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What you’ll learn in this episode:
Have you ever reached the end of the week, exhausted, and then crashed into Monday, and repeated that cycle until you were burnt out?
Being an entrepreneur, business owner, and your own boss, can feel liberating. It can give you more freedom, time, and help you reach your goals if done right.
If done wrong, you can end up with less freedom, time, satisfaction, and even money.
Today, I’m going to give you six steps that you can implement that will allow you to organize your life and your business so that you can have more time doing the things that get you to your goals, gain more control, make more money, and enrich your life.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- Being productive sometimes means you need to assess what you have produced so far.
- To avoid being rudderless, you need to be intentional.
- Clear your mind of the unnecessary. It’s just slowing it down.
- Success is built on subtracting more than adding.
- Set and define your priorities regularly.
- Feed your week what you want to get out of it.
- Get a calendar. Write everything in that calendar.
- Schedule not working time.
- Get into a productivity ritual.
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 18: Not Working is Not Self-Care
Episode 19: What Your Time is Costing You
Steven Covey’s Habits of Highly Successful People
Work/Connect with me:
Business and Rejuvenation Retreat
[01:00] Jessica: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the practical mindset podcast. I’m Jess Miller and I’m so excited to be back here with all of you to talk about the concept of crash-landing into your weeks.
[01:15] Any of you out there crash-land into your weeks? Have you had that experience? I will tell you that when I first started my business, this was a regular occurrence for me and something I really struggled with. As I work with client after client, I have noticed that many people struggle with this as well and as the year is coming to an end, this is something that is top of mind for me talking to my clients, thinking about the holidays, thinking about 2022, so I wanted to come on to the airwaves and talk about this phenomenon with all of you, because I think it’s a game-changer in how we experience our business, how we experience results, how we make money, all of the things. If you want to move through your days and weeks with better results, productivity, and a sense of control and well-being, you need to stop crash-landing into your weeks.
[02:11] I want to share with you that when I first became an entrepreneur and I left corporate, one of the number one reasons I did that was because I thought I was going to have the ultimate freedom and control over my time to do whatever I wanted to do. If any of you have ever left corporate or know people who work in corporate, you probably can relate to this. This idea that when you become an entrepreneur, you have this freedom and you can choose to do whatever you want, and you’re your own boss. That was a big piece of why I wanted to start my own company. So, what I would do is I would essentially show up to my desk every Monday morning, I remember sitting there at my desk with my yoga pants on, I would get there whenever I felt like it, a lot of times it was around 10 AM, I would sit down, I would turn my computer on, maybe I would surf the web, I would maybe have a snack, and I would essentially crash-land into my days. As I would go through the week, I always felt like I was pushing against this inertia. I wasn’t really sure where I was going, I didn’t have a plan, and I would just wander through this week, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t producing anything or creating things, but there was no sense of momentum that was coming from my days. I would often get to Fridays and I would have the feeling “where did the week go? What did I actually do this week with all my time? What did I have to show from it?”
[03:52] Part of being productive is being able to look at something that you have produced in the week. I found myself ending the week feeling like “where did the time go?” and having very little to look at. What I found was that the reason that that was happening was because I wasn’t doing my planning intentionally. I wasn’t coming into my weeks with intention. I was essentially crash-landing into every Monday and letting the spirit move me through my week. When you crash-land into your Mondays, you are already behind the 8-ball, both logistically and energetically. It’s synonymous with this feeling of being rudderless. You’re moving along with little ability to steer and aim for what you want because you haven’t set out that intention from the beginning. You’re not really sure where you’re going and that the winds of life and your business just blow you around, and more often than not, you end up in a very different place than you actually want to be, and you often end up in stormy waters unintentionally, which uses up more fuel and makes you work harder than you need to.
[05:08] This behavior not only doesn’t produce the things that you often wanted to or doesn’t produce at the level that you could possibly produce, but it also costs you time, sanity, and money.
