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As a solopreneur, it can feel hard to take time off. I mean REALLY take time off. Not take a vacation where you still respond to email.
The problem is that for many solopreneurs running a one-person business, taking time off means the business shuts down. As a result, you’re constantly worrying about it. But what if you had great systems in place to automate your business?
That’s exactly what you’ll get with Streamlined Solopreneur. You’ll learn how to turn manual tasks into reliable systems, so you can take time off worry-free.
Joe Casabona knows about this firsthand. He went from worrying so much that he had a panic attack to taking 4-6 weeks off every year. Worry-free. And he’s helped hundreds of solopreneurs do the same.
If you’re ready to automate your business, and take time off to do what you want (instead of waiting until you have a panic attack), start listening to Streamlined Solopreneur.
Subscribe now or visit https://streamlined.fm.
Imagine a teacher walks into a classroom with no lesson plan, no idea what they're going to teach. They don't even know the subject. Now, an extremely skilled teacher might be able to figure something out on the spot, get a vibe, check in the room, and make a good lesson. But more likely, they are going to struggle hard. Because if you don't know what you're going to do before you go to do it, there's going to be this buffer time, this awkward point where you don't have a plan and you need to come up with one. That sounds crazy for doing something in the classroom, but it's something many of us do every week when we start our work week or our work day. And that's what I want to talk to you about today.
Hey, everybody. Joe Casabona here with another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur. I help busy solopreneurs turn manual tasks into reliable systems so they can take time off, worry-free. And one of the most reliable systems is understanding what you're going to work on. You want to know what you're going to work on because it gives you a measure of how well you're doing your work. It helps you sort out your work and prioritize things instead of constantly putting out fires. It helps you come up with a plan for each day, and it gives you fewer surprises and the ability to build in a buffer.
So those are all the quick reasons why you should plan your week. I suspect if you're listening to this, you already know the importance of planning your week, and you're thinking, Joe, how? How do I do that? How do I go about planning my week or my day? How do I not get distracted by all of the things that are flooding my inbox?
The way that I do it is I know when I go down to my office, the three tasks I need to accomplish that day. And I know those three tasks because I spend 20 to 25 minutes every Sunday planning my week. And this is my approach to it.
But before I get there, I do want to tell you that I've been working on an AI-coded app for my iPhone called Daily 3. It's this entire approach. It asks you at the beginning of each day, what are your three tasks? And then it checks in with you twice, asking, how is the progress going? And have you completed your tasks? You know, basically a journal. It gives you a way to journal your productivity and your tasks. If you want to try that out, if you think it sounds interesting, I am doing a beta for this app. It's working on my phone and it's wonderful. I love it. So you can head over to streamlined.fm app to join my mailing list and people on my mailing list will be the first to get an invitation to the beta.
So now that that's out of the way, how do I plan my week? How do I know what three tasks I'm working on on a specific day before I go down to my office? Well, there are two places where I plan my week. The first is the sidekick notepad. I like doing things on paper. I have many pens. I love it. And I will write out my in this order.
The order is important. My major tasks for the week, my appointments for the week. So any meetings on my calendar. And if my wife is working on a particular day, and if I have coverage because my wife is working on a particular day, once I have all of that information, I take them, and I write out the days of the week, and I write down the three tasks I want to accomplish for each of those days. So I'll do that on a notebook, and then I'll move it into Obsidian. That is, that's with me everywhere. And so I like having it there.
So what I'm going to walk you through, I'll have a picture of the notebook in the show notes over a streamlined fm, But I want to walk through the weekly plan note and then right after that go through the monthly plan note. Because knowing what I want to do for a month kind of informs how I do my weekly plans. But if you're not, you know, if you haven't planned your month, you're listening this. You're going, all right, well, I don't. Where am I? You can start with a weekly plan.
So here's what my weekly plan looks like and here's how it all comes together. The first thing I'll do is review last week I use on Laura Lacun plus, minus, next approach. And so plus is all the things that went well. Minus is all the things that didn't go as planned.
And next is what you want to work on for the next week. So I will do that. I will review my previous week. That helps me understand, okay, why, like, why did I accomplish everything last week or why didn't I accomplish everything last week? How can I adjust for this coming week?
The next thing I'll do before I start to write down my major tasks is I'll check four places. My email inbox, my calendar, my notes inbox in Obsidian, and my task manager, Todoist, in those four places will contain all of the things that I've been working on and all the things I'm going to have to work on. So it's about gathering that information.
I also look at the previous week's note so I can see what did I do, what didn't I do, like what do I still need to do? So I'll take all of that information. And then the second section in my weekly note, after the review of last week, is the major tasks. I will try to have max 15 of these. That Math works out, right? There are five weekdays that I work, and I want a maximum of three tasks per day. Sometimes those tasks are like two days. I try to manage my major tasks in a way that I only really need to work on three tasks each day. So that's really important. If I have more than one, they're going to be like smaller tasks, and I can kind of combine them into miscellaneous tasks, you know, catch-up hour or something like that. But for the Most part it's 15 tasks mask max per week. So I take those, I write them down, they are all numbered because the number is going to correspond to the tasks per day.
