Creating & Sticking to an Ideal Week.

Do you ever feel like your time is regularly being robbed from you? I know we have. In this blog we will show you a simple, easy-to-use productivity technique that will return your precious time to you and compel you to complete the important things you need to do. Its all about creating an ideal week.

So what is an ideal week? Let me answer that with a question. What would it look like if, over a 7 day period, you could block out specific periods of time to make sure you were accomplishing your most critical tasks and responsibilities?

And what would it look like if all that blocked out time became your weekly ideal schedule, so that you knew exactly what to do and when to do it and that became a recurring weekly habit? Pretty cool, right?

So what are the advantages to living according to an ideal week framework? I’m so glad you asked!

#1. It makes it crystal clear what important tasks, responsibilities and recurring appointments you have for any given week. Clarity leads to completion.

#2. An ideal week allows you to fill your most critical responsibilities in to your calendar, leaving less room for un-important time-wasters. I think all of us could benefit from eliminating some of the cronic time-wasters in our lives, right?

#3. Knowing what your week is going to look like and understanding what your responsibilities are is highly motivating and increases the likelihood that you will get done what you need to get done. We all need a bit more motivation at times — a bit more energy at times — living according to an ideal week helps with both of those things.

So how do you start? Its simple. What tool do you use for planning your time? A calendar? A paper planner or appointment book? An app or digital calendar? It doesn’t matter. You can create your ideal week utilizing any of these methods.

Begin by looking at an empty week and putting in the non-negotiable appointments you have to do. For example, classes for school, work hours, church and small group times, self care time etc…

Next put in your important tasks. When will you complete your home work? When will you eat and sleep? When willl you exercise or work out? etc… At this point, only your most important tasks and appointments should appear on your calendar.

Now you can populate your calendar with weekly things that are not as important, but that you still want to attend or get done. After this, you will be able to see how little time you may have to commit to things that are not important or things you don’t want to do.

Now keep in mind that this is called an ideal week — not a perfect week. It is unlikely that you will be able to stick to this exact weekly schedule without having to make some changes. Let’s face it, life happens. But the goal is to stick as close to your ideal week as possible. This will help you stay focused on what’s important and motivated to accomplish it.

The key is to not give up for any reason. Even if your ideal week gets totally destroyed this week with unexpected things, Monday is a new week — with a new chance to live according to your pre-determined ideal week frame work. So don’t lose heart — keep it going — and over time you will begin to recognize that you are indeed getting into a healthy habit of living according to your ideal week.