Today’s topic is all about helping you look a little bit differently at how you plan your work week.
Sometimes when we think about creating our ideal work week it can be a little bit overwhelming.
With so many different moving parts, it can be tricky to know what tasks are the most important and when we’re supposed to do them.
As a business owner, it really helps to be able to break your schedule down into a structure that you can repeat week after week.
In this blog (and video down below) you’ll learn how to create manageable work blocks that help you prioritize the things that are important for your business growth.
Creating these work blocks will give you a clear picture of what tasks you should be including each week and provide a clear structure of how you spend your time.
Treat Yourself Like One of Your Clients
It’s really easy for a lot of us to let our own business goals and priorities take a backseat to the commitments we’ve made to our clients, or other people.
And it makes sense, most often the obligations to other people carry more weight than the promises and the goals we’ve set for ourselves.
This doesn’t mean you don’t care about the big vision goals and ideas that you have for your business. Rather, what happens a lot of times is that we end up trying to fit them into whatever time is left over at the end of the week.
When I was first starting my business I would tell myself, “Okay, on Friday afternoon, when I finished everything else I have to do, then that time is for me and my business.”
But the problem is that that extra time often just doesn’t exist. Our time can always get used up. There’s always something or someone else that we end up giving our energy and our hours to.
This is why it’s important to have a structure in place that intentionally carves space out for our own goals and our own business growth.
It makes it easier to follow through when you treat yourself just as you would treat a client, making this time part of your weekly plan and putting it on your calendar.
What Should You Prioritize?
One of the strategies I really like to use is to break things down into smaller pieces, think of it as categorizing and grouping things together.
When you have working blocks in your schedule it gives a purpose to each specific chunk of time. You can set a goal and intention for a certain period of time to help your work feel more manageable and less overwhelming.
Here are 4 essential work blocks that should be in your plan every week:
1. Client Work – The service that you’re providing to your clients (AKA how you make your money!)
2. Your Own Marketing – Planning and implementing the promotion and sales strategy you have for your business. You need time set aside every week to be consistent with your marketing plan.
3. Your Own Admin – All the important back end work that should not get put on the backburner! Things like, tracking your finances, doing maintenance for your processes and systems, checking in to make sure your automations are working, tracking email stats, etc. Pro tip: I spend about 30 mins to 1 hour each week on my admin. It’s not a ton of time, but it is so much easier when you’re keeping up with things on a weekly basis.
4. CEO Time – This is the time when you’re being the CEO of your business. When you’re setting goals, evaluating, and taking that big picture/visioning for the future view. This is time you need to really grow your business. Not just to keep it running, but to create and plan for those visions that are going to take you to the next level of success.
So, those are the 4 top work blocks that I prioritize every week. If you’re wondering how you can make time for these blocks in your own schedule check out this post about doing a time audit.
Make the Time
I’d really love to challenge you throughout this week, and definitely into next week as you plan your schedule, to think about these four blocks and carve out time for each of them.
Check out my video for more details and tips for how to, little by little, shift your weekly schedule closer to where you want it to be. Because when you’re making little shifts over time, the ideal schedule that you have lined out for yourself can and will become your new weekly structure
Connect with Jenna:
If you’ve struggled to get into a routine with your planning or if you’ve struggled to follow through on the plans that you make, I want to help you!
Book a free strategy call with me and we’ll talk about how to create a system and rhythm that supports your planning and implementation goals.
Freebie Alert:
I like to use Trello for my weekly plan and for, honestly, pretty much everything in my business. I love how visual it is and how I can break my tasks down into these different blocks I talk about above. I can easily move them and shift my schedule if my day changes or something comes up.
I’ve built a free template of the weekly dashboard that I use in my own business every single day. It’s a resource that’s super user friendly for people who want to get started with a project management tool.
It comes with tutorials about how you can get your own Trello dashboard set up and how you can get started with Trello by using and customizing the template for yourself.
You can grab the freebie below whether you already use Trello or want are new to it and want to give it a try!
