Weekly Planning, not Daily Planning for Success

Hi Megan here. Ready to share my absolute most favorite and powerful time saving tip for you when it comes to running your business. 🥰

There is kind of two parts to this. So I want you to really think about right now. If I were to ask you, how do you plan your day? And most people and it’s OK if this is right now, would say, well, when I wake up in the day, I kind of think about what do I need to get done today? And what we typically do is just create a very long task list of all the things that are in the forefront of our brain. And then our goal is to go as fast as we can all day long, trying to check as many of those off, collapsing into bed, waking up and repeating.

If this sounds familiar, don’t worry. You’re not alone. 

This is what the vast majority of people do. I want to introduce you to a different way to start thinking about how you’re planning your time. And it really ties together. Everything that we’ve been talking about here in this training and this is leaning into weekly planning instead of daily planning.

Moving from Daily Planning to Weekly Planning

So here’s the subtle change. When you are living in a daily planning mode, you’re experiencing what I just laid out, right? And what’s happening, whether you realize it or not, is that you’re going to be very reactive to what is popping into your brain at the start of each day. And usually that means we’re just thinking about what can I get done in the confines of this day? And we’re not putting any thought or intentionality around those routines or specifically when during the day are we getting each one of those done? And that makes us feel a lot more overwhelmed, and we lack the opportunity to have really good efficiencies.

Now, on the flip side, when you start leaning into how to create a weekly plan, I do mine on Sundays. There’s no wrong, wrong day to do it. But the real shift here is you’re going to be looking at your week as a whole, comparing it against everything that you are juggling over the course of the upcoming week and possibly even months. You may have some large projects that you’re working on that you will need to lean into over the course of several weeks. But when we learn how to create a plan for our entire week, here’s what happens.

⭐️First, if it’s Monday and all of a sudden that little thing pops up into my head, oh, I need to remember about x, y, or z. I can go look at my weekly plan and say, it’s OK. I’ve already planned the time to do that on Wednesday. And so it really helps decrease our stresses and anxieties. And what that allows us to do is actually be more fully present in the moment we’re in, instead of always kind of mentally being in multiple places at once.

Planning let’s you be present

Now, true story, where years ago when I was building my first business in network marketing because I did not have these strategies in place, even when I was having family time, I was often my brain was constantly turning or worrying about when I was going to reach back out or when I was going to listen to the next training. And so I was never fully present. And I also found myself kind of secretly trying to sneak. And look at my phone as well. Well, once I mastered this weekly planning process, leveraging the checklists, the routines, etc., what that has allowed me to do is step away from my business for hours at a time and be fully engaged in what I’m doing in the moment without the feeling that pull, because I know I can walk away with comfort and ease knowing that, hey, in 4 hours I’m going to come back in and do that next routine for 30 or 40 minutes. And so the tremendous sense of just peace and calm that you will have is absolutely life changing.

⭐️ Now, the second part that I want you to understand with this weekly planning process is understanding the difference between how we view tasks versus appointments. Now, most of us have a calendar with appointments, things such as a doctor’s appointment, a dentist appointment, maybe afternoon activities with your kids, a work meeting, whatever. And when I say the word appointment, chances are you’re thinking of a set thing at a set time that you aren’t just going to go. I’ll get to it later. Now, when you think about all the things that you are doing for your business, most of us will instinctively just think of them as tasks. Right? I need to get the social media post done. I need to follow up with this person. I need to build this newsletter and it just sits on this long list of tasks. And so what happens is when suddenly we’re like, oh, let me go ahead and sit down and work on that, we might say, I’m not in the mood. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later. Well, when you take the most important things that will help you hit your goals with your business, and instead of creating them as tasks, we switch this and start to build appointments on our calendar for set dates and times to do these tasks. Magical things start to happen.

SEE THE MAGIC IN ACTION ✨ – So I have things in my business that aren’t my favorite, right? We don’t love every part of it, but because I create them as appointments on my calendar, what happens is maybe it’s a Thursday morning and I’m looking at my calendar and I see that when I did my weekly plan, I had decided that on Thursday from 9 to 10 is when I was going to go in and work on content creation. Maybe I don’t love content creation. Maybe that’s not the thing I love most in my business. But when I see it listed there as an appointment on my calendar, what starts to happen is if I say, I don’t really want to do that now, now I’m scanning my whole weekly plan and I’m seeing when else do I have the time to do this? And it helps remind me that this was the time I created because I thoughtfully, intentionally realized this was the best pocket of time for me to get that work done this week.

So I want you to really start thinking about what activities do that will help you with your business that you want to do daily or weekly? And how can you transfer them off of your task list and instead get them in as appointments with set dates and times on your calendar.

Bye bye! See you soon 👋

Now, I hope that you have found our conversation here all around some time management and time saving tips for your business beneficial I highly encourage you. Definitely dive in and look at all of the amazing training available to you here in this level of program. I personally have never seen anything quite like it for free available out there. I know I have certainly gleaned a ton of amazing information. And here’s one little last tip for you. When you’re creating those checklists of where you want to spend your time, one of the things that is on my weekly checklist is a set chunk of time for personal development and learning so that I know every week when I’m doing my weekly plan, I have one hour set aside to come in and dive into training, education, et cetera just like this.