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The My 10-Step Personal Success Routine post has been one of my most popular.  This post builds on it with the idea of designing your week.

A b2b sales consulting client of mine is FreedomSpeaks/CitySourced, and Kurt Daradics (“KurtyD”) is the CEO. KurtyD’s a great guy – he’s very purpose-driven and has a lot of character.  Not to mention he also does improv comedy 🙂

We recently sat down for a private session to help him make progress on building his sales machine.  Interestingly, one of the things that he took away wasn’t about sales process – but about how designing your week can be a huge help in staying focused, balanced and productive.

KurtyD’s suffering from success – CitySourced is getting great press, leads, attention, funding, etc…and he’s working on amping his own organizational game to keep up.

Here’s an excerpt from his post “Fight The Resistance“:

“Lord knows I’ve been busy, but even though we’re seeing traction, I still don’t feel like I’m really getting that much done, sorta spinning my wheels.  Even lately I’ve been feeling a bit paralyzed and at the end of the day my focus and concentration has been toast. I’m terribly behind on some personal correspondence and taking care of personal business. The start up has officially consumed my life.

I was starting to get a bit concerned and burned out, and regardless that my diet has been good, I’m getting enough sleep and exercise, I still wasn’t performing at my peak.  Also, I truly sense that we’re on the right about to break through and deliver some major game changing technology, and that little voice inside my head that tries to tell me I ‘don’t deserve it’ or that I ’should go back to bed” has been really trying to throw me under the bus. Seth Godin calls this voice “the resistance“. That little voice has been really confusing me lately, reminding me of all the things that need to be done, and it’s been causing me some anxiety and tempting me to work from a place of desperation rather than inspiration.

Today I had a cool breakthrough. My pal and coach Aaron Ross aka @MotoCeo really helped me break  some things down. Aaron has been helping us think through our sales process and we’re currently getting ready to launch our sales efforts using Salesforce.com, where Aaron used to be Sr. Director of Sales.

Aaron showed me how he manages his calendar and as cliche as this may sound, this was a big ‘aha’ for me, and something I’m implementing immediately.

  • His Mondays are for planning and thinking about the “non-urgent & important”.
  • Tues are for new clients calls and meetings.
  • Weds are reserved for existing accounts and clients.
  • Thurs is a ‘catch all’ day. [Aaron: I normally use these days for one-off coaching sessions/workshops]
  • Friday is errands, bookkeeping and some ‘catch all’. [Aaron: clean the clutter, get organized for next week]

Aaron helped me focus on the fact that if I want my business to catch a fire that I really need to get the “magnifying glass” positioned in the right place and hold it steady so that it burns the leaf, that’s the spark that catches fire.

I have a strong sense that the calendar trick is to work really well for me. For example, the tools I need and documents I have open for new sales calls is much different that what I need for existing clients. By batching the work in a focused fashion I can dive deeper and batch all the work. Then I can deliver a list to my asst or project manager in a bunch, rather than piecemeal through out the week, which delivers better process and efficiency to my team and saves them time too.”

Thanks Kurt for sharing!

Other Tips & A Screenshot Of My Calendar

I block out time for my Personal Success Routine (“PSR”), meditation, exercise, etc. first, and then schedule work time around those blocks.  In the shot below, that time is all the aqua color.  You can see the morning blocks for my PSR.  (Side note: the 10-Step PSR I wrote about in 2009 has been mostly out the window for awhile, since I got into a serious relationship.  But – what’s cool is we are creating a new “Mutual/Couples PSR”. I promise to share it when it stops evolving.)

I use Google Calendar and have multiple calendars to color-code my work.  I don’t get too fancy/complicated. I use a few basics:

  • Aqua is “personal time” like exercise, meditation.
  • Purple is client time (prospective or current).
  • Red is “get stuff done” – usually I’m on computer creating something.  ‘Pay the bills’ would also fit into this.
  • Yellow is Team/Visioning time (with partners/employees).
  • Green is travel (not on this screenshot).

(Click on the image to expand it)

If You Want An Exercise Routine That Makes It Easy To Get Your Butt Kicked

You see my Tuesday and Thursday mornings are blocked out for CrossFit / exercise.  If you’re looking for a badass exercise routine that will get you in shape without a huge amount of time, check out CrossFit.  I started a month ago and it’s awesome! I like that it’s done in small groups (this is key for me), there’s lots of variety, and it’s tough.

How Do You Design Your Week?

Leave a comment and share the wealth!

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