley Downs: (11:05)
So you have Monday divided into four parts, Tuesday into four parts, et cetera. And now, yes, we are getting a little bit more advanced. I would say, this is getting into our coaching realm for sure. Which is why we love certifying you to do this work with people because there’s something magical that happens when you’re, when you’re coaching, when you’re getting coaching and working with someone to, to make this happen and not you’re in your, you’re not all on your own doing it, but I always wanna give you these practices for free as well, because that’s what I’m about. But back to our paper, days of the week, times of day, four sections, and then you have your good list and your bad day backup plan and your recharge list or whatever else that you have that, you know, like these are the good things. These are how I take care of myself, meals, movement, and mind. This is how I plug into my community. This is how I get back. Like whatever the good things are for you. And now I want you to plug some of those things, your good behaviors, your good habits into your matrix. So let’s say it’s taking a walk. Does that go in mid-morning, morning, afternoon, or evening? Let’s say it’s having a smoothie. That’s something I’m focusing on March. Where does that one go? Let’s say it is catching up with a friend and these don’t have to be every single day either, but maybe it’s a, a chat with a friend.
Robyn Conley Downs: (12:32)
For me an afternoon habit that I have is making, uh, making tea in like a glass teapot. Some of you who follow me on Instagram, know that I will make like loose leaf tea in a teapot and then I’ll let it steep. And then I will drink that tea. And I do that without any screens, unless I obviously I’m taking a video of it for Instagram, that sort of defeats the perfect purpose, cuz like none of this is really performative or for other people. I do that for inspiration, but it’s really about taking, um, a little rest in the afternoon where I tend, I know for myself that that afternoon chunk is when I tend to push through, I do a lot of computer work. So it’s the time of day where I’m sort of flagging from being on a screen. My eyes are tired. My brain is tired. It’s right before Elle my daughter gets home. And so I’m like kind of in that gearing up to sort of take on her energy. And so the simple act of pausing and preparing some tea, pretty mindfully, it’s like a mindful activity. And then just enjoying the tea is pretty powerful and it doesn’t take a long time. It’s like five minutes and it’s become, you know, habit and ritual in a practice. But partly because I plugged it in into my afternoon and it’s something that I do every day.
Robyn Conley Downs: (13:56)
So that’s part three. And I think you could start really simply. My optimizers out there wanna suddenly create like a whole new way to be productive around this activity where you’re plugging in a million activities and a million habits that you are suddenly trying to do every day. Please resist the urge, my dynamos who go to that perfection mode really quickly. That’s not what this is about. We’re not about trying to get more in the day and we’re not about trying to make this like how we’re better at taking care of ourselves and anyone else. And we’re not making it about performative, you know, external ways that we’re doing this, right. It’s truly about being intentional, that you’re getting some good in every day.
Robyn Conley Downs: (14:46)
And then what I want you to do is add everything else in afterward. So if you have whatever kind of your job situation looks like, whatever you are, um, caring for other people’s situation, your life responsibility, school, whatever it is, then you can add in all of your other things on top and around, but it’s a really big mental switch for some of you to actually start with the good list and to put it into your, 4R framework. It’s fundamentally radically changing how you think about your day and your week, because you’re starting from a place of care. You’re starting from a place of fueling, of recharging, of taking care. You’re starting from a place of feeling good instead trying to jam all that stuff on top of everything else, which I think often feels just like more to do and more ways we’re not living up to unrealistic expectations.
Robyn Conley Downs: (15:41)
So like I said, this is a really simple, profoundly, simple habit practice and mindset that you can implement. And the more you do the better you get at, because you start to not even need like a planner kind of to do it, you internalize it. And when you start thinking about how can I get the good in first and then how can I do everything else second? So how am I getting the good in? And then how am I taking care of everyone else and doing all of my other risk responsibilities? So those good things do not get tossed aside or as one more thing that we don’t have time for.
Robyn Conley Downs: (16:21)
So I will review again how to organize your day to get more of the good. Number one: think about your day in four parts. So if you wanna use my 4Rs, those are morning, midday, afternoon, and evening refresh, revive reset, and rest. Number two: know what your goods are, use my ideas for good list or for your recharge list or your bad day backup plan and know what your good things are. And just remember that those are yours. They’re not someone else’s. And, but that’s part of the, the practice and the work is to know what your goods are and to make sure that they’re goods not shoulds. Number three: plug your goods into your four parts of your day. You could do that all at once. You could do the activity that I suggested or just kind of wing it. I think again, when you’re for starting, the more intentional about this that you are with better, but do you, what, what works for you is the most important thing. And then four: is do that first and then add on all of your other things second. So I know that you will always prioritize your job and taking care of the people in your life and all the things that push and compete for your attention. But when you have your goods first, it helps us to organize around it. And there’s a real, like intuitive fluidity about this. It’s not about productiviting your way to this or over organizing. It’s just having those slots plugged in that everything else can then kind of gel around rather than trying and hoping, like hoping and wishing that these things happen and then days go by and they don’t.
Robyn Conley Downs: (18:09)
If you do this, I always love to see it. You can connect me, connect with me @realfoodwholelife on Instagram. And if these concepts are resonating with you, whether you’ve read the book or you listened to the podcast or both, if you’re at all curious about our coaching certification, I just invite you to come check out the website, www.thefeelgoodeffect.com and then become a coach. If the timing’s not right, you can always get on the waitlist, but maybe this is the year that we invite you into our cohort and you can learn these concepts and, and really help others with them as a part of your own business or a part of your own work. And that you can call yourself a Feel Good Effect Coach, which is pretty amazing group of people that you would be able to join
Robyn Conley Downs: (18:59)
As always. I wanna thank you so much for listening and being part of this conversation and this Feel Good movement. Until next time, here’s to feeling good.
