Color-Coded Productivity
Bringing Beautiful Clarity to Your Most Important Goals

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #514: "Color-Coded Productivity: Bringing Beautiful Clarity to Your Most Important Goals"

The script that I am reading from right now is color-coded.

The task on my digital task manager to write this script was also color-coded.

The block of time on my calendar to record this podcast episode.

You guessed it, yep, it's also color-coded.

Color-coding for me has always been an essential part of my productivity systems, and this week we're going to break down what that looks like and how you can introduce more color to your next, well, everything.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 514.

Color-coded productivity, bringing beautiful clarity to your most important goals.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

In the episode this week, I'll break down how I use color in literally every single one of my productivity systems, how you can use color to enhance what you do every day, and the joy of intentionally adding in bright colors to boost your mood, improve your productivity, and just make you feel good.

Let's get to it.

What's your next action right now on your to-do list?

And how do you know it's the right one?

Productivity on what to do next is the ultimate productivity challenge.

Doing a lot is actually relatively easy.

Doing what matters, and in the right order, and at the right time, and in the right location, and for the right reasons, well, all of that requires a well-built system and a bit of housekeeping.

One of my favorite strategies to build a great system is to color-code just about everything I can get my hands on.

So let's discuss color-coded productivity and how to bring about beautiful clarity to your most important goals, because the clarity aspect and the color, they go hand in hand.

And I want to start this conversation instead of about clarity, about joy.

If you listen to this podcast, you know that I like to bring an element of energy and enthusiasm and positivity, not just to the world in general, but specifically to the world of productivity.

Why?

If you ask the average person what they think about productivity, they fall into one of two camps.

There are the people like you and I, the high achievers who get our endorphins and our daily rush of excitement from doing things.

We like to check boxes.

We like to feel productive and to get a lot of things done.

And then there are those who think of productivity through the lens of, "My boss told me to do something and I have to do it."

It's just a drudgery.

It's a chore.

It's an obligation.

It's a responsibility.

Being productive has a negative connotation because it's just associated with being forced into something that you didn't choose.

And so when I think of a way to flip the script on this, I'm always asking the question, "How do I bring about more positivity, more energy, more enthusiasm to all the things that I do, including the things I have to do, including the things I don't want to do?"

I don't want to spend my time doing things I don't want to do.

I'm like anybody else.

If I'm forced to do something that I don't like, I'm going to find a way to avoid it.

I'm going to find a way around it or postpone it or delay it.

The problem with that is that eventually we still have to do the thing.

Eventually we're going to either experience a consequence from not doing it or that real sense of pressure of, "Well, the deadline is here.

Now I'm forced to do this."

All of that to say, the reason why I'm discussing color this week is because to me, color embodies joy.

It embodies energy, enthusiasm, and an intentional decision to say, "Let's bring about as much positivity as we can to the work that we do, whether we like the work or not.

Whether we want to do it, have to do it, doesn't matter.

If we're going to do it, if the action's still going to happen, we may as well do it with a smile on our face.

We may as well do it laughing and playing and having some fun and bringing about more of that sense of enjoyment.

On the podcast just recently, I discussed the concept of adult recess, this idea that we take a break in our day to have fun and we build playgrounds and we add in as much joy as possible through the act of play.

This is the same conversation, but now it's through the joy of color.

I'm trying really hard to make work fun.

That's what this is all about.

Not just because I think that some people are experiencing that sense of drudgery more often, but because we all have a choice of how to bring ourselves to our days.

We have a decision to make.

Do we walk into our day with that sense of optimism and enthusiasm and fun, or does the work weigh us down?

Do we emotionally get crushed by what that feels like?

I'm going to use that term on purpose because yesterday, literally just yesterday, I had what I would call one of my lowest points in my life recently when it comes to my emotions.

This stems from a direct loss of sleep and increased stress.

Then because of that, I experienced this very acute sense of hopelessness about this certain project I was working on.

I felt really bad.

I'm not the kind of guy who feels those kinds of emotions that often because I'm intentionally choosing joy as often as I can.

