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How to Do Pre-week Planning
There are four simple steps to pre-week planning. You can reference the blank weekly planner template in Figure 18 or a completed template in Figure 19 while we go through each of these steps.
If you already have our physical planner or online planner (the Do What Matters Most plugin or extension for Chrome and Outlook), please open those and follow along while reading this chapter. If you don’t have either of those and would like to look into getting one, please visit DoWhatMattersMostPlanner.com.
Figure 18. Blank pre-week planning template
Figure 19. A completed pre-week planning example
Step 1. Review Your Vision, Roles and Goals, and Long-Range Calendar
Take a few minutes to review your vision and goals; then ask yourself what you can do this week to move toward accomplishing your goals. This review of your vision and goals means you are looking at them at least one time per week—this puts you in an elite statistical number of people.
For some goals, you may have nothing to do this week. For others, it is important that you do specific things this week. For example, maybe one of your goals in the role of parent is to Hold a family reunion by October 1st. When you are doing your pre-week planning, you may not need to do anything this week as it relates to that goal. However, if it’s April, maybe this week is the time when you need to take certain steps toward accomplishing that goal. Maybe one of your action items is to send out an RSVP email to all family members along with a draft itinerary for the reunion.
Can you see how that simple example moved someone from potentially being in Q1, if they were to procrastinate, to being well ahead of the curve in Q2? It was important to have the goal in the first place, but it is the pre-week planning that helps you connect the action items to accomplishing the goal. When it comes to this particular goal, you won’t be doing something every week toward accomplishing it. Other goals, such as health goals or sales goals, however, might require you to do something every week. That is why the first part of Step 1 is to begin with the vision and goals.
There is a section in the front of our weekly planner in which you can write your vision and goals. We designed the weekly planner to be a one-stop shop so that you can easily and quickly reference your vision and goals each week. For those who do your pre-week planning on the computer, it is essential to have your vision and goals in a place where you can see them every week.
As we mentioned earlier, pre-week planning is a process that can stand on its own and still dramatically increase performance and productivity; however, it is so much more powerful when your daily and weekly actions align with your longer-term vision and goals.
Finally, as part of Step 1, we recommend briefly reviewing your long-term calendar; doing so helps you stay in Q2. For example, it is usually better to book a flight well ahead of time so that you get the flight you want, at a better rate, and with the seat of your choice. The Q2 approach is much better than the alternative of waiting until the day before your trip (Q1), paying for a more expensive ticket, and having your seat options limited.
Step 2. Write Down Your Roles
Just as you did for your vision and goals, identify the five to seven roles that matter most to you. This approach helps you plan your week through the lens of what matters most in each role. Planning your week through the lens of roles is one of the primary differences between this planning process and every other planning process.
Figure 20 shows some potential roles someone might have.
Even if you are using an electronic calendar (Google, Outlook, etc.), it is critical that you do these next steps on a piece of paper. We have had conversations with several leading neuroscientists in the world, and all agree that the act of writing unlocks a part of the brain that otherwise stays dormant— when you type, you cannot access it.
If you are using our weekly planner, write your roles across the top in the gray row. You will notice that the personal role is prewritten for you—as we mentioned earlier, this is the most crucial role. In the personal role, you will think about yourself through the lens of what you can do this week to take care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In other words, the personal role is all about you taking care of you this week.
In Greek, there are two terms used to think about time: Kairos and Chronos. Kairos focuses on priorities (roles), and Chronos is all about time. Most planners are focused only on time (Chronos). Pre-week planning brings Kairos and Chronos together so you focus on both your priorities and time. Pre-week planning—looking at your week through the lens of your different roles—is what allows you to lead a life by design, schedule your priorities, and do what matters most. For a lot of people, this approach of using roles is a big shift, because looking at more than just their professional role is new to them.
Step 3. Set Action Items for Each Role
Whether you call them action items or weekly goals, the bottom line is that in order to come up with these, you have a personal brainstorm with yourself to determine what matters most this week in each role. Imagine how powerful it is to sit down each weekend for a few minutes and identify specific actions that are important in each role! Step 3 is the most critical step of pre-week planning and can enhance almost anything that you might already be doing when it comes to planning.