[05:24] Now, a side note. A lot of people that I’ve worked with, and I was this person in the beginning when I started my business as well, we identify as these creative, fluid people, and we come into this container of our week with this belief that planning and scheduling out our weeks is stifling, that it robs us of our freedom in some way, that we have this rose-colored glass view that we’re just supposed to waltz into our week and experience it organically, and it’s just supposed to move us in this way that produces what we want. Not only is this misguided, but it’s not true, and it’s often the word on the street, and it’s positioned as something people neither are born with, like they’re built to do it or not – planning your week or moving into it intentionally with some sort of structure is either this God-given gift or it isn’t, and that is completely not the case. The more you choose how you enter your weeks and your months, and even your years, the better results you get, and the more money you make. Not to mention, the experience that you have is so much greater and so much more filling, because at the end of the day, you are the architect of your life. You’re the architect of your business. You get to decide what your week looks like, but the key is, you have to decide and create it intentionally.
[06:59] As we approach the years end, there are also a lot bigger things at stake. As we move into the holidays, and this is really top of mind right now as we move into this period of time, your lack of planning, this consistent crash-landing into our days, our weeks, our months, are costing you bigger things, like restful holiday time, time with your family, a smooth transition into the next year in a way that feels rested and empowering, and focused. So, let’s dive in right now and learn about how you can avoid crash-landing into your days.
[07:41] I’m going to walk you through all these things. I want you to grab a piece of paper or, if you’re walking or driving, don’t grab a piece of paper. You can go back and listen to the recording. I’m going to bring you through this step-by-step piece of this, and I want you to think about these things. Are you doing them? Are you not doing them? How do you start doing them right now? So, number one, I want you to get everything out of your head and on to paper. In the beginning of my planning, when I think about going into my week next week, and I often do this at the end of the week, for me, I do it on Sundays. I am actually preparing for the next week. I do a brain dump. the reason I do that is because I carry around a lot of stuff in my head that shouldn’t be there. All the space and energy that it takes for me to store this information in my brain is costing me valuable focus time, focus energy, that I don’t want to be using for that.
[08:46] Your brain is not designed to store your to-do’s. Your brain is actually for processing and filtering information. From a very primitive perspective, your brain is wired for survival, and is constantly scanning your environment, looking for threats. That’s what it does best. Not storing your brain dump list. So, you want to get everything in your brain out onto a piece of paper so you can see it, and you want to free up the space and use of your brain for what it’s designed to do, and that is process information and make decisions. So, the first thing is do a brain dump.
[09:26] The second thing is, I want you to set your intentions. How do you want your week to go? This goes back to what I was talking about – our preconceived idea about how we’re somehow shackled into how our week is going to unfold. No. You are the architect of your life. You’re get to decide how your week is going to go. The real question is: how do you want it to go? How do you want to feel as you move through your week? What do you want to be spending your time on? How do you want to spend your time thinking about things?
[09:58] Side note – I really want you to think about this through the lens of the person you want to become. We have all moved through our weeks in whatever way we’re moving through. I’m going to take a guess that some people that are listening to this right now, their weeks haven’t felt that great. Maybe they’ve entered into those weeks in a way that doesn’t get them what they want, it doesn’t feel awesome. Maybe you’re crash-landing into your week, and that’s not how you want to be living your life. So, I want you to think about when you’re setting your intentions, who is the person you want to be? Because that’s the person you want to show up as in your week. When you’re thinking about these things, like your intentions, spending your time, or how you’re going to feel, I want you to think about how would that person answer those questions? How would they feel and spend their time, and what would they spend their time thinking about as they move into their week?
[10:51] Another question which I think is so powerful, probably the most important question, is what would you not be doing and thinking? If you were setting an intention, if you were intentionally moving into the week, what would you not be doing anymore? Many of you have heard me talk about this – that success is really built on subtracting more than adding, in my opinion. So, what are you going to do less of? What are you going to not do as you move into your week? That’s the second thing.