Yesterday was a hard day.

Yesterday was one of my most challenging days that I have had in a very long time.

My response today was to combat that with a direct sense of optimism.

I'm coming back here on the very day after a difficult day and saying, "No, that's not my future.

That's not who I am.

I am better than that.

I can do better than that.

I am choosing to be better than that."

That's what this is.

The joy of color is not just, "Is my calendar red or blue today?"

Yes, the practical nature of the conversation, that's what we're talking about.

I love color coding.

The underlying subtext of all of this is the choice that we all make every day of how we bring our best selves to the work that we do.

That's not to say we don't have hard days.

We do and I did and that's true and that's part of life.

We always have a choice.

The choice of emotion is a very challenging one, but it's one of the most important ones we could possibly focus on and put our energy into of how to combat those challenges in an intentional and positive and productive way.

If you take anything from this show ever, through any episode that I produce over these last 10 years, I would hope that one of the messages that you hear is the one that I end the show with.

You have the power to change your life and the fun begins bright and early.

That's the theme of this podcast, that we have the power and it can be fun.

Those things come together, that having power is fun and having power over your life and the choice to be able to say, "Let's bring about our best selves every day.

Let's combat those difficult days.

Let's intentionally choose color.

Let's do the things we can do to say tomorrow morning is going to be better than this morning and today is better than yesterday."

That can be true going forward if we opt into that.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now and get back to the content this week, but I think that's a really important piece to keep in mind as we build these systems.

Color is joy.

Joy is color.

We got that established.

Now practically, how do I use color in my systems every day?

Great question, Jeff.

Let me answer that for you.

Number one, I always end up focusing my entire productivity system through the lens of my calendar and task manager.

That's how everything for me gets done.

It's how I decide what matters, what doesn't, what I focus on, what I don't.

Really, this conversation about color is one of priorities.

It's one of the next actions that I started the show with where I asked that question, "What is your next action?

How do you know it's your next best decision?"

It's a hard question to answer, and there are a lot of different perspectives to go about figuring out how to be confident of what that next choice would be.

One of the ways that I have used for years is the strategy of color.

I have found that to be extremely helpful to indicate to myself in a very acute way, "Here's this thing I can visually see that matters, and here are these things I can visually see that don't."

I'm a very visual person.

I respond very strongly to visuals.

That's why I love color so much.

It's why my home office is filled with color, which I'll get to in a minute.

It's one of those cases where if we're going to bring about systems that speak to us, that are personal, that are customized for how we think, how we operate, and how we bring our best selves to our day, well, this is a chance for you to customize the things you use every day and make it speak to you for what's meaningful for you.

All right, so practically speaking, the very first way that I use color is on the categories on my calendar.

Those categories are ones that are built in by default on nearly every calendar app you can imagine.

I use the built-in application on my Mac that's just called Calendar.

It used to be called Mac Calendar, I'm pretty sure, but the Calendar app on my Mac computer has an opportunity for you to assign all these different categories.

I've labeled mine everything from home projects to fitness to personal growth to social activities, and all of them have colors associated with them.

Let's start with the most important, which are my meetings, which is the color red.

I use the color red, and you'll see a theme with this.

I use the color red very intentionally throughout all the things that I do where red is designed to be an alert.

It's designed to grab my attention.

It's the most important color I use in every single system.

Red means not just danger, which I think you could associate with that, but red means urgent and important.

You know the Stephen Covey four-quadrant model where things can be urgent or important or both or neither.

This is Q1, Quadrant 1 of both urgent and important, and that's what my red meetings are in my calendar.

Anything I've ever scheduled that has to start at a certain time, in a certain location, for a certain reason, that's guaranteed it's going to happen, it's in red on my calendar first thing.

If I just glance at my calendar on the next week coming up, for example, or just today's activities, I can see the red items right away.

My entire day is built around those red blocks of time.

I have to guarantee that all the other things I'm doing are based on the fact that I have to be at this certain place at this certain time for this certain reason, and I know it, that's the filter that I use.

It's the big rock.