Figure 21 shows a sample template with weekly action items or weekly goals filled in for each role.
Figure 21. Set action items for each role
It is this step that moves the majority of your time and focus into Q2. To use the earlier example of ping pong balls, you determine what you should put in the aquarium first—what matters most to you in each role. From the earlier archer example, Step 3 is the equivalent of identifying your bullseye in each role for the week. (We have placed the visuals for these earlier examples here for your convenience; see Figures 22 and 23.)
Figure 22. The ping pong ball example
Figure 23. The bullseye example
Pre-week planning is dynamic; every week is likely to be different from the last. Each week, you are apt to have a different number of action items in each role. If you recall, the graph from the previous chapter tracks the average person over five weeks. This person would consistently see a dramatic increase in performance and productivity from week one to week four. In other words, it is okay to start slowly, with only a couple of action items per role. Once you do pre-week planning for two or three weeks, however, you’re likely to have additional ideas, and the number of action items you write down in each role will likely increase. This pattern of increasing ideas is why performance and productivity rise when someone consistently does pre-week planning.
You do not need a set number of action items per role. Maybe in the role of spouse, you only have two action items this week, but they are two high-priority weekly goals or action items such as date night or writing a love note. At the same time, you may have eight or nine specific action items in your professional role that you also consider to be high-priority items. Your filter should be the do what matters most filter. Ask yourself if what you write are the Q2 types of activities and ideas.
The following are examples of hypothetical weekly actions by some of the most common roles (these are just examples, and they would not all be done in the same week):
Personal: Run three times, complete two cross-training workouts, do yoga twice, read five chapters of Start with the Vision, meditate twice, schedule a physical exam, enroll in an online course, sign up for the September 5k, and so on.
Manager: Take a team member to lunch, finish Part 1 of the strategic plan for our division, do a continue–start–stop with the team, finalize the analytics report for last month, send a birthday note to X (a key client), review the purchasing order, schedule one-on-one coaching with (name), and so on.
Spouse or partner: Plan a date night, write a note, send flowers, go on a hike together, make the bed, change the tires, get a new chair that they requested, get the airline tickets for our vacation, and so on.
Parent: Date night with (insert name), go on a bike ride, help build a fort, write a note, get ice cream, play basketball, conduct a one-on-one interview, review roles and goals, call (insert name), and so on.
You can see that although each of these action items seems simple, they can combine to transform a person’s life. Think about when John (from PepsiCo) decided to call his son; that seemingly simple action mended a broken relationship and transformed his life!
The real power of pre-week planning is Step 3; that is why the act of writing action items in each role is so important. It is this weekly brainstorm you have with yourself—by role—that is transformational.
Step 4. Schedule a Time for Each Action Item
After you’ve got your action items planned by role, it’s time to make things more concrete. As you can see in Figure 24, you can assign a time for each action item.
Whether you use our weekly planner or an electronic calendar, it is in this step that you assign a time for each action item.
Let’s return to the previous parent role example. If you plan to send a reunion RSVP via email to your family, figure out a day and time when you will do it this week. In Figure 24, we assigned that action item to Tuesday at 6 a.m. Likewise, let’s say that in the manager role, you plan to meet with one of your team members, finish your strategic plan for your division, call an important client, and conduct a feedback session. When will you do all of these this week?
The point is that you need to assign every action item you come up with in Step 3 a time for when you plan to do it.
• • • •
To reiterate, these are the four simple steps to effectively do pre-week planning: review your vision/goals, identify your roles, determine what matters most in each role this week, and assign a time to each action item. You can incorporate thousands of variations into pre-week planning, but it is important to keep these four steps as the core process. That is what differentiates this process from every other planning process in the world.
Figure 24. Schedule a time for each action item.
