Ever written your own job description?

And I don’t just mean your paid work – the ‘9-5’ stuff, I mean all the ways you spend your time every day?

I recently received this reminder from Jenna Kutcher, and I thought it was such a great idea.

I know from experience how easy it is to let things that aren’t for us slip right into our regularly scheduled responsibilities. These then become our everyday life, and we’re buried under all this stuff before we know it.

How many things do we carry around that isn’t really ours?

How many jobs are we fulfilling that we didn’t really want to sign up for?

That we aren’t meant to spend our time and energy on?

So, let’s talk about it. Better yet, let’s write this thing out.

What if you whipped out a piece of paper and wrote your own job description?

You know your schedule, your life, the things that ask you for your time and energy. Start there.

Are you a mother? Are you a nurse? Are you a teacher? Are you a referee (I often feel like this with my children!)? Are you a housekeeper? Are you a ………..? [Fill in the blank]

Start with your ‘Right Now’ job description. Listing all the things that currently make it onto your to-do list takes up your time and energy.

Then I invite you to write out your ‘Working Towards’ job description. Maybe this involves a change in your paid work outside the home. But this exercise aims to narrow your job description down.

Like this: Right now, I’m spending my time on these ten things; by next month, I’m going to narrow it down to 9 and then by the following month, I’m going to narrow it down to 8.

To narrow your job description down maybe, you need to delegate.
Are there things in your job description that someone else can do? Perhaps they can do it even better than you? Maybe they will get more joy doing it than you do? What can you delegate? As the saying goes ‘focus on what you do best and outsource the rest!’

Are there things on your job description that have crept onto your to-do list that shouldn’t be there? Are they unnecessary or unproductive? Can you delete them? In her book ‘Drop The Ball’ Tiffany Dufu urges women to embrace imperfection, to expect less of themselves and more from others – only then can they focus on what they genuinely care about. What balls can you drop – letting them fall to the floor without guilt or shame?

I’m encouraging you to do this activity because I know how valuable it is to have clarity on who we are, what we want, and what we deserve.

I know how easy it is to get dragged in different directions by so many demands, all yelling for our time and attention.

Let’s clear up what you’re truly meant to be doing so you can work towards that goal!

So I invite you to take a moment to pause, restructure, and pivot whenever possible.

I’m always here to help you live out that dream job description and make this happen in all those amazing areas of your life.