How do you stick to your weekly flow?
We’re back for another episode of Well Planned, a Plan Simple series with Megan Flatt. Megan is a business growth strategist who works with female entrepreneurs, specifically mom entrepreneurs. She helps women build thriving businesses that they can feel good about and sustain them while still being actively present in the day-to-day lives of their kids and their families. One of her secret weapons is the Weekly Workflow, which we talked about on a our Systems and Support episode. I like to call it time blocking.
A weekly workflow is different from your schedule, but it’s what helps you schedule all the important stuff. For example, you might have certain days you see clients and certain days that you work on creating content or record your podcast and certain days that you do other things. You assign certain blocks of time to particular task buckets—then you fit specific tasks into those buckets.
We discuss making a plan (even if you aren’t a planner), and sticking with it. We also talk about how to stay on track when stuff comes up—a kid emergency or something else that causes you to change your plan. Because stuff always comes up. So what do you do about it?
We talk about:
- Making sure there is enough buffer space to let you shift things around, for example to reschedule calls if you have a sick kid or to keep moving on a project if you are in a groove or even if something fun comes up that you want to do—if you schedule every week down to the minute you lose that necessary flexibility
- Having a framework and then plotting out the week OR just taking the time to plot out the week, whichever is working for your life right now
- Creating rules and boundaries, like saying I don’t see clients on Fridays, for yourself to help make things easier
- Using a framework for home and selfcare stuff as well as business stuff (like Mia’s food rhythm or Megan making sure she eats lunch every day)
- Deciding whether or not your plan is realistic and what needs to happen for it to be realistic—and getting realistic about how we are actually spending our time
- Accounting for transitions between activities—you need time to stretch or get more water or switching gears mentally
- Knowing your own personality and what kind of accountability or motivation you need
- We touched on motherhood and balance and being the default parent, but we’d love to talk about it some more
Have a question for Mia and Megan?
Go to plansimplemeals.com/ask.
You will get prompted to record your question and we’ll try to answer it.
Or just email your question to mia@plansimplemeals.com
Megan Flatt is a Mama CEO, a business growth strategist, and a planning pro. She’s been working with clients for years to create strategic growth plans in their business that allow them to scale while still being present for the important moments in their families’ lives. She shows Mama CEOs with big vision and great ideas how to get those big CEO ideas into a day-by-day plan where they actually happen.
LINKS
Doable Changes from this episode:
- ADD BUFFER TIME. Try adding buffer time into your day. Think of this as transition or runway time, the time you need in between activities. This might mean 10 minutes between client calls to use the bathroom and refresh your water or 5 minutes before you need to leave the house to gather things you need. Then add buffer time to your week. Know that if you have a sick kid one day or a project runs over that there is some extra time build into your week to absorb at least some of that.
- SET ONE HABIT. Pick one thing that you will make a habit. It could be filling your car with gas on the same day and time every week or putting your phone in the other room when you are focusing on writing. Pick ONE thing and start to do it regularly until it becomes routine.
- TRACK YOUR TIME. We tend to underestimate how long it takes to do things and how long we are distracted sometimes. Start jotting down when you start a task and when you finish it. Then start using this data when you plan. If week after week it takes you an hour and a half to write a blog post, stop trying to give yourself half an hour to write it. If you are going to write for three hours and halfway through you go to write a Facebook post and get lost in there for an hour, note that. Start to see where you are actually spending your time.