For those of you who would like to track your own progress and stay accountable, we have created a very simple way to do that. In the upper right corner of our planner, you can track the total activities you have planned during the week divided by the total number you have accomplished. This gives you what we call your productivity quotient. Ideally, a productivity quotient is in the 70 to 80 percent range. If it dips down to 70 percent or lower, then you need to investigate why. Are you overscheduling, not leaving room for Q1 flexibility, procrastinating? The productivity quotient is one more optional way to hold yourself accountable and measure your productivity.
Take Action
An orthopedic surgeon and successful businessman wisely said that pre-week planning is simple, but not easy! What he reiterated is that the process of pre-week planning is simple, but the habit of doing it every week can be challenging. Pre-week planning takes a serious commitment for each of us to set aside the required time each weekend. The weeks when this surgeon does his pre-week planning? Highly productive. The weeks he does not? Higher stress and significantly less productive.
He is not alone in recognizing that this is not an easy habit to develop. Any time a person develops a new habit, it can be challenging, even when the habit itself is powerful. This particular habit requires discipline, which we define as doing the right thing at the right time regardless of how we feel about it. When done consistently, it is the sum total of each small action in our roles that transforms our personal and professional lives!
The best time to start pre-week planning is right now—this week! We invite you to pause what you’re doing and plan for the remainder of this week. Pull out a sheet of paper or your BYB planner, write down your roles, brainstorm your priorities by role for the remainder of this week, and schedule a time for each one. Go through the four steps right now so you can experience how simple it is.
Then, choose a time this weekend when you are most likely to have some quiet time to do your pre-week planning for the next week. If you have not already done it, set a reminder on your phone for the scheduled time. Some people find it helpful to treat pre-week planning as an ongoing process throughout the weekend. In other words, they start on Friday afternoon before they leave work and add additional actions or ideas to their roles throughout the weekend when they think of them. You can ultimately do whatever works best for you.
Dorene, the COO of Discover Healing, treats it as an ongoing process throughout the weekend and says this about how she does pre-week planning:
Often, I hear employees speak about the dread of a Monday, and I too have considered that at different times. You know the lyrics “Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day. Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way.”
There is an answer to those Monday morning blues. It’s called pre-week planning. How refreshing not to have to think about or decide what you have to do first thing Monday morning. With pre-week planning, your week is laid out in front of you, and you know exactly your direction.
I have used pre-week planning for years. On Friday afternoon, I start to plan my next week. Using my planner, I place all my meetings that are recurring for each week. I also arrange any other meetings I know I need to have so that the times are set and coordinated. I take the time to think through the various items I need to accomplish based on my different roles and place those in my plan.
This provides a great start to a great week. My mind doesn’t feel overwhelmed because I’ve already thought through these items and know there is a time for each one.
With pre-week planning, I can think “Monday, Monday, so good to me. Monday mornin’, it was all I hoped it would be.”
Dorene exemplifies the peace, calm, and focus that accompanies someone who does their pre-week planning and is prepared for a great week— no matter what may show up. She experiences the characteristics that are commonly associated with Q2 versus the stress and crisis-response feelings associated with Q1.
Now that we have seen how well this process works for Dorene, it is time to think about one other idea that has proven valuable—sharing your week with your partner or spouse. One of the primary reasons for divorce or for employees to leave an organization is frustration. If you think about the root cause of frustration, it typically stems from misaligned expectations. An employee thinks the leader should be doing Y, and the leader thinks the employee should be doing Y. When those expectations are not aligned, it results in frustration. The same idea is true in relationships. Pre-week planning can help you avoid the inevitable conflicts found in Q1 such as, “I thought you were going to take her to soccer!” When you sit down with your partner (hopefully after you have both individually done your own pre-week planning) and align your priorities for the week, it ensures you are going the same direction and that you are focused jointly on what matters most. Most importantly, it aligns expectations and gives clarity for the week!
When Things Do Not Go as Planned
At this point, some people may be thinking, “This all sounds great, but what about when things do not go as planned?” It is a great question, and that is exactly what will happen almost every week!
Remember, the Do What Matters Most matrix from earlier in the book? Look at it again (see Figure 25) and think about how the big three will help someone move the majority of their focus to Q2.