Then I have my upcoming events. The way I approach my upcoming events, it's really important I look at my week, week, like I said, I look at if my wife is working. I look at, I look at if I'm going to have coverage because my youngest is in school three days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's a half day. So if I don't have coverage, I know that I have three hours max to work on that day. And I'm going to have to adjust my schedule. And so I don't want to plan a full day's worth of work if I know that I'm not going to get that full day's worth of work. So this also helps me build in buffers.
I know that like if I have just back-to-back meetings on a Wednesday, I'm not going to get a lot of things done that day. And so maybe I can take a few of the smaller tasks or maybe I just know, hey, those meetings on Wednesday are my tasks for the day. So looking at my upcoming events combined with my tasks, I take them, and then I divvy up the tasks by day.
And so what I'll usually do is take my most crucial work, look at the days I have the fewest meetings and the most coverage, and I'll put them that day. There are some things that have to happen on certain days, right? If I have to prep for a coaching call or if I have coaching, you know, with my friend Justin Moore, those are on specific days, then I know that I'm going to have to do those tasks on those days. I have at least one day of the week reserved for no meetings, though. And so if I have, you know, if I need to do a bunch of recording, for example, I'll put it on my no-meeting day. So that's how I divvy up those tasks.
Next, I'll ask myself, I have, it's called major questions. And so what are the big picture things I should be looking at for this week? What do I need to do before I leave for a trip? How can I generate some extra income in the next two weeks? What's a quick win opt in? I can offer major questions I should be thinking about that kind of touch. Multiple parts of my business after that.
I have notes for meetings, I have a Google Calendar view embedded directly into Obsidian, and I have tasks from Todoist embedded directly in Obsidian. So the weekly note gives me a full view of what I'm working on for the week.
But that's only part of the battle. Again, this takes me 20 to 25 minutes. I know all the places I need to look, I write down the tasks I need to do, and I sort them so that when I come downstairs on Monday, I am ready in my office to do the first thing on that list. But you might have heard me say I also build in buffer time, and I can't necessarily do that on a week-to-week basis, right? What if I'm planning my week on a Sunday and I'm actually leaving for a trip on a Monday, or my wife is working three days in a row and I don't have coverage.
Now I'm suddenly surprised by that fact, and I am scrambling a little bit. And so I also have a monthly note, a monthly plan. I'll do this on the 1st of the month and it's got some bigger questions, right? So like what's my primary focus for the month, what are three other goals for the month and then what are the major events? So if I'm traveling, if I have a big school event like in the middle of a weekday, if my wife is traveling or if she's working a bunch of days or if my father in law is traveling and I'm not going to have coverage that week, this helps me get a handle on how many working days am I really going to have this month.
And it's usually the same, but it's really helpful over the summer when we don't do summer camp. And so I am working a lot less. So planning my month immediately really informs my week. And I have these notes up next to each other in obsidian so that when I'm looking at my major tasks and my inbox and stuff like that, I can see, oh, okay, I'm going to have to be more productive this week because next week I'm not going to be productive at all or I'm going to be away from my recording machine next week. So if I need to batch-record content, I need to make sure to do it this week.
And then again, my primary focus and three other big projects for the month are also here. And at least two or three of those tasks in my major task list for the week should tie back directly to those goals. So once I have those things, my monthly plan, my weekly plan, every day I use my Daily 3 app. It prompts me and says, what are the three things you're working on? I put them in, and I have exactly what I'm working on that day. Or at least I know the three tasks I need to accomplish. Maybe I'm super productive, and I get them all done before noon. And now I can find other things to work on or take the rest of the day off or, you know, consider some of the major questions and really give myself time to do that.
But that's how I plan my week. I review the previous week. I look at my task list, my notes over the past week, my calendar, and my inbox. I look at the plan I made for the month. I write down my monthly tasks, I write down all of my meetings for the week, and then I divvy up my tasks by day. That's my approach. If you like the idea of having a sort of work journal or task journal, I'll include some screenshots.
But my daily 3 app that I'm working on, if you want to try that out, join my mailing list over at streamlined.fm app, because it's been really helpful for me to understand what are the things I should be working on and then different checkpoints throughout the day to say, oh, I'm really distracted today because then you can make better adjustments and build in a better buffer. And then you're not surprised at the end of the week where you're like, where did my, where did all of my time go? So again, that's over at streamlined.fm app. That's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening. I'd love to hear what's your approach to planning your week? Did you gain anything interesting from this episode? Let me know over at streamlined/feedback.com.
And until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.