[11:25] The third thing is to find your priorities. What are the three things that are the most important to you and why? Every week, I set 3 priorities. I define them. Sometimes, it is like for instance, when we’re recording this, we’re moving into Thanksgiving week, I have intentionally put not working and time-off time on my calendar, where I am not going to physically be in my business routine, doing work in the routine way that I do it. So, on my priority list, my family and getting ready for the holiday is a priority. That includes decorating, creating delicious side orders that I want, and baking a pumpkin pie. So, some weeks it’s things like that. Other weeks, it’s like opening up the doors to my 10K accelerator or fine-tuning the pieces of my retreat that I am holding at the Canyon ranch in April/May timeframe of 2022. So, whatever it is, you want to put those three things, those three priorities, on your list first. What are those three priorities? You want to define them.
[12:36] Number four is, what are you going to put in your week that will enable you to thrive and perform at your highest level? Another way to look at this is, what is nourishment for you? This can look in a variety of different ways. It could be something physical, like nourishment, like food, it could be the company you surround yourself with, like people, it could be how you spend your time and what you’re doing, it could be the spiritual aspect, how are you filling yourself up? But what are you going to put in your week that’s going to enable you to rise to this next level and really thrive and perform at your most essential self?
[13:17] Number five is, I want you to put it all in your calendar. I start with the priorities, and I put those in first, alla Stephen Covey, I put the big rocks in first, then I go down the list and I find a time slot for each and every thing. Everything has a home. I start with, like I said, those big rocks. I give everything else a home, and then I also think about the cadence of my days as much as I think about the tactical items. Just to give you an understanding of what this looks like, and I’ll speak about a client that I had. When she first came and started working with me, she was exhausted. Absolutely exhausted. So, we started talking about what exactly was she doing with her time? So, we went through the list, she told me, and it all seemed really reasonable, and then when we started to dig a little deeper. What I started to see was, she was packing her calendar with appointment after appointment, after appointment, throughout the entire day. We’re talking 8:00 o’clock in the morning until 5:30 every day. Even if it was stuff she loved doing, it was just packed in there, so by the time she got to the end of her days, never mind her week, she was completely depleted, she had no time to think about herself, no time to think about her business, there was no marinating time. She was just slammed, and the cadence of her days were crippling her. As soon as we dug in there and freed that up, and put it in there in a cadence that worked better for her, figured out what times in the day, is she a morning person? An evening person? How does she want to work and structure her days? What things really lit her up? What were those priorities? and really fine-tune that and finessed it.
[15:08] Also baked in there, things that I talk about all the time, like how do we leverage our time? How do we bend it? What is coming up with her and her mindset around her money that was driving how she was packing things into her calendar? Once we streamlined that and dug underneath it, and finessed it, not only did she feel better, but she produced at such a higher level. It’s almost like she became whole different person. Her business up-levelled, she made more money, and she was able to also, instead of arriving at the weekend and giving her family all the scraps, she could take that energy that she was not burning out through the week, and she could infuse that into her weekend with her family. So, her business was thriving, and she was thriving, and it was amazing. So, you want to look at the cadence of what you’re doing with your calendar, as well as the tactics.
[16:07] Number six, and very important, and especially as we think about this time of the year and the holidays, I want you to think about, when are you going to schedule not working time? For those of you listening, I have been on the soapbox about this not working over the last many weeks. I am holding a challenge around that as well for the year end, because I believe so deeply that not working time is actually not an afterthought. It’s part of your success strategy. I also talked about this in the last episode, so if you haven’t seen it, I really encourage you to go back and listen to it after you listen to this podcast. Not working is not self-care. It is an essential piece of your success strategy. During this time of the year, getting your mindset around this and understanding how to practically put that in your calendar could mean the difference between enjoying your holidays, spending time with loved ones, resting, and making money, and producing in your business, or not. It is so important that we intentionally choose this time, both from a practical perspective, meaning I want you to go in and, as you’re planning your week, you are intentionally putting it in your calendar, in your schedule, but also managing our mindset around this in a very practical way, that we are tying this not working time and the whole structure of how we’re building the schedule and the intention, the not crash-landing, and to choosing the time, and choosing the not working time, how we are crafting that into creating the results that we want.
