Weekly Wrap-Up & Planning

Close all open loops for the current week and tie up all loose ends. Getting everything in your head processed will free up mental RAM for next week…

First let’s go through and process any emails that we left for the end of the week. We don’t want to leave people hanging!

Sometimes we set reminders and to-do items for ourselves that we completely forget about. Let’s check for any lingering tasks that fell through the cracks…

Now let’s process all our paper notes from the week…

1) Process Paper Meeting Notes

First go through your meeting notes, looking for action items and reminders you noted for yourself in the future. Process these (through the Eisenhower Box), adding some to your current task management list. 

2) Clear Your Desk

Look for anything that has piled up on/around your desk over the week…

• Bills and other mail can be paid and thrown away
• Records can be scanned and then shredded or stored
• Reference materials should be put away (you can take them back out later)
• Loose papers should be somehow eliminated.

The goal here is to have a clear desk and clear mind to attack the new week with.

3) Check Slack Direct Messages to Yourself

This was somewhat done already when you checked your starred Slack messages. But read through the last few days of Private Slack Messages to yourself, and make sure you’re not missing anything important…

4) Close Out All Open Tabs

Look through all the open tabs in your internet browser, and decide what to do with them. Most can be closed. If you really need the page again in the future, you can search through your browser history and find it…

Now that we’ve caught up on everything, let’s close out last week’s to-do list and transfer any lingering items over into next week…

1) Print Out New Task Management List

Take out a new blank to-do list (or print one from the file below), and mark the ‘Week Start’ date in the top-right corner…

2) Transfer Your Old To-Do List Over

Go through all the items on your previous week’s to-do list…

• Cross out anything that has been completed
• For any remaining tasks that have still not been completed, mentally process them through the Eisenhower Box (look for items to delegate or delete)
  • If you see tasks which can be delegated, deleted, or moved off your to-do list and into a long-term project management/idea capturing system
• For any tasks still remaining, move them all onto your new weekly to-do list
• Don’t forget to process your Daily MITs, too!

After you’re done with this, you can trash the previous weekly to-do list…

3) Move On Before Anything Else

Your first instinct might be to start prioritizing or setting Daily MITs right away, but go through the rest of this SOP before doing anything else. You’ll likely add new to-do list items and have a better understanding of what the highest priorities are after progressing through this entire SOP…

Evaluate your progress from the previous week against your KPIs & long-term goals

Checking Accounts

Savings Accounts

In theory, the only account that has a minimum balance is the Payroll account – which always needs to be fully funded for next week’s Payroll. But in general, this is just to get a feel of where cash is flowing. Transfers and minimum balance checks should happen with the Monthly Wrap-Up.

Check Company Calendar

1) Look at Previous 2 Weeks

Anything you missed? Anything where there would be benefit to taking additional action? (i.e. following up from an affiliate webinar to solidify the relationship, or sending a follow-up from a recent meeting)

2) Look at Next 4 Weeks

Anything you need to plan for? Meetings or events coming up that require prep time? Gifts you need to buy? Flights you need to book? Content you need to create? People you need to herd?

Update Goals Dashboard

1) Update Company OKRs
2) Update Next Week’s Priorities
3) Check Team’s Weekly Progress Reports

IDEAL WEEKLY SCHEDULE (HIGH-LEVEL BREAKDOWN)

Sunday – Wednesday = Front-End (Promotion) Days
Thursday – Saturday = Back-End (Fulfillment) Days
Thursday – Friday = Meeting Day
Sunday = Catch Up & Planning

Plan For: {{form.Answer_the_questions_above_here…_2}}

Prioritize. The most important and valuable projects deserve the most time. Your top priority/focus projects should be getting most of your time, but don’t forget to give some time to the important but less urgent projects as well.

Pick your MVPs. Select the week’s “Most Valuable Projects” by thinking about your focus areas and answering the following question: “What project(s) will make the most difference in my life this week?”

Make some time each week for your MVP projects even if they are not urgent.

Use the 80/20 rule. Remember that 20 percent of your projects/tasks account for 80 percent of the total value. Make sure these projects are well represented in your week.

Make realistic estimates. Just because your workday is eight hours doesn’t mean you have eight hours to work on your projects. There are meetings, phone calls, email, interruptions, and other overhead that will take some of your time.

Use project planning. Project planning can help you develop a plan for each of your projects so you can estimate how much work you need to allocate to each of them and still meet all your deadlines.

You should now have your new Weekly To-Do List filled out with a bunch of tasks (on the left-hand side). Now we will finally prioritize these.

Go through each task individually, and use the ‘Prioritization System’ on the bottom-right corner to help prioritize each one…

• Critical Important (Bypass All) = This is a critical emergency that needs to be done immediately
• Revenue Within 7-Days = This will create new revenue within 7-Days
• Revenue Within 30-Days = This will create new revenue within 30-Days
• Revenue Within 90-Days = This will create new revenue within 90-Days
• Keeps Customers Happy = This will keep existing customers happy OR reduce returns/refunds
• Autonomous System = This task will result in an automated (or semi-automated) system that will pay dividends for a long time
• Deadline Approaching = There is an upcoming deadline on this task that’s outside of our control
• None of the Above = None of the above apply to this task, so it will just remain blank and unprioritized

While you’re prioritizing, you should also be looking for (once again) tasks that can be delegated, outsourced, or otherwise moved off your list.

Once you’re done prioritizing, move onto the next step…

1) Review Your Weekly Priorities

Here’s what you said your most important weekly tasks were –

Most Important Thing = 
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Most Valuable Tasks/Projects =
{{form.List_5_MVPs_(Most_Important_Projects/Tasks)_that_you’d_also_like_to_get_done_this_week…}}

Reconnect With =
{{form.Is_there_any_valuable_contact_you’d_like_to_reconnect_or_deepen_the_relationship_with?}}

You’ll be reminded of these every couple days via Slack for the remainder of this week…

2) Set Tomorrow’s Daily MITs

Now fill out your ‘Top 3 Most Important Tasks’ for Monday (the very first ‘Daily MITs’ slot on the top-right)…

You only want to fill out one Daily MITs slot per day (that’s why there are 7 total, one for each day).

3) Make It Happen!

Tomorrow, you’ll wake up and start working hard to achieve your 3 Daily MITs 🙂

If you complete them all – great! Then go ahead and start knocking out some of your other high-priority to-do list tasks…

But more than likely, you will NOT achieve all your Daily MITs (I usually don’t myself). That’s okay!

Each night when you’re shutting down, set your Daily MITs for tomorrow in the next slot down on your weekly to-do list. 

If you forget – then do it before you go to bed. Worst case scenario, you’ll set Daily MITs first thing before you start working…

However you make it happen – you’ll now have a fully prioritized to-do list with a daily prioritization and ‘just-in-time’ planning system to keep you on track throughout the week.