Once again, another Stephen Covey example.

It's the big rock that goes in first.

All the other smaller things go in afterwards.

The color red for me, extremely important.

The second color is blue, and that for me is the most common work tasks I may have on my calendar.

Those kinds of larger focus blocks of time I would schedule, and focus blocks of time are a huge theme in this podcast.

My FBOTs are very important, and my FBOTs tend to be in blue, and they're associated with a very specific work task that is also important.

It may not be quite as urgent, but it is something that is so essential to me that my calendar is filled with large blue blocks whenever I need to be there.

The next one, which actually for me is just as important, are my orange blocks, and for me orange is podcasting.

I'm in an orange calendar category right now.

That's what I'm doing, and so I look at my calendar.

I can glance at it.

It says, "Jeff, record episode 514," and it has an orange block.

It's labeled with the time and the location.

I've got it right there, and I do that literally every day because podcasting is what I spend most of my time on, so my calendar has more orange than blue and more orange than red.

In fact, it has more orange than any other color you're going to see because podcasting takes up that much of my time, and I want it to be very clear that that's what I focus on.

If we back up for just a second before I go to more colors, if you look at your calendar and just glance at it, the first thing you're going to see is all this different color if you're using these categories.

You can visually, without even thinking, you can see the colors that stand out the most.

You can see the red meetings.

You can see the larger blocks of time.

You can see which color dominates the spectrum, which will give you a pretty good sense of where your time is spent or where you've scheduled your time to go.

You can see right away, "I've got a lot of work time," or, "I've got a lot of personal time this week.

It's a vacation week," or, "I've got a lot of fitness time scheduled."

Whatever the thing is for you, you're going to see that color right there.

I can use that as a nice, good sense of a double check, an accountability check.

Is that color the right color?

Am I spending my time on the right tasks this week?

Or the opposite, am I missing a color?

Is there no fitness time built in?

Do I have nothing scheduled to work out?

That's a problem.

That is the next color for me.

Green is my health and fitness time.

If I'm going to the gym, if I'm going to the park, if I'm going to spend time on a certain dietary change and I have a focus block of time for that, it gets the color of green to indicate this is a health and fitness project I'm working on.

The green one for me is a big deal.

If I glance at my calendar and see no green, that's a big problem.

Health matters to me a ton and I need that on my calendar guaranteed, almost as important as those red meetings.

Sometimes, watch this, I'll change a color to red to force me to do it.

What?

That's right.

One of the big things about productivity is the power of choice.

I was just talking about that earlier.

One of the things you can do to fool yourself into doing something is to convert any of these colors to a more important color.

As an example, if red matters to me that much, and it does, I can convert anything to the color of red and force myself to do something because that's what red means.

It means I don't have the choice to opt out.

That's a big deal.

If your life doesn't have that level of intensity, at some point the boundary being set in that way, you're going to have too much freedom.

Let me back up this whole story again and go back probably 10 years or so.

There was a time when I became a full-time entrepreneur where I realized I don't have a day job anymore.

I have the power of choice all day, every day, forever.

Whenever someone's given a lot of freedom, the first thing they do is use it, which is awesome.

It's a ton of fun.

I had so much flexibility when I first became a full-time entrepreneur that I just did whatever I wanted, which was awesome, and I'm not going to deny it.

It was a ton of fun, but it wasn't practical.

I wasn't getting stuff done.

I was just being silly and enjoying that sense of freedom for a short time.

It was short because I realized pretty quickly I can't just spend my whole day working out or Googling how to change my diet.

It was fun, but that's not what I need to be doing.

To my point here is when you realize you have the power of choice, it also means that you can upgrade the intensity of certain activities at any point in time.

So if you say to yourself, "My life is filled with these certain things, but it's the wrong things," you can make the change.

Make the choice.

Change the color.

Sometimes it's that easy.

You just change the color from green to red, and all of a sudden, this workout is no longer an optional thing on a Tuesday afternoon.

It's now a required meeting with yourself.

You're now going to show up because you have to.

Sometimes it takes that.