In Chapter 2, we mentioned that the optimal high-performance and productivity balance for a person or team is to spend 20 to 25 percent of their time doing Q1 activities, 60 to 70 percent of their time focusing on Q2 activities, 5 to 15 percent of their time managing Q3 activities, and less than 5 percent in Q4 activities. This varies somewhat by industry but holds true in most industries.
As a reminder, the same research showed organizations that struggle, and are far less productive, spend 40 to 50 percent of their time in Q1, 15 to 20 percent of their time in Q2, 30 to 40 percent of their time in Q3, and 10 to 15 percent in Q4.
Figure 25. The Do What Matters Most matrix
The point is that Q1 activities will always come up during the week. However, when you have developed the habit of pre-week planning, the difference is that you are able to be calm and focused during the storm.
Pre-week planning is a powerful way to reduce stress and increase productivity in each area of your life. It is what also prevents the things that matter most from slipping through the cracks. Of course, things will come up during the week that are urgent and important. No problem! When you have planned your priorities into the week, you can simply ask which is more important, the urgent issue, or what you previously scheduled? If the answer is that the urgent issue is more important, you can simply shift your previously scheduled item to another time. That is low stress, and you are still doing what matters most! The originally planned item will still get done, just not at the originally scheduled time.
For example, imagine you are a website developer, and as part of your pre-week planning, you have decided to test the new website on Tuesday morning. In the middle of this testing, your boss comes in and gives you an urgent project that needs to be completed within the next hour. If the requested project from the boss is urgent (Q1), then you can simply shift the website testing to later in the day and focus on completing the requested project. The point is that the website testing still happens because it is important; it just happens at a different time than originally planned. The result is that you are a team member who is still in Q2 and can handle the Q1 tasks from your supervisor. The whole idea is that when Q1 tasks come up, your previously scheduled priorities can often shift around rather than not get done at all.
It is also important to set the right expectation for yourself. In the previous chapter, we indicated that 70 to 80 percent is the right accomplishment target at the end of the week. A 70–80 percent productivity quotient seems to be the right balance between stretching ourselves and not overscheduling. Give yourself permission right now to not accomplish every item you planned in the week. If it is important, and you did not accomplish it this week, roll it forward to the next week. Again, it will still get done, just not in the exact timeframe you had originally planned. If you have rolled the same action forward week after week and you are still not doing it, there is likely another reason why it is not getting done.
Lastly, since you know Q1 fires will show up during the week, it is important to be flexible and leave open space in your calendar to move things into if needed. If a person pre-plans every minute of the week into their calendar, then there is very little room for flexibility. That person is setting themselves up not to accomplish several of those planned activities during the week. So, leave some open space and plan for the unexpected.
Wrap Up
Nobody has ever said to us, “Pre-week planning didn’t really work for me.” Instead, people are always sharing stories about how pre-week planning shifted their focus and helped them accomplish things they had been thinking about for years.
We continue to use the term life-changing because we believe pre-week planning is exactly that. How can pre-week planning not be life-changing when a person sits down every week to review their vision and goals, identify their roles for that week, list what matters most in each role, and then assign a time to each item?
Pre-week planning is a habit that takes discipline and consistency, doing it week after week, even when you may not feel like it. When a person has that discipline and is consistent, the rewards are worth it.
Imagine how great it would feel to enjoy your work; be a better contributor; have improved health, relationships, and finances; and have less stress, and a strong sense of purpose and direction. Imagine the team dynamic and how great it would be to have an aligned team focused on Q2 activities, increased profitability, increased productivity, and a fun culture to top it off.
At the beginning of the book, we said doing what matters most is both a mindset and a skillset. Vision, roles and goals, and pre-week planning are the skillset. The mindset is having the willingness and discipline to consistently apply the skillset.
In the next and final chapter, we want to come back to time and why these habits are so important to start now. In addition, we will share a few things that you can consider adding to your vision, goals, and pre-week planning to truly make the most of each day—in other words, to make each day count!