How many of you block your time out each week? Now I know most of you will have ‘to do lists’ but do you also plan time each week for reviewing finances or planning your sales & marketing? Until the end of 2008 I simply wrote my list each day and didn’t properly plan ahead, that was until I met ActionCoach.
So what do I mean by a default diary? This a diary for the week whereby you block out time for tasks according to the hours available for you. For example because I have children my day starts at 9am and finishes at 3pm but I then schedule time 3 evenings per week and time over the weekend for additional work. My diary includes:
Working on the business
- Increasing my knowledge, reading books or visiting business websites
- Planning my sales & marketing
- Financial reviews
Working in the business
- Planning my clients events
- Processing emails
- Doing the sales & marketing (i.e writing a newsletter, posting press releases)
- UKAWP
- Dream Occasions Hire work
- Researching & writing new posts for my blog
- Family time
- Timeslot for meetings (although flexible to clients needs)
Now there will be weeks when the diary won’t work, for example if you have a project that week you will be understandably busy with that. But in theory it will help you focus on the task at hand. Do you have a system like this for your business? I’d love to hear from you on what works best for you.
Do also read the SmartPlanner post on ‘using a block diary’ which is the same principle.
Bernadette Chapman is the UKAWP’s training director and also owns Dream Occasions, operating throughout South East England.