Sometimes you have to bring in the accountability from your own personal coach to ask that question.

If I hired Jeff to coach me through my day, what would Jeff say about my schedule?

Would Jeff have some opinions on this?

Because he would.

If he did, what would he say?

I use that all the time with other people that I view as doing life and business better than me, and I'll ask that question.

What would that person do in this scenario?

What would the better version of me do in this scenario?

What would the hero of Jeff Sanders' story do in this scenario?

What colors would I choose?

What choices would I make?

Okay.

Next color, now that green is health and fitness.

Purple is my home and kids' time.

So I include purple usually on the weekends quite a bit, Saturdays and Sundays, evenings as well.

Sometimes I'll have some purple thrown in the workday if I have a certain special event to go to at my kid's school, for example.

So purple for me is very specifically a home and children activity kind of category.

Yellow is then all of my errands.

So if I'm going to buy groceries, I'm going to go to the store and buy something, it's when I'm usually out in my car going to go do a specific activity, usually errands.

Pink is my social time.

I'll be the first to tell you that my calendar has very little pink on it.

As a parent of two young kids, my social time is extremely limited and that really bothers me.

Honestly, I don't like the fact that I'm less social than I'd like to be and I have to be intentional about scheduling social time to get me, number one, out of my home office where I'm by myself all the time and out into the world.

But then also even when I'm not working or I have, let's say for example, a weekend available, that I intentionally choose to be social during that time.

Time with my wife and my kids is great, but time with other people is also super important.

And so whenever I schedule my weeks, I'm looking at all these colors and one of the first things that I notice is the lack of pink, the lack of social activity.

And the more of that that I add in, the more joy I'm adding into my life.

And pink is a fun color.

So I put that in there intentionally to associate that with fun social activity.

The last calendar category color, a lot of C's here, calendar category colors.

The last one here on the list is my gray white category, which I call complete.

Another C word, good Lord.

So the complete category would indicate the events on my calendar that are now done.

So I do something that I think a lot of people should do that don't do it.

I don't use the word should very often, but I find that this is one of the most important things I've ever done on my calendar.

Oh yeah, take some notes here.

This is a good one.

So what I'll do with all of these colors, I'll sign a random event as red, blue, orange, green, purple, yellow, pink, doesn't matter what color it is.

When it's finished, I turn it to this gray white color, which indicates it's complete.

On my calendar, I think on the Mac, it's actually considered white, but it looks gray.

That's why I'm calling it both.

So I turn it to this white color.

So it grays it out.

It has that impact of taking that event and saying, the time has passed.

It's over.

We've moved on now.

And that's it.

It's a very specific and intentional visual to indicate the passage of time so that when I glance at my calendar, I'm not going to see a big mess of color.

In fact, what I'm going to see is the things in the past are all grayed out and the things in the future all have color.

And where those two meet is where I am right now.

The next colored item is the next thing I'm going to focus on.

And the previously grayed out items are now in the past.

So it's a past future delineation of knowing where the present moment is in a visual way to see this.

And so what this requires you to do is after each event on your calendar has ended, you gray it out and you go on to the next one.

It's the exact same thing as checking a box in your task manager.

It's the exact same thing as crossing off an item on your to-do list.

And in this case, it's the passage of time of a block of time that's now over.

And when this happens on a regular basis, and it does for me all day every day, I'm always aware of where I am in the sense of time so I know my next block of time to focus on.

Hopefully that's helpful.

It's a strategy I've used for a long time.

I found to be very helpful.

It does require a bit of intentionality to make that choice, but I think it's awesome.

So those are the calendar categories.

Once again, red for meetings, blue for your focus blocks of work time, orange in this case for me podcasting, for you it could be a different specialized activity, green for health and fitness, purple for my home and kid time, yellow for errands, pink for social, gray and white for items that are complete.

So now let's go on to the task manager.

In the task manager, you're going to see a very common thread here, which is that the colors are associated with the same calendar colors.

So as an example, in my task manager, which is Nozbe, that's N-O-Z-B-E, I have projects and I have tasks.

