I’ve talked before about being a huge fan of planning, time blocks and deep work. I see it less about time management and more about priority optimisation.
I’ve spoken before about planning out your month, your week and your customer blocks.
But today, I’m going to literally share with you my week’s schedule, how I plan on getting everything done, what I’ve got to cut and how I fit it all in.
View my calendar
The first thing I’ll do is go over my calendar at calendar.google.com. Meetings that have been booked last week or before, will be scheduled in my Google calendar to remind me.
I use ScheduleOnce and Calendly for booking appointments and I’ve made sure that people can’t book calls less than 3 days in advance.
As I often do my weekly planning on a Monday (something I want to start doing earlier, maybe Saturday or Sunday), I’ll also book up those slots with my own tasks.
But first, I have to see what I’ve already committed to.
Are you using Google’s new calendar layout?
As you can see, my week is already pretty booked out.
Aqua green is content writing. Usually, I want to do this first thing. But since I’ve been writing content every day for a year now, the habit is strong enough to move around. It’s still the first thing I like to do on a Monday though.
There are a few blocks that can’t be moved too. In salmon and yellow are my training and gym sessions. I used to do them in the evening, but was finding that I had calls later in the day that I couldn’t miss.
In purple is the reminder for James and I to do our podcast for the Sell Your Brand Show, which is published on a Monday.
In light green there are a few calls, interviews and in the brown outline are meetings that can’t be moved either. In dark green we have the weekly coaching call for Sell Your Service.
You can see quickly how your week gets books up, I haven’t even put in my own objectives and obligations.
Last, there are a couple of reminders. 1. Send Mum £100 and 2. Send Safyre a card. Both are personal tasks that just need to get done on those days.
Your obligations and “must-do’s”
After I check out my week’s plan, I’ll take a look at my obligations and must-do’s. I’ve talked about these before, on my “Profit Block” video.
It starts by understanding all your obligations for the week and month and day-to-day.
For example, the gym, reading, lunch, emails. It all needs to get done. I also talk about customer profit blocks, times in your week that are dedicated to customers.
My obligations and priorities have already changed from this
On my obligation board I write down everything I want to accomplish each week or month. I write a little estimated time down (red) and try to fit that into my week.
Lot’s of things like lunch, gym, food and reading are already in my plan. So I’ll go through this list of obligations and fit them into my calendar.
Note: There might be a few obligations that must be pushed back in favour of other more immediate tasks. That’s absolutely fine. What I find helps a lot, is writing down the obligations and tasks anyway and removing them and replacing them after I’ve written them down.
I’ve switched a few things around and moved the yellow Exefit session to 12pm not 12.30 as it was a mistake
A lot of my obligations like profit blocks, content and meeting slots have already been taken up.
In grey you can see I’ve added lunch. Absolutely NOTHING is more important than eating a decent lunch. When Gordon Gecko says “lunch is for wimps”, I’ll happily remind him that any old fuck can sustain themselves with cocaine and prostitutes. But real winners eat lunch.
If it’s good enough for Harvey Spectre, it’s good enough for me.
In lavender I’ve got a few tasks like learning with Digital Marketer (minimum 1 hour a week) and to shoot a video. I’ve also PLANNED in blue, when I’m going to answer emails and Facebook.
I don’t have notifications on, I read my mail and answer it when it suits me. There is a massive difference between checking emails and processing emails.
Finally, that leaves me with the time to plan in activities and tasks that I want to accomplish. At the moment, my goals are as such.
- Launch Beaver Funnels. Our own funnel building plugin for Beaver Builder
- Launch Corkscrew customers site
- Drive more paid Facebook traffic
- Increase email list to 10 000
- 100 000 subscribers on YouTube
- 100 members at Sell Your Service coaching
- Webinar with Jakob from Funnel Flows
It’s not a massive list as you can see. But there’s enough to be getting on with!
Many of those tasks can be completed with a few emails. However, there are a few tasks that I’ll need to do, in order to check off those goals. Some might have to wait until next week. I’ve also prioritised them below.
- Sales webinar for SYS coaching. Sign up page, traffic, reminders, follow up.
- Beaver Funnels home page and sales letter
- Beaver Funnels receipts and welcomes (email)
- BF mastermind/private group
- Funnel Flows sign up page
I also have a few private appointments that I need to keep. Things that have to get done or taken care of, but have nothing to do with work.
So now all that’s left to do, is place these tasks into my calendar. Starting at the top.
Looks like I might even have a few hours to spare (:
And there we go! In dark blue, I’ve added all the tasks that I need to get done through the week. So far, it looks like I have a little spare time on Thursday and Friday, which is always nice.
I’ll usually use that time to go through my tasks list and check off smaller tasks.
The key however, to making this whole thing work, is to stick to it. You have to follow your schedule. I even occasionally have “brain time”, where I’m allowed to day dream and doodle or play video games. Anything to keep my mind off something (which us usually when I have a brain wave).
So much of my week is automated, from the emails, reminders, social media etc. But over time, it’s my goal to remove myself from as much of my tasks as possible.
The next thing for me to automate, is my email newsletter, promotion and traffic driving.
Should I use a planner?
I hear this question a lot. “Should I use a planner?”
I love the Self-Journal and the Nomatic Planner. Both of them are fantastic planners and useful for day to day work.
However,, there’s no need to spend $40 on a book, when Google calendar is free AND it syncs with everything.
Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work (who knows a thing or two about time and planning) just uses a piece of paper with 9 – 5 written down in blocks.
The tool you use won’t make you any better, it’s the method and the habit. Try a few different methods to start, but don’t overwhelm yourself.
Definitely try writing it down first though. The act of planning on paper has proven psychological benefits of cementing your plans in your mind.
What’s your favourite planning tool? Do you have any obligations on your list that I don’t? Let me know in the comments below.
