How To Stay Focused On Your Plan For The Week

In this week’s podcast, how do you stay focused on your plan for the week? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Why Your System Must Start At An Area of Focus Level Your Digital Life 3.0 Online Carl’s Time Sector System Blog Post 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   Script Episode 154 Hello and welcome to episode 154 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. So, if you are listening to this podcast you obviously have some interest in becoming better organised and more productive. And, I guess you have set up a system… Hopefully, that system is based around COD (Collecting, organising and doing).  Now if you are also doing your weekly planning, how many of you are able to stick with your weekly plan? In theory, if you sit down on the weekend and give yourself twenty to thirty minutes to plan out what you want to accomplish in the week, then you should be getting a lot of your important work done… In theory. In practice, that’s a lot harder to do, and it takes a lot of effort and focus to accomplish.  But it is possible and this week I will share with you some of the strategies I use to make sure I stay focused on my plan throughout the week.  Now, before we get to the question, If you haven’t already done so, you can download my annual planning sheet as well as my areas of focus worksheet (for free) so you can begin planning out next year. Yep, 2020 has not turned out how we expected, and I am sure many of you have had to make some pretty dramatic changes to your plans, but no matter how well or badly this year has gone for you, we all get another chance next year and taking the time over the next three months to plan out what you want to accomplish next year will reap some incredible rewards.  So, head over to my website, carlpullein.com and download these very helpful planning sheets and make sure you are setting yourself up for an incredible 2021.  Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Beth. Beth asks: Hi Carl, I’ve followed David Allen’s Getting Things Done and recently your Time Sector System and the problem I have is no matter how well I plan out the week, I very rarely do what I plan to do. I am constantly interrupted by my colleagues and staff as well as my customers. Is this normal or is there anything I can do to help me stay focused on my plans? Hi Beth, thank you for your question.  I think we all struggle here. It’s very easy to make a plan on a Sunday afternoon when we are away from our normal environment and then arrive at work on a Monday morning and thrown into the emergencies and crises of the day and our carefully crafted plan is thrown out of the window.  As Mike Tyson apparently famously said: “We all have a plan until we get punched in the face”. So how can we stay focused on our plan for the week and still manage the emergencies and crises that will inevitably come up in the week?  The first thing to do is plan to do less.  It’s very easy to plan things out when our phones are not ringing and our colleagues and staff are not asking questions all day. This often leads us into a false sense that we can do a lot more than we really can. If I am being truthful to myself I know that I can realistically only focus on one or two projects each week.  Sure, I would love to be able to work on five or six projects, but realistically, with everything being thrown at me, as well as my core work, no matter how much I want to work on those five or six projects it j