Introduction
There’s one thing that everyone knows: Nothing in life stays the same. More correctly, the only constant in life is change. Life is a series of uphill treks strewn with obstacles, setbacks and sometimes, tragedy. Or it can be a downhill run that is interspersed with golden opportunities, big successes and amazing achievements. Ecclesiastes reminds us “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Change is not the enemy; it’s life… shaping us, stretching us, and preparing us for what comes next.
If we break our life journey down into weeks, the same rule applies. There are bad weeks and there are good weeks. We can have a run of several good weeks followed by a bad week or vice-versa. In fact, there is no specific pattern to the cycle.
A bad week is when everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong. Work has to be redone or a deadline is missed. A sudden crisis throws you off schedule. You experience conflict or come under extreme stress. Your productivity plummets and your work outcomes are poor.
On the other hand, a good week is when you experience smooth sailing all the way. You get everything done according to schedule, maybe even with time to spare. Your productivity is at its peak and you are at your highest focus. You are motivated and driven and you are very happy with the end result.
You can design your best week ever
Despite the fact that change is constant, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good measure of control over the nature of your week. You have the ability to design your best week ever! The tools and methods presented in this challenge will help you craft and plan one amazing week after another. At the very least, they’ll help you cut short a bad week, mitigate the losses and prevent it from extending to the next week.
The benefits of designing your best week ever
The keyword in the above statement is ‘Designing.’
Design implies creativity, innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. This includes new methods of planning and scheduling your week. More importantly, designing your best week ever means personalizing your planning to suit your capabilities and surroundings.
There’s so much to gain from learning to design your best week ever. Some of these gains include:
- Getting more done in less time.
- Eliminating stress, conflict and pressure.
- Maintaining your best focus and mental energy.
- Staying motivated and driven.
- Maintaining peak productivity and efficiency.
- Sending the message to others that you are capable and in control, which is a great reputation to gain.
Forget the 80-20 rule. Don’t bother with multitasking. Don’t rely on the SMART goals formula alone. Instead, lay the powerful and practical foundation for designing your best week ever. Adopt the tools and methods in this challenge to craft not only the best week ever but an endless series of best weeks ever! Read on to start this amazing challenge.
Day 1 – Classify Priorities
The first thing you need to do when planning your week is to get your priorities straight! Your week will revolve around getting the most important tasks done and out of the way as soon as possible. So, let’s say you sit down and make a list of priority tasks for the coming week. Suddenly, you begin to panic because the list is long. How will you manage to tackle all of those tasks in a week? At the same time, you can’t afford not to tackle them because they’re very important, right? Wrong!
We tend to think that priority tasks are equal in urgency and importance. But they aren’t. They can be classified into a number of categories so that you can schedule them and space them out to eliminate panic and pressure.
Your challenge for day 1 is to classify priority tasks into the following:
- Urgent and important
- Urgent but not important
- Not urgent but important
Let’s run through each category to give you a better idea of how to apply this challenge:
- Urgent and important
These are tasks that are time-sensitive, such as a non-negotiable deadline. Missing the deadline could lead to big setbacks, such as the loss of an important deal. These tasks are also important because their outcome is vital for the flow of a project, or other tasks that will be built upon it. For example, running a scheduled webinar or live event. Missing the time slot could mean losing hundreds of potential leads and damaging credibility.
- Urgent but not important
These are time-sensitive tasks that need to be finished quickly but at the same time are not as important in terms of their negative impact. Not getting them done may throw you off course and cause delay but they won’t lead to huge losses or setbacks. Also, these are tasks that can be broken down into steps over the course of the week, or they can be delegated. For example, scheduling social media posts. It needs to be done promptly to keep your content calendar on track, but missing a day won’t cause major losses.
- Not urgent but important
A good example is taking your pet to the vet for his or her shots. Of course this is a priority as it’s important to make sure that your pet stays healthy and happy. However, the task is not time-sensitive and can be pushed back if you are under too much pressure. For example, Strategic planning for the next quarter. Mapping out goals and priorities isn’t urgent today, but it’s essential for growth.
The goal: This challenge will change your perception about what priority tasks really mean. Make a list of your priority tasks for the week and reflect on them. Next, classify them under the categories presented here. Learning to classify priorities in this way will allow you to plan your week with more efficiency and much less stress.
Day 2 – Schedule the Expected
Typically, most of us know ahead of time what our week is going to look like. More often than not, routine is the norm. We know what to expect during a given week in terms of what needs to get done. Of course, unexpected disruptions can pop up, and the following challenge will show you how to deal with them.
Your challenge for today is to plan for the expected as efficiently as possible. Here are some steps and suggestions to help you master this challenge:
- Start by scheduling meetings and appointments according to their designated hour. The rest of your weekly schedule should be built around these.
- Avoid complicating your schedule by creating a minute-by-minute, or hour-by-hour plan. Be flexible with your time framesto avoid pressure and stress. For example, a scheduled meeting can run 15 minutes late or start 15 minutes early. Naturally, this will throw your whole schedule off course if you expect meetings and appointments to start and end like clockwork. So, always give yourself some leeway when scheduling tasks.
- Add your priority tasks to your schedule according to urgency and importance. It’s best to get all of your priority tasks done early on in the week.
- If you expect to have a crowded week, consider waking up an hour earlier to work on priority tasks. Getting them out of the way will give you a huge sense of relief and avoid panic and last-minute rushes.
- Believe it or not, some distractions can be expected and planned for. For example, traffic noises or loud voices during a certain time of day. You can use these times to schedule mundane tasks that don’t require deep focus. Or, you can move to a quieter space to work during noisy times.
- Remember to include regular breaks in your schedule. It’s important to take a few minutes every hour or two to unwind and give your brain a rest. Research has shown that frequent short breaks are more beneficial for renewing physical and mental energy.
- Intersperse difficult tasks with mundane ones to allow your mind to relax. For example, after compiling a complex analytics report, schedule half an hour for reviewing your emails or doing some simple data entry tasks.
- Avoid long to-do lists and stick to a simple and flexible weekly schedule. To-do lists can become overwhelming if they contain countless mini-tasks that you really don’t need to be reminded of. Let a solid, flexible schedule be your roadmap for the week and leave it at that.
- If you are expecting a crowded week, consider delegating mundane tasks to others. This will free you up to focus on what’s important but also ensure that smaller and less important tasks don’t pile up.
The goal: Mastering this challenge will allow you to build a robust schedule around the expected. Remember that flexibility is key in order to avoid stress and panic. Once you get the hang of planning your week around the expected, you will have taken a big step toward designing your best week ever. Click here for part two!
Hello, I’m Lorene Troyer, a designer and digital creator passionate about turning ideas into beautiful, sellable products. I help coaches, mentors, and entrepreneurs transform their wisdom into income-generating digital businesses through polished templates, printables, and ThriveCart sales pages. See my book on Amazon My articles on Medium: https://medium.com/@LoreneTroyer Connect with me on X: https://x.com/LoreneTroyer1