How to Win the Week: A Guide to Weekly Planning and Goal Setting

Feeling like your weeks are slipping by without real progress?  

That’s where I was for 10 years. Another Friday, another week of fighting fires at MiPA, no closer to my big picture goals, no longer enjoying the business I was running.  

Then four years ago, I found a way to change all that.  

In the latest episode of MiTV, I share that “Win the Week” philosophy that’s seen me completely revolutionise my life as a small business owner, grow my business, and enjoy my life a hell of a lot more.  

Give it a watch, and if you need support to create more time in your calendar and get progress happening faster, comment below and let’s have a chat. 

Em x 

P.S. You’ll get more crucial insights for small business owners like this in my Sunday night newsletter, Win the Week (sign up here: https://emmas-newsletter-adef7a.beehiiv.com/subscribe), and over on my Instagram @emmamipa (give me a follow!)

Please visit my website to get more information: https://www.mi-pa.co.uk/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Every week on the podcast, I'm sharing my own journey live with everyone and interviewing all the business owners being exactly where you are now. And we're sharing practical tactics and real strategies to help you build a business that works for you, not the other way around. If you lurch from week to week without really getting stuff done, like you know, when you get to Friday and you think, God, it just doesn't feel productive, it just feels like more of the same, then this week's episode is for you. I have a mantra, and my mantra is that reactive entrepreneurs are not happy entrepreneurs. It's my mantra, it's because it's me, that's what I live by. On the days when I am getting pulled from pillar to post, I absolutely hate those days. And on the days when I've gone in with it with three top things to get done, I absolutely love those days, and even if those three top things only take me an hour, I feel like an absolute productivity queen because I I emerge into the rest of the day knowing that the top three things that were important got done, even if they only took an hour and I've got the other remaining seven or eight in the day and the work day to be reactive, like you still the day is still greatly more meaningful than just going through the day without a real plan. I've been in business for over 16 years now, and without a doubt, the past four years have been the most mm-meaningful, is probably the right word. They've had the most growth, we've done the most, I've um achieved the most. I don't mean financially, I just mean in like what we've created internally. I have enjoyed them far more than the previous 10 years, and even in my personal life, I have done things that I hadn't thought were possible before. So whether that was like spent staying in Spain for five weeks last October to work from there, whether it was doing like a fitness transformation last summer, I've started to do big, like set bigger goals and get them ticked off. And quite frankly, if you really, really do this properly and set goals that are meaningful to you, getting them done is like the biggest end like endorphin boost ever. But you have to like treat it properly, you can't just like create goals at the beginning of the year and not look at them again. It's when you actually create things that are really meaningful and go, yes, at some point in this year I want to get this done, and then when you look back and you are getting them done, it's like wow, like it is the biggest self-confidence boost, is the biggest congruency in you achieving what what you know you're possible, what it's possible to achieve, and it gives you that kind of momentum and self-forward. And I absolutely pull all of this down to the way that I operate now in my weeks, like it's without a doubt that. So, the first 10 years of being in business, I was definitely a busy fool for so much of it. I would not plan my time, not plan my weeks. I would I was doing a lot of client work, which was like the biggest stopper to my growth and to my what I wanted, what success looks like for me. And literally, in COVID in the summer of 2020, I got time back, and I really distinctly remember having a conversation with my business coach who I've spoken about so many times on here, Martin, and I said to him, I can't do the next four or five years as the last four or five years have been because I'm gonna be greatly unhappy if that happens. And we were like, Okay, so let's make a plan. And you know, it's funny because I had never really made specific plans that were meaningful. I have made plans and I've even got one hanging around here somewhere, which I will find. Stop camera. A few minutes later. Roll camera, found the picture, and this is the the plan that I made in where is it, 2014? Oh, where where are you now? December 2015. And this plan was exciting and great, and it had me like doubling revenue in a year. I didn't make this plan by the way, I didn't double this revenue. It was about buying a new car, black and oak. Remember when they were really popular? And I made this plan, so I had made a plan, but what I had never done was break down how I get there in my day-to-day and my week to week. And I think this is the where so many people go wrong, they only think about right when the next 12 months I want to do X, and it's really exciting and sexy. I'll put this down now to dream about big goals, like that's the bit that makes us excited. But what we absolutely must do, and what I never did then, was break that down into what it looked like to achieve it and to get there. And when that clicked for me in 2020, um, because I'd made a plan with my business coach Martin about how we were gonna get there, but it was broken down into monthly targets and steps, and then I broke that down into weekly steps of what I needed to get done, and then what I did off the back of that was that I figured out how to plan my week that worked really well for me, and that like you get your big goal and you reverse engineer, as Gary Veinichot would say, you reverse engineer it all the way back, and then it breaks down into okay, it is Thursday the 20th of June today. Just what is the one thing I need to get done today? It's that it's that granular granularity, and if you are doing all this, I love it, and you don't need to watch any more of this episode. But if you're not doing it, I promise you that this is what achieving what you want to breaks down to. It's like what is the one thing I get done today? It could be just making a phone call to somebody that you want to work with, it could be um it could be creating