The projects are color coded in a similar way.

So my red projects tend to be ones that are current and important, right?

They're urgent, they're important, they're happening now.

And so they get the red color.

And they're also listed at the top.

So they're the ones that I could always jump to because they're the next most important thing to focus on.

My orange category, my project colors, podcasting, once again, it's the same color as it is on my calendar.

My purple projects and my task manager are once again, my home projects.

And I definitely have a home project assignment here because I have so many things to do at my house to keep my house functioning, my household functioning, that I take that role very seriously.

I actually gave myself an honorary title here in my house, which I am the household manager.

It's a very specific title.

It's very important to me.

It's what I take very seriously.

And I'm not, I'm not actually joking.

This is real.

I use that term as the household manager on purpose because I view myself as being responsible for my house in part because it's also where I work, but also in part because I value a clean and organized home.

And so as the household manager, I'm going to make sure the house is picked up and clean every day.

And I take care of that.

So having a project assigned to my home in my task manager is important to me.

It's a big part of my life.

The next project category I use is once again, pink for social.

I may use green for health and fitness.

It's the same as the calendar, but I have these things assigned in the projects themselves.

So that part is fairly obvious.

You can make this association between how you color code things in one place and another.

But now let's get to one that's actually a little bit different, which are the task category colors themselves.

So if I glance at my task manager, right, I'm looking at today's goals.

What do I have recorded as what I'm going to do today?

The first place is the calendar.

I see those colors.

The second place is the task list for today.

And those are also color coded and they're based on once again, urgency and importance.

So once again, my individual tasks here are color coded with the very first ones being red and those red items are due today.

Absolutely must do's, they have to get done first.

And so by doing so, I can see the red ones, I move them to the top and I work on those until they're done.

And that's really how I think about my day.

What's due today.

I get all that stuff done first and then I can take a breather and go focus on other things.

So when I just glance at my task list, I know what matters because it's red.

I also added two more colors to clarify the next level of priority.

So red being the most important.

The second one, I use the color orange to indicate importance or not due today.

But if you can get it done today, you should.

That kind of feeling of this is important, so give it some attention.

But if you don't get to it, it's going to be okay.

And the final category color for my task is blue, which means it's a good idea to work on if I have free time.

But if I don't, no big deal.

I'll just postpone it.

It's fine.

So that allows me to see my task list with three colors on most days, red at the top, orange in the middle and blue at the bottom.

And that simple visual allows me to know once again, what's that next action.

Well, it's right there.

I can see it.

Let's get to it.

So now that we've nailed down the calendar and the task manager, we can then shift to your project manager.

Now depending on how you have set up your productivity systems, you can use a variety of tools for this.

I have discussed for many years how I used to go from Evernote to a program called Devon Think and then to Google Drive.

And I have bounced around to a lot of different ways to manage projects.

And what has always worked for me is the most old school, silly method, which is a Google Doc or what used to be a Word document many years ago.

That's how I organize my projects.

I don't use a fancy program.

I've tried many times and it's just never connected for me.

The only thing that's made sense to me is to have what essentially is a Google Doc where I can write down anything I want, organize it in lots of different ways.

And one of the ways that I organize the project list of the tasks I'm going to be working on is using color to indicate where I am in that project.

I know what's in the past.

I know where I am now.

And I know what's in the future to finish out what I'm working on.

So let's back this up for just a second and look at the bigger picture of what I'm talking about.

When I have a project, I will open a Google Doc and I have a template that I made.

And then I write down all the entire list of A to Z, what it's going to take to complete this project.

And they're numbered all the way down and I organize them based upon how I want to flow through this project.

And I'll reorganize this as needed.

And part of that organizational process is to assign these colors.

So for me, in this case, on the Google Doc for project, black indicates a future task or idea.

The black color is just regular black text that's usually at the bottom of the list.

My green items are things that are complete.

And so I'll use them as the green means it's done.

And there'll also be a strikethrough on the text.

So I use that very traditional word processing feature of change the color to green, use a strikethrough to indicate it's now finished.

