Around the 15th of the month, I get a reminder to create next month’s monthly plan.
For example, it’s April now, so I’m creating May’s monthly plan.
I divide the month into 4 weeks (roughly) and ask myself one question.
“How will I know that May has been successful?”
I’ll write down 3-4 core objectives for what I’d be proud to look back on and see accomplished.
Could be measurable goals, or activities. It doesn’t have to be too specific.
I’ll also write out 3-4 things that I know need to get done.
Then, I’ll throw that into ChatGPT with the prompt:
“I’d like to create a simple weekly plan for the month of May. Split into weeks, following the below format. I’d like the weeks to be planned out to give me a high level overview of the tasks I need to get done.
My core objectives for May are
1. Think of 4 killer YouTube ideas that will get a ton of attention and traction
2. Brainstorm the titles and thumbnails for those ideas
3. Write the scripts for those videos
4. Record those videos and send them to my editor
I’d like to spend 2 weeks thinking of ideas. I’d like to spend 2 weeks writing scripts and under 1 week recording the videos”
You can see how I tell it how long I’d like to spend on each task and the resources I’d like to allocate.
It’ll then spit out a rough weekly plan for me to follow.
At the end of each week, I’ll look at the monthly plan for next week and write out some of the more specific tasks I think I need to do.
That becomes my weekly task list and on Monday, I spend about 30 minutes thinking about the week and what kinds of daily tasks I want to get done.
Here’s the kicker though.
I basically only have 1 task.
Create YouTube videos.
For a lot of businesses and agency owners, you’ll have 4-50 tasks that you need to get done.
I’m lucky – because I have 4 awesome team members who not only take care of themselves, but do 95% of the work of the company.
I’m left to do ONE job and one job only.
Monthly planning like this doesn’t make me more productive or organised.
Having fewer tasks makes me more productive.
