What does your week look like? Do you live a reactive week where you run around all week putting out fires and feeling out of control? Or do you live a proactive week, where you have everything organised and controlled? Do you feel efficient and complete tasks on time or are you always running late with projects and waste a lot of time going from task to task?
Last week I spoke about setting goals and make 2016 your year. But that is not going to happen if you are living reactively. Sure you can’t plan everything and there will be times that you have to react to things, but for most of the time you can be proactive and control your life and make those goals happen.
Working out what you do
The first thing you need to do is put aside some time to sit down and write out as many of the tasks you do in your week as possible.
If you owned a clothing shop you may do things like:
- Customer Service
- Meetings with Suppliers
- Attending to emails
- Marketing
- Writing a blog
- Ordering stock
- Receiving of stock
- Restocking shelves
- Social Media
- Invoicing/bookkeeping/payroll
- Staff meetings
- Systemisation
If you owned a building company you may do things like:
- Meetings with clients
- Attending to emails
- Marketing
- Quoting
- Ordering Materials
- Receiving Materials
- Social Media
- Invoicing/bookkeeping/payroll
- Staff meetings
- Building
- Meetings with potential new clients
Themes
One you have worked out what your tasks are you then need to put them into themes. You may find that once you have established themes you will then be able to organise when/if you require staff or someone extra to help you. Lets look at our clothing shop and builder again.
Clothing Shop Themes
- Business Development
- Marketing
- Writing a blog
- Social Media
- Systemisation
- Stock Control
- Meetings with Suppliers
- Ordering stock
- Receiving of stock
- Restocking shelves
- Customers
- Customer Service
- Attending to customer enquiries
- Running of the business
- Attending to emails
- Invoicing/bookkeeping/payroll
- Staff meetings
Building Company Themes
- Business Development
- Marketing
- Social Media
- Building Project
- Meetings with clients
- Ordering Materials
- Receiving Materials
- Building
- New Business
- Quoting
- Meetings with potential clients
- Running of the business
- Attending to emails
- Attending to phone calls
- Invoicing/bookkeeping/payroll
- Staff meetings
Schedule it
Now that you know what your themes and tasks are you need to actually schedule it. The best place to do this is on a spreadsheet. When doing your schedule look at the best times for things to happen.
Here is an example of the Clothing Shop Schedule
Here is an example of the Building Company Schedule
It is also a good time to implement ‘rules’, for example, you only check emails at the end of the day and attend to them then, or you only return phone calls at a certain time. Stock is ordered on a specific day and that day is also when you meet with suppliers and reps, if they come any other time tell them you only meet with them on your allocated day.
Print out your spreadsheet, put it up in your office in a spot that is prominent, where you will see it each time you walk into your office.
If you use a diary or online calendar, put it in there as well. The more places your new ideal week is the more times you will see it and the more likely you are to stick to it.
Being disciplined
Once you have done your schedule you then need to implement it, this is where discipline comes in. Make the changes and stick to them. There is no point going to the effort and acknowledging that you need to be proactive instead of reactive and then setting up your ideal week only to put it aside and not try your hardest to stick to it.
As I have already mentioned, there will be times when things come up that are out of your control and you will have to attend to them straight away, but the more you become disciplined the less this will happen.
Tell everyone
Everyone needs to know your intention of scheduling your week. Your suppliers need to know they can only see you on a certain day, your new clients need to know that there are only a few times a week you can meet with them. Your staff need to know what is happening, so does your family so they know when you are available.
Re-visit your Ideal Week
From time to time it will pay to re-visit your ideal week. Sometimes things look good in planning but reality can be different, or something new will come up that you want to implement and so you have to shuffle things around.
It doesn’t matter if you have to do this several times, it is all part of implementing a plan that works for you.
If you would like to get a copy of my spreadsheet so that you can set your own up then click on the link below.
Click Here to get your Ideal Week Spreadsheet