And so as a project moves down as time passes, the top of the project will all be green and with a strikethrough.

So I know this is all complete, which then will bring me to what I'm doing now.

And the way I indicate that, once again, here comes the color red to indicate the next action.

Red is, this is what gets my attention now.

I can visually see it.

It's right there.

It's bold.

It's red.

I use the color blue also to indicate the current category I'm focused on.

So blue is used a lot less often, but usually they are just to indicate this is the major category and then red is the specific task in that category for that project.

And then finally, the color purple is the next most important color that I use, hopefully sparingly, but I have to use it quite a bit, which is pending items.

Now pending would be things where I'm waiting for someone to do something or for something to happen, which could be a future date.

But usually most of the time it's, I have emailed someone and I am now waiting for their reply.

I have submitted a request and I now need to wait to move forward until that thing is done.

And so my typical project is organized based on the green items that are done, the red that I'm focused on now, the purple pending things I'll get to later when that thing takes place and then all the future items are just in black and we'll get to those later.

So that's the bigger picture way that I organize this project management system.

You can use this in a lot of ways.

There's tons of opportunities here to customize these things.

This is just where I've landed on over the years to clarify for me what I'm doing.

The point of this, of me telling you about it is not for you to duplicate my system.

You can, if you want to.

But I think the real intention behind this is to say, this is intentional.

The colors are here on purpose.

They have value.

They mean something.

They grab my attention when it matters so I can go do the next thing because I can see it.

It's visual.

It's right there.

And that level of clarity is extremely helpful.

The next area for my productivity systems that I tend to focus on are my file folders, which if you're also in Google drive or a typical cloud system, you'll have folders and files in them.

You can use color on a lot of those things in a lot of different ways.

I don't.

It's one area where there actually is no color or very little color in use, mostly because the way that I organize my files and folders are more like an archive system.

It's more just things that are there that are helpful that I'll access on occasion, but I'm not actively working in those systems all the time.

If I am though, I do use color.

So as a simple example, let's imagine I have a Google drive folder with some files in it for a current project.

Well then I will color that folder red because that's a current and important project that needs my attention.

And I'll be right there on the homepage for Google drive.

So when I log in, I see it right away and it's red and I can jump right into it.

And that's basically how I use color in my file folder system, which is I only use red, which is fine, right?

You don't have to use color in every system, but you should use color when it matters.

And so if it does matter and you are using it, it is helpful if you don't.

And there's no real problem.

Just skip it, right?

All of this is optional, by the way, all of this can be skipped.

The point is to provide that layer of clarity when you need it.

And so if it's helpful, make sure it happens.

And speaking of that, let's go a little bit deeper into how to use color and specifically the script that I'm looking at right now to record this podcast.

Right?

I said at the top of the show that this script is color coded and it is.

All of my scripts in my podcast have been for years, literally since day one, 10 years ago.

And even before that, when I would work on a blog post or I would work on an article, I didn't really start to integrate color specifically until after I left school.

So this is probably my mid twenties or so.

Color coding for me didn't really come on my radar until then as an intentional way to organize things.

But once it did, I couldn't stop myself.

It's just everywhere.

And so one way I do that here in my scripts is the same exact philosophy.

The black text is just future ideas.

The blue items in this case usually are big organizational categories.

And of course the red text in the script are the components of the script that need my attention to work on next and optimize that certain area that needs to be fully thought out.

So my scripts in this sense, just like any other project or task or document, they're always going to follow this same format of anything in red is important.

Everything in another color has a different value and it's all intentionally crafted so that I get it, I understand it, I can glance at it, know what matters and go on to the next thing.

Those are going to be the most helpful components for you to integrate color.

These next two areas really have nothing to do with priorities or nothing to do with next actions and have more to do with the joy of color itself.

So as someone who is a business owner, I have a website, I have a podcast, I have logos and headshots and graphics and all kinds of things.

And as someone who spends a lot of time in those areas, color is a big deal.

It takes a long time to identify your brand colors and how important those are and where they get placed and where they don't.

