“You have a choice in life. You can either live on-purpose, according to a plan you’ve set. Or you can live by accident, reacting to the demands of others. The first approach is proactive; the second reactive.” – Michael Hyatt
Sure, you can’t plan for everything. Things happen that you can’t anticipate. But it is a whole lot easier to accomplish what matters most when you are proactive and begin with the end in mind.
One of the ways I do this is by creating a template that I call “My Ideal Week”.
I was first introduced to this concept by Steven Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and then the process was refined by reading Michael Hyatt’s blog.
The idea is similar to a financial budget. The only difference is that you plan how you will spend your time rather than your money. And like a financial budget, you spend it on paper first.
My Ideal Week — the week I would live if I could control 100% of what happens — looks like this:
Without going into too much detail, here are a couple key ideas for me:
- Family first. Nothing is more important, I promise you.
- Have a morning ritual.
- Schedule your most important work tasks first.
- Fight hard to keep distractions to a minimum.
- Set aside some time at the start of the week to plan your week.
- Schedule meetings, calls, and little things in the afternoon.
- Limit responding to email to specific time slots in the day.
- Date night is a non-negotiable.
- Make sure you move everyday – doesn’t have to be exercise per se, but do something active.
- Set an end-of-the-day deadline, and try stick to it (there will always be more work to do).
Now that you’ve seen mine, I suggest that you map out your own Ideal Week. And once you have created it, you can use it as a basic template for planning each week.
If you are like me, not everything can be shoe-horned into the template, of course. But having this basic blueprint will better enable you to to accomplish those things that matter most.
For a more detailed look into how I formulated my Ideal Week, click here.