some social media post for the next month, it could be writing an email that's gonna go out to your list. It I'm not saying these have to be massive big things, they're all the marginal gains that build up. And so when I realize that and I broke my days down into that, like this is where a much more aligned, happier life has come from for me, and it's all about winning the week. As I would say, I've got a newsletter called Win the Week. We'll put the link on there if you would like to sign up to get lots of tips, tips, hate that word, tips, lots of insights and thoughts and opinions on how you can win the week. Um, but my winning the week plan and philosophy, which is definitely downloadable below this video as well, is how I run my week, and I wanted to share it with you as well. And in the download, there is um an outlay for how you can craft your perfect week, and you can share that with your PA or anyone in your team that helps you with your calendar, you can share it with your partner or family if they need to know what that looks like for you. Because this is one of the big things as well. If you don't share what winning the week looks like with people close to you, then they will quite unbeknownst to them disturb you at important times just because you're working at home, they might think you're accessible when actually 9 till 11 is you getting all the brilliant stuff done. You know, you might think that um they they might just not know that Friday is your deep thinking day or creative day to get stuff done, so the more you can share, the better. But my winning the week breaks down to just a few steps. Number one, it's about getting really clear on what your bigger goals are, and then breaking that down into 12 months, 52 weeks, and ultimately without overthinking it on a Sunday, going right, what is what are the two or three things I absolutely must finish by Friday? Like that has been a game changer for me because a lot of the time it can get to Friday at half past three, and I've not finished one or two of them, and you know what? Like, I get it boxed off, then I get it blasted out. So even though it's taken me the whole five days, I make a plan of what's most important and I get it done before Friday ends. I then set my schedule so I like set my plan for the week of when I'm gonna focus on the most important things. Um, so this is like whether it's 90 minutes a day, two hours a day, whatever that might be, I then make sure that's planned into my diary and it's a non-negotiable, so I decide on what the top three things are when I'm gonna get them done, and then step three, I do my focus planning on a Sunday, and this is my path framework, and I live by it. So every Sunday I do five specific things. Sometimes it takes me 10 minutes, sometimes I luxury in this, and it takes me an hour and I'm enjoying it. But I do six specific things in my path framework. So P is I plan what my top three things are on the week ahead. I announce them to my PA Beck. So on a Sunday night, I send her an email just saying, right, these are three things I must get done, and by telling her she knows where my head's at and what I need to work on, and also some of them she can help get done as well. So, and I always find that announcing it helps keep me accountable, but it also just lets other people into oh actually I could I could do this or I can help with that. So, um I announce my third one, which is I look ahead. So, um, one of my favourites because what I love doing on a Sunday is going, actually, I don't need to be in this meeting at all. I'm gonna cancel it, I'm gonna remove myself from it, especially internal ones, you know they can get out of control. I might look ahead at external meetings we've made and said, actually, I've got bigger, like I've got something I really must get done, so I'm gonna ask to push that back. This is your week, these are your days, and if you need to carve out more time to get something important done, Sunday night is a really good time to do that and go into it with a like a sigh of like a breath of relief knowing you've got enough time to do it. And then I plan in my focus time, so I make sure the focus time slots get planned in, so I've got my non non-negotiables every day, and then fun is my final fifth step to it. I make sure that there is things coming up booked in in the week ahead that I'm going to love. It could be this, it could be that I've got a filming day booked in and I enjoy that, it could be a date night, it could be that I've got my exercise classes or my time for a run or a weight session booked in, but I need to make sure that the week ahead is appealing to me also because if it's busy, I need the things that I love. So I plan, I plan what the top three things are. I uh look ahead, I announce to my PA what I'm gonna get done, I look ahead as well to see what things I can remove, I get my focus time slots booked in so I can get stuff moved forward, and I make sure that there is time for fun as well. And I do this every Sunday religiously. And the final step to all of this is crafting a week that you love, and I have a rhythm to mine in that Monday's internal meetings, Friday. I try and keep free for creativity and content, um, Tuesday afternoons are free for like sales calls or new inquiry calls or supply, like just phone calls and meetings. So I have a plan to it. And if you do download um the PDF that's with this episode, which is my win the week PDF, you'll see how mine is laid out, and there'll be a template there for you to carve out your own two and the things to think about. Because once you get a rhythm to your week of where things go, it makes it really easy to say no to things, and it makes it really easy for your PA or anyone that supports you to go, okay. Um, well, somebody just asked to speak to Ralph, so I can put in this call for Ralph on a Tuesday afternoon. Or actually, I know what the priorities are for this week. Ralph isn't busy this week, he'd love to chat, but we're free in four weeks' time. Starting to get those conversations going so that everything is not super reactive in your calendar. Um, without a doubt, the ability to get good stuff done every day, whether they are smaller things or bigger things, has m impacted my life incredibly, and I want to help you with the same thing because winning the week makes life so enjoyable. Um, and so this week's episode I hope will help you think about how I can plan next week better. And below this, there will be a link to the download, and so you can use that as a guide on getting next week to be absolutely fantastic. I hope today's episode has helped you, and I will see you next week. See you then, bye bye.