And one thing I've realized over time is the value in color and how it grabs your attention.

Not just to say a website visitor will see what I'm working on and I'll use a bright yellow to get their attention, for example.

But more importantly for me to communicate my identity, what I value, who I am.

Color is an expressive indicator of who you are.

And of course for me as a business owner, my business is another extension of my identity and so it's another opportunity to express who I am and how I view the world.

And so when you think about that, it could also apply to the clothes you wear and the house that you're in, the furniture you buy, right?

All of these different elements where color matters a ton.

Of course there is my home office and studio, which I've discussed previously that I have bouncy balls and lava lamps and all these great things.

Well, I also have a lot of lights.

I have a specialty light with a little guitar guy on my desk.

I've got tons of lamps everywhere.

This is a very bright home office.

And one thing, this is very related and very funny, is when I wake up in the morning, one of the very first parts of my routine that I never actually discuss that's actually really important is I turn on all the lights and I open all the blinds and all the drapes, all the windows, right?

Everything is bright and open and I let in the sunlight if there is any at 5 a.m.

Usually most of the year there's not, but once the sun is up, I let in the sunlight.

I turn on the lights in my house.

Everything is bright and it's bright for a couple of reasons.

Number one, helps you wake up.

Of course I can wake up faster if there's light, but also light shows me my home.

Light exposes things that are dirty, unorganized, messy, that need my attention.

The light exposes what I need to focus on.

Light is a metaphor here.

Yes.

It's also a physical thing you can use.

Yes, both are true.

If you expose the things that are dirty, unorganized, unkempt, messy, you then have the opportunity to clean those things up.

You have the chance to wake up physically and then get to work on those things.

When I begin my day and I turn on all these lights and I open all these windows, I'm doing so because I want to see what's in front of me.

How messy is my house?

What is my task list today?

Where will my priorities be focused?

Light in this case and color indicates all of these things.

Now let's get to very quickly how you can incorporate more color into the work that you do.

Well, the first thing you can do is just copy what I'm doing, which is I guess a possibility, but let's really focus here on what you can do now to incorporate color in a very intentional way.

The first is to batch everything you're working on into categories and then assign a color to those categories.

This is a very simple strategy around batching, which I've discussed before on the show.

Batching is a really important aspect of productivity and the more often you incorporate that, the more you can spend your time on like items, which is more efficient, it's more productive, it's higher quality.

And then when you assign a color to those items, like I do with podcasting as a good example, my calendar is batched with the color orange over and over and over in a given day.

Or if I'm working on a different kind of project, like a health and fitness project, there may be a lot of green back to back to back.

When you batch these things together, you can then look and visually see the fact that these colors are all together, which then allows you to batch your focus and your time on those specific things.

Now another way to organize by color is to use that filter we discussed earlier of assigning color to things that are urgent.

Once again, the color red or things that are not urgent, which could be literally any other color you choose.

The point here is to use this strategy to label a specific color like red as the thing that will grab your attention and use that throughout all of your systems.

And finally, the last category here, the last important strategy for you to incorporate color more often is joy.

It is fun.

It is to add bright colors into your life everywhere, your clothes, your office, your accessories, your tools, your furniture.

Now I have a very strong bias towards bright, bold colors.

I get that.

That may not fit your vibe.

Fine.

But use your colors on purpose.

Add the colors in that express how you want to live.

Color is an amazing opportunity to just be more of yourself more often.

And so clearly I am biased in certain directions here, but just be intentional.

Choose these colors on purpose and build the life you want.

And use color as a primary filter to make those choices.

And for the action step this week, clarify everything with color.

Add a color coded system to your calendar, task manager, project manager, file manager, and more.

If you have a system that is causing confusion or desperately needs more clarity, color is a phenomenal solution.

And I'm still surprised to this day how much I use and rely on color to get me through my projects.

And I think you'll feel the same way when color becomes an integral part of how you get things done.

JeffSanders.com/514 is the place to go for episode notes.

And of course, subscribe to or follow this podcast and any amazing app you're using right now.

And that's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and the fun begins bright and early.