How To Motivate Yourself For A Weekly Review

This week, what stops you from doing a weekly planning session, and how to make sure you are doing one every week.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Download the FREE Areas of Focus Workbook More about the Time Sector System The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 190 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 190 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. I’ve recently received a number of questions on weekly planning sessions and how to overcome the fear and dread of seeing all those incomplete tasks. I answered those questions individually, but I realised that my answer to these questions needs a wider audience because I know so many of you are not looking at these sessions in the right way.  Now before we get to the question, I should point out that the weekly planning session I will talk about in this episode is the Time Sector System planning session, and not the GTD (Getting Things Done one) although I will refer to the differences.  The TIme Sector System’s planning sessions are simple, quick, and are more focused on what you are going to do next week, rather than reviewing what you have and have not done this week.  And of course, if you have not joined the Time Sector Course yet, now would be a good time to do so. The course is at a very low price of $49.99 (that is four times cheaper than an equivalent course) and will give you a time management system designed in the 21st century for the way we work today.  There’s enough complexity in the world as it is, the Time Sector System keeps thing simple and focuses your attention on what needs to be done now, and not what may or may not happen in two weeks or two months time. Full details of the course are in the show notes.  Okay, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question This week’s question comes from Dodge. Dodge asks: Hi Carl, I think many avoid the planning session because it can be discouraging to have to face unfinished tasks from the week before and stressful to realize you have more you need to do in the upcoming week than is realistic but can’t figure out how to drop things.  I know this is more internal than external, but do you have any suggestions to make it more attractive?  Hi Dodge. Thank you for the question What you describe in your question is something I know a lot of people worry about. It’s horrible to go into your task manager at the end of the week and see just how much you have not done, that a week ago you decided must be done. It didn’t get done and you feel guilty.  Now, with this, you need to give yourself a mindset shift. Nobody is going to consistently get everything done they planned to each week because there are far too many unknowns that will come your way once the week gets underway.  Planning the week is in many ways a guessing game. You have to try and guess what emergencies will happen and how long they will take to sort out. Even the most experienced practitioner is going to find that almost impossible to accomplish.  Instead, we want to be looking at the weekly planning session as a learning process. Each week we will identify a number of tasks that at the time of the planning session we feel must be done next week. So we give them a date and hope we will have the time to complete them.  At the end of the week, we find a quarter to half of those tasks we thought had to be done have not been done and we feel guilty and it can erode our confidence in the system. When this happens, it does not mean you have failed. It means you have likely been a little over-ambi