Create (Design your week)
This is about taking back your time.
Design your schedule: This is about taking back your time. Moving from being reactive to the meetings you have and invites you get and actively planning the what, when and how of your time.
In this video, I guide you through designing your schedule strategically to prioritize important tasks over reactive ones. By categorizing your activities into blue, red, green, and yellow, you can allocate time efficiently for regular meetings, spontaneous tasks, personal activities, and future-focused work. The goal is to create a balanced schedule that includes both routine commitments and strategic thinking time. No specific action is requested, but implementing these scheduling strategies can enhance productivity and focus.
Designing Your Schedule for Success
Cadence: Many of us work to a weekly, or monthly schedule. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Hot and cool weeks: Design your schedule template (download here)
Gathering or Collecting
Now comes the challenging part.
- You need to collect your commitments.
- These are regular meetings, 1-2-1s, deep work time etc.
- List out your personal commitments:
- eg Going to the gym, Date night (this is important!), Pick up kids, Running, Lunch
- List out the things you really want and need to do
- Date night
Planning
It’s time to get creative. You can either grab two blank sheets of paper, a ruler and some coloured pens or print this plan (download here).
100 Things you Want
If you want to be a great coach, make it your job to surface all of your clients’ needs and desires.
The simplest way to go deeper into what your client truly desires is to ask two questions: “What do you want?” Followed by, “What else?”
You can repeat the “What else?” question dozens of times.
Or you can give them the assignment to write down “100 Things You Want…”
The first thirty or so will come pretty easily. The second thirty are a bit of a stretch. But it’s the third third where they’ll really struggle. It might take them weeks.
In fact, to list out 100 things they want, they’ll need to get a little bold, a little outrageous, and a little outside the norm.
And that’s where the magic lies.
Most people are unconsciously living someone else’s dreams, or accomplishing someone else’s goals. Most people unconsciously hope that when they finally achieve their goals, they will finally feel the love or respect they craved as a child. [Hint: they won’t.]
Help your clients find out what they really want and you’ll have clients for life.
- 10/10s (coming soon)
- Zone of Genius (coming soon)
- Strength based (coming soon)
Rock, Pebbles and Sand
A frequent lament I hear from CEOs: “We just can’t seem to get anything done!” When we dig into the issue, we often find that it’s not about not getting things done, but about what kind of tasks are getting done.
And here, a simple metaphor, the concept of a glass jar, comes into play.
There are three types of things you can put into this jar: sand, pebbles, and rocks.
Sand represents the routine, mundane tasks in any organization – dealing with customer complaints, fixing bugs, handling operational challenges. There’s always a lot of sand, and it’s tricky to get rid of.
Next, we have pebbles. They are slightly larger initiatives – feature improvements, extending working hours, launching new product lines. They’re not groundbreaking, but they gradually enhance your operations.
Finally, we have rocks. These are the large, daunting, strategic initiatives – like entering a new market, launching a new product line, or conducting a merger. They’re challenging, but they are what truly drives your business forward.
The Typical Pitfall: Filling the Jar with Sand and Pebbles Most organizations fill their jar with sand and pebbles, leaving little to no room for the rocks.
The Solution: Prioritize the Rocks
So, how do we tackle this issue? It’s simple – we invert the process. Instead of starting with sand, we begin with the rocks. Once we’ve placed the rocks, we add the pebbles and finally the sand. The sand and pebbles fit around the rocks, ensuring all three can coexist within the jar.
Read
Identity and Environment
From Rich Litvin https://richlitvin.com/three-levels-of-transformation/
- Who are you? How do you think?
- What does your wiser self know – that you pretend not to, or would rather avoid?
- Who do you admire? Who do you follow online? What kind of books do you read?
- Who do you dislike? Who would you never dream of following? What kind of books do you never read?
- What are your hard lines? “I’m not the kind of person who _____.” “I would never _____.” What would be different if those things weren’t true?
- What do you want to be known for?
- How often do you challenge your beliefs or conventional beliefs? What old beliefs no longer serve you? How outdated is your self-image? What do your best friends or top clients admire about you that you still find hard to own about yourself?
- What are you tolerating in your environment? A messy bedroom, a messy office, messy business finances, messy estate planning, messy retirement planning?
- Where do you need willpower to resist temptation or discipline to do what you need to do? (Eg. eating junk food, not automating your finances, not scheduling all your time off at the start of the year).
Habits
From Rich Litvin https://richlitvin.com/three-levels-of-transformation/