I want to talk to you about my method for preparing for the week ahead. We’re going to talk about planning. So my caveat here is that I’m not always the best planner. Actually, I’m pretty good at planning, I’m not always good at maintaining my plans. So I have had to develop a system for making sure that I remain on top of things as my business grows, because the last thing you want to do is start dropping balls left and right. That is way more miserable than just following the plan in the first place.
#1 Block off time in your schedule
First thing you need to do is you need to block off time in your schedule every single week for planning your next week. I like to do this on Sunday evenings for a reasons. Number one being, well Friday is just too fatiguing. I’m just too done for the week on Friday to start planning for the next week. I am not reliable on Friday afternoon, so don’t try to get in touch with me. By Monday morning, if I haven’t already set the stage for the week I’m going to start behind. I’m going to already feel behind when I wake up on Monday morning. So I think it’s really important to do this on Sunday evenings, so you can really prep yourself for the week ahead.
#2 Get a project management system
Once you’ve got time aside to plan your schedule the next thing I think is really important to do is to have a project management system. Even if you’re a solopreneur, and you literally don’t work with anyone else, and you are the only person in your business, I think it is vital that you have a pro-level project management system. Even if it’s pen and paper to-do lists. If that works best for you, go for it. There are tons of project management systems out there like Asana, or Trello, Basecamp. Just pick one and go with it. I personally use Asana with my team.
#3 Establish the roles you play in your company
Then that brings me to the next step, which is that you’ve got to know the roles that you play in your company. Yes, it’s a company. Even if you’re the only one working in the company. Look at you being a boss. I had a realization a couple of weeks ago that I have a lot of different roles in my business, and that I was feeling like I wasn’t really living up to my standards at a couple of those. So what I did, was I went and looked up job descriptions for each of the job roles that I have currently in my business, and I recommitted myself to those job descriptions so that I can measure my success and see if I’m actually following through with being good at that role or not. This way I can categorize my to-do list based on each of those job roles.
So the roles that I currently have in my business are CEO, CMO, VP of sales, expert, and coach. The role that I was struggling with was the CEO role. So I had to make sure to write down the tasks that I need to do to be an effective CEO and leader for my business. Then make sure I block off time in my calendar every single week to focus on those tasks.
I realize that might sound like kind of a random thing for you to do in this process, but I think it’s a great way of looking at your list and seeing if you are really only focusing on branding related stuff, and you kind of need to focus on some financial stuff, some admin stuff that maybe you’ve been avoiding.
#4 Decide on your most important tasks
Once you’ve done all that the next thing that you’ve got to do is decide on your most important tasks, or MITs, for the week. I choose three MITs for each day of the week, and I only choose three because I tried to do five before and I never finish all five things. So every single day of the week I pick the three things that I must accomplish that day, knowing that I probably won’t get much else done.
I also like to outline my MITs either in my Conquer Your Year Planner by Natalie MacNeil. This is one of my favorite planners ever. It is designed for being a productive badass entrepreneur. I also like to do more of a bullet journal method. Which is just a little bit more simple by outlining my week, and then just picking my three most important tasks for each day of that week.
#5 Block Time off your calendar
Now that you what tasks you need to do, it is time my friends to start blocking off the time to do those tasks on your calendar. So when you start blocking off your calendar the first thing I think is important to do is to block off time for those things that you have to do every single week, like eat lunch, and when you’re sleeping, and waking up, and exercising, and any other long standing appointments. Like if you have to pick up your kids, or take them to certain activities at a certain time that’s predictable every day, then make sure to put those things on your calendar first.
Then just verify that you have all of your scheduled one time appointments on the calendar for the week, because the last thing you want to do is double book yourself and think you’re going to record videos during a time where you actually have a dentist appointment.
Finally, once you have all those time sensitive appointments that can’t be moved on your calendar, it is time to block off time to accomplish your MITs that we discussed in our previous point. It makes sense that if these are the three most important things that you need to get done in a day, then you’ve got to block off time to do those things. My rule of thumb here is to estimate how long I think it’s going to take me, and then double that amount of time, and usually that’s still not enough time.
Finally, once your entire week has been planned my favorite way of sealing the deal and making it an awesome week is to close my eyes and visualize the week, or go through my calendar with my eyes open obviously, visually and visualize each day as I see it playing out. This is going to cement your week plan in your head, and help you to start off Monday with a bang.
I hope you enjoyed this video on how to plan your week. I know it’s a little bit different from the type of content I normally do around sales, and marketing, and packaging your services, but I think it’s really important.
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