[17:57] You can pull your brain out of the halfway house. You can take it out of the place where it is half in your work and half in your personal life, because being in that place, and really it is purgatory being in that place, is not doing anybody any favors, especially you. So, putting this in there in a way that it really drives the results that you want, it allows you to thrive both in your personal life and your business, allows you to not only flourish but it allows you to make more money, and also, energetically, it is the thing that allows you to experience the happiness and the contentment, and the confidence, that comes with knowing that you have put something together in a very intentional, strategic way to support you personally and professionally. So, it is really important that when you think about your weeks, there is always this not working time that is part of your plan.
[19:09] The last, but not least, piece is that you are going to make this whole concept of strategically planning your weeks, and not crash-landing into your Monday, a weekly ritual. I mentioned that I schedule time, as I’m looking forward to really go in and walk through these steps, I usually do that on a Sunday night. One step back is when I am ending my week, and I usually do this on Thursdays or Fridays, I schedule a time at the end of my week to wrap everything up and look ahead a little bit. It’s like a slow dismount. I kind of come off the week and I look at what’s on there, and I’m tying up the loose ends, and if there’s some things that I need to actually push into the next week, I will take those off of my schedule and just put them into the calendar for the next week. It’s like I already know that those things are going to go in there, so I look at it, and I’m like “what can I move in there immediately? Because that’s just going to save me time on Sunday, and I know that they have to happen, so I just put them in there.” So, I put that stuff in there and then I tie up the loose ends. Then, on Sunday, I actually sit down and I go through this entire exercise, what is my brain dump? What are the intentions that I want? What are my priorities? What are the things that are going to make me thrive? I put all of those things into my calendar.
[20:48] I have to tell you that I have actually done a little experiment with this, and a little research project, and I have gone back, and I have looked at my planner in relation to my experience during my weeks. I have identified, what are the most productive weeks, and what aren’t? At the end of my week, I’ll do a little post-mortem, what worked? What didn’t work? I also bake that into just reflecting, and I weave that into this ritual so that I’m not crash-landing into my Monday, and I will look at, what are the weeks that have felt the best, have produced the most, have created the most money as a result? All the things, and I will compare it to those weeks that have not created that, have not produced that, and what I have found is that the determining factor in my week feeling productive, having a sense of control, and creating the best results, are when I intentionally set up my week and I didn’t crash-land into Monday. Sometimes it’s super obvious, because I can flip through my planner and I can see I never wrote down my brain dump, or I never set the intention, those weeks are blank, and the interesting thing is, when I’m actually in the planner part, in the calendar part, even the things that are coming to me that I have written in my schedule, even the creative pieces that I get these insights or these kind of flashes of creativity, even that is less. It’s so far-reaching how setting that intention and doing that piece upfront really sets me up for a whole different reality and a whole different way of navigating into my week, experiencing it, producing results, and frankly, making sure that my life, my days, my weeks, are built intentionally and they’re not this afterthought, they’re not me crashing into the runway, basically. They are the smooth ascent, and really, everything flows from there.
[23:03] If you want to move through your days and your weeks with better results, more productivity, and a sense of control and well-being, you need to stop crash-landing into your weeks. You need to go back, listen to this podcast, and I want you to do that right now. If you’re taking notes, I want you to go back to your notes, and I want you to walk through these steps so that you can end your week on a high note and really prepare for that next week, so that you can move into that week with ease, control, well-being, momentum, and a way to create all of the things in your business that you want, and more.
[23:48] If you’re ready to change the way you think about, and show up, in your business, and are ready to take more time off this holiday season, while still making money, come join us in my private Facebook group for a special holiday bonus. Inside the group, we will be sharing what is one of my clients’ favorite topics: how to create, implement, and communicate a profitable holiday roadmap so you can take time off with ease and create a win-win situation for both you and your clients that they will be thanking you for. Click the link in the show notes to join us, or search Jessica Miller Breakthrough Coaching in the Facebook search.
Until next week, everyone. See you soon.
