Return on Your Time
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Episode Show Notes: Return on Your Time
When was the last time that you actually looked at your schedule like a detective, looking for extra hours per week, looking where you could allocate those extra hours?
What would you do if you actually had an extra full working day per week to devote to some quality projects?
Welcome to This Week's Plan, where we help you transform possibility into reality. We help you accomplish the right things each week so you can enjoy a more balanced life, both personally and professionally. Join in as we share real world battle tested strategies and techniques to help you center your focus, accelerate your results and improve your momentum to avoid being overwhelmed. This isn't just about making it through the week, it's about fitting in all the right things. Now here's the host of This Week's Plan Shane Fielder.
Just a reminder, before we get into this Mid Week Pivot that we have a beautiful gift lined up for you and it's sponsored by Samurai Innovation and it's our eight no fail planning methods course.
This course will help you stop hacking your way to productivity and looking all over the Internet in different places. And we have eight methods, eight ways that you can actually win this week. What you want to do is go to NoFailPlans.com, all the information's there. It's on the house and it's our gift to you for being a listener at This Week's Plan.
Getting a bigger return on your time.
I want you to just think for a minute to step back, step back for a minute and review your calendar for the last couple of weeks. We want to encourage you to look at where are the gaps in your calendar when you look back in the week? What I do is time blocking. I put in all the different things and in my week that I need to do.
But one of the secrets is, I actually go back and I edit those time blocks after the events. If I said something was going to take an hour and it actually took 90 minutes, I actually extend that time block in my calendar. I have a historical record of going through my calendar and looking where I won and where maybe I had some cracks in the week or where some emergencies happened or some opportunities came up that I didn't plan for.
Look for those gaps in your week and then ask yourself, what were you doing in those gaps?
What created the gaps?
You might have a lot more gaps that you have no accountability toward. People say, "Shane, I actually don't know what I was doing." It might have been in those times that you were doing some less productive things. And that's okay. It may mean that you need to plan more mental breaks into your schedule so you can actually take a 15 or 20 minute break, distraction free and go clear your mind whether that's going for a walk or maybe that's the time you check your social channels and see what's going on in those feeds.
Then you go back into the project. The key is how can you use this intelligence that you gained through this review to either create boundaries going into this the rest of this week and next week?
Or can you create some more productive blocks of time that you can actually use those to move the needle forward?
That's how you can actually create a better return on your time.
Are you at the top of the mountain?
Have you been on top of your game this week?
How are things flowing effortlessly and going really great for you?
Then it's time to accelerate. We've reached the acceleration question which is, where can you amplify or invest some time this week into building greater progress?
How can you just stop and pause today and say for the next two to three days this week, where can I just add a little extra in?
Where can I do another couple of inches worth of productivity?
How can you gain a little bit more progress?
Where can you leverage your time, talent and energy of your team or the people that you work with?
That's how you can amplify your progress this week.
Has this week not gone as planned so far?
Maybe you're in a valley.
Have you hit a low point?
Maybe you've had some discouraging news.
Have you felt defeated by the enormity of the project that you're working on?
That's okay.
Now is the time to push over your domino of productivity to get a better return on your time.
We want you to push over that next domino of productivity.
You should ask this question to yourself every day for the next two to three days.
What three things can you do tomorrow morning?
These are three things that you're going to do tomorrow morning before you check your email. Three things before you communicate with another human being on the face of this planet.
What three things can you get done?
I guarantee that you will have the answer to this.
Also, I guarantee you that when you do those three things, you will unleash a force, you will unleash some positivity, and you may change the momentum in your favor than how you were feeling ten minutes ago.
Answer those three things. Put it into the next two days and see what the results come out to be for you.
I want to remind you to join the show at This Week's Plan.
There's a black box there. Fill in your question for me. I look forward to featuring you on another edition of This Week's Plan or the Mid Week Pivot.
Let me know by email how you're doing and how this is working for you. I look forward to conversing with you.
Domo Arigato.
