I’ve been on a productivity band-wagon for the past couple of weeks, chatting about how I plan my days like a productivity ninja, and how I use mind-fuqery techniques to turn my dreams into reality.  

So this week I thought I’d give you a little behind the scenes glimpse at how I plan my days to get the most out of my natural energy levels – its another inception style fake-out that I use on myself to try and live a more balanced life, and to feel like I’m working in flow with myself rather than fighting against…well, me.

After careful observation I’ve noticed that not all days are created equal.  

Some days I’m full of beans, bouncing out of bed ready to swing for the fence, others I have a lot less energy, but my creativity is sky-rocketing; I’m gonna bet you’re much the same.  The days vary from day to day, Monday always feels different to Tuesday, but I’ve noticed that my weeks are all pretty similar.  The way I feel on Mondays, is pretty much the same every Monday, ditto for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and so on.

My fuq factor varies GREATLY with each day.

So I structure my weeks, to get the most out of my body.  This is how they look:

Monday: Energy level is good, creativity is fair, fuq factor is medium.  Not super creative on Mondays, but I love doing ‘admin’ style tasks like bookkeeping, financials, organising calendars, planning.  I’m not ready to dive deep into any project work yet, but I am super pumped to get everything prepped for the week ahead.

Tuesday & Wednesday are always the same: Creativity is highest, energy is amped, and I’m determined to conquer the world (or at least my major goal for the week).  Max productivity/output happens across these two days, so I make sure there are zero interruptions/distractions/meetings/alerts.  I literally shut everything off (emails/socials) and dive deep into achieving whatever my major project is for that week/month.

If I can get really focussed here, with zero disruptions, I can bang out a solid 15-20 hours on a single project.  If I can manage that over the month, that’s somewhere in the order of 60+ hours of project work in a single month…there’s not a lot of projects that take too much longer than that!

 

Thursday: This is the only day I allow meetings, for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I read years ago that people are most likely to say ‘yes’ on a Thursday and its always stuck with me.  Secondly, by now I know I’ve achieved a good chunk of my agenda for the week, so I’m happy to take the accelerator off a little.

I should preface this by saying, I will do literally everything to avoid a meeting!  

My whole business is online, and my goal is to live a gypsy life where it’s impossible for me to have face-to-face meetings anyway.  So I’m introducing that practise now.  So my first response to a meeting request is always no.  I’ll always try to work it out either via phone, email or Skype.  Never in person.  If a meeting is 100% necessary (and this is usually only if I need it to advance one of my projects) then I batch them up.  So I wait a few weeks until I have 3/4 meetings to do, then go and do them back to back.

For me, meetings require such a shift in energy.   I work online and by myself all day (the silence is bliss!) so even the process of needing to talk to someone can be a challenge sometimes! (Hands up all the hardcore introverts!!)

Friday: Creativity is good, but I’m completely unable to give a fuq.  So I do anything that’s either fun (like writing, blogging, social media.  Side note: I batch my social media into one session that gets automatically fed out over the week) or requires very little brain-power (like clearing out my inbox – if you wanna hear what I think about emails, read this).  If I can finish Friday afternoon with a clear inbox and my sights set on next week I’m pretty happy. This hasn’t been happening lately, so I’ve taken to inbox clearing on Sundays, so my Monday can start fresh to death.

Saturday: No work, all play.

Sunday: I usually do any training programs/education/online courses on Sunday.  My brain feels rested and my body is usually catching some rays in a Sunny spot, so I pop an online course onto the headphones and do a couple of hours of solid, uninterrupted education.

So that’s my week, but again, these are all practises I have only just introduced this year; and I’m sharing them with you because after 12 years as an entrepreneur, I’ve seen more growth in my brand in the past 12 months as a result of getting really disciplined with my time management.

So how does your week look?  Have you noticed that some days you feel more creative, whereas others you just want to focus on admin?  Your order of flow is likely different to mine, but I’m gonna bet that if you take a look at the days overall you’ll start to notice a pattern.

I encourage you to track this and start working with those natural energy ebbs and flows to live a more harmonious, balanced life.