How to Win The Week
Pre-planning is one of the best things you can do to set yourself up for success the following week. I recently did a workshop by Demir Bentley called Winning The Week and in it he talks about a strategy for preparing for the next week in order to maximise effectiveness and success. Having tried it out I am absolutely fascinated by the sheer capabilities of what is possible from a simple pre-planning system. I would love for you to try this out next week and see how you go! I’m going to be updating my pre-planning session and I will keep you posted on what works for me and what I’m adapting. Stay tuned for that next month!
It involves sitting down for roughly 20 minutes once a week to set yourself up for the next week. The 7 steps are as follows:
1. Create a space that you can always go to for your pre-planning session. It can be going to your favourite coffee shop or café or it can be a designated corner in a room in your home. It needs to be a space you love and associate with joy otherwise you will not want to plan. Once you have your space chosen choose your tools whether it’s your laptop and phone for a Google Calendar or planner and notepad with pens and pencils. Decide in advance what your planning space and tools are and be strict with this to begin with. You don’t want to arrive at your desk and be looking around for your phone or a favourite pen. It needs to be organised and accessible to encourage you to get planning!
2. Look back over the last week and evaluate: what went well? And Why? What didn’t go well and why not? Doing this is SUPER IMPORTANT. As it allows you to learn from the last week and be strategic about what worked versus what didn’t. At first it will take time especially if you’re not sure what you did last week or didn’t track it. As you get used to pre-planning and evaluating the week it will take a matter of minutes to look back and reflect.
3. Next ask yourself the magic question (I adapted the one from the Lazy Genius here): and that’s What can I do this week that will make next week easier? This is all about stacking the dominoes in your favour and helping your future self to make the best possible decisions.
4. Next we get into the planning part. Have a look at your calendar and review the next two weeks. (You might realise now that if you’re doing a pre-planning session weekly then there will be an overlap – that is intentional to make sure no gaps crop up. You ensure everything is captured). The purpose of this review is to check you haven’t missed any major things such as trips, doctors appointments, projects etc that require major project planning. It also allows you to co-ordinate with other people who will be involved and loop them in ahead of time. (Nobody likes being reminded of major things at the very last minute no matter how spontaneous they may think they are!)
5. Now it’s time to update your to-do list. Based on the calendar review of what is happening in the next two weeks you will have things you need to add to your task list and things that need to come off. Update as needed. Keep the next two weeks in mind when updating and crossing things off.
6. Budget your time – This is where you slot your to-do list into your calendar. It means assigning all the tasks an actual time in your week. It’s also known as calendarizing your week. Here you will notice that you may not be able to fit all of the tasks on your to-do list into your week! This is normal! You will need to decide which tasks are priority tasks that matter and ensure that they get slotted in. For things that can’t be slotted in: can they be removed, delegated or postponed? This will take time and experience to know which tasks are not needed or which can be done by someone else.
7. Game Day strategy – Now that you have your plan it’s important to put it into action. One strategy is to run your day like a game. Make it into a game and make it fun. You’ll find you work harder, faster and smarter and you will enjoy it more.
There you have it! Have a go and let me know what you think and what step you find you like the most!