A Schedule

01

Jan

Not only is it important to take the time to plan your week, but to create a schedule that you regularly revisit and update to work best for you.


Happy New Year! I love times like this, as it gives me an opportunity to review how things are going, then set goals and make purposeful changes to hopefully achieve them. The timing of this letter couldn’t be better.

Last year I wrote about the value of doing weekly planning, and some best practices I had learned. As I continued this practice throughout 2017, I generally treated each week as a blank slate, and scheduled activities somewhat randomly.

Doing this caused two issues; this first was spending more energy than necessary trying to plan my week, and the second was the uncertainty of each week, as none were the same. Additionally, despite the weekly planning, I repeatedly struggled with certain areas in my schedule – including making time for exercise and supporting my wife before dinner, when our boys are the most challenging.

Recently I took some time to list all the activities I want to fit into my week (family, work, devotion, community etc.). I then created a prototype day, and variants of the day to build a prototype week that realistically fit everything I wanted to do.

This was a great exercise as it allowed me to think about what has been working well, and what definitely has not. It led me to do things like bump my schedule to start and end earlier, allowing for better family support without losing time to work on the business, and to create a more structured lunch break where I can get away from the screen.

I highly encourage you to take the time to not only create a schedule, but to review it regularly to identify areas where you are struggling and to adapt as your seasons of life change.

The solution to being more productive is often not spending more time, but being wiser in the time we spend, and planning well is the first step.

~ Sean

Closed for now ... something new coming soon(ish).