Bookending Your Week

I hear it from leaders at all levels of organizations – and I’ve lived it alongside teams I’ve been a part of.

You manage up to a board (or a CEO who reports to a board). You manage a team that needs vision, direction, and support. And you manage across to peers whose work product relies on you (and yours on them). Each direction generates a steady stream of requests – many framed as urgent (at least in tone). 

Amidst this avalanche of high-level demands, the weeds tempt you toward a comfortable nearer-to-earth experience. The issues are concrete and solvable (and, let’s face it, you handle them better than anyone else). You get the joy of finishing something, checking it off a list. We could all use a nice dopamine hit most days, right?

But when you come back up out of the weeds, you see all that ambiguity and prioritization waiting for you to bring clarity to it. At times it seems impossible to make progress on your priorities when you’re pulled in so many directions each week. 

And so, Friday after Friday, you careen into 5:00, realizing you were busy all week but accomplished little of importance (if you actually set out with some idea of what importance meant that week). The priorities that deserved your best attention are now relegated to a resentment-packed weekend (when you’ll also find yourself catching up on emails that required thought you didn’t have time to give them).

Then on Monday, you’re shot out of the same cannon into the same circus. And it happens again … and again … and again …

In the middle of all this activity, you may have overlooked the most consequential decision you can make: where you will focus your time and attention.

Your week and your calendar will fill themselves with whatever everyone else demands of you if you don’t set some standards. And I’m not talking about time blocking to answer emails. I’m talking about choosing what you will do, what will wait, and how you can stay aware of which is which.

In my experience, the blur of a progress-free week almost always traces back to fuzzy priorities. When everything is tagged as important (or at least time sensitive), whoever’s demands are loudest wins.

One Possible Solution

 

Two short rituals can help bring order to the chaos – one to close the week on Friday and one to open it on Monday. These bookends together take only about 35 minutes. They help organize that unruly shelf of priorities staring back at you.

Starting the Process

 

On Monday morning, before you look at your email, name your top three priorities for the week ahead. Write them down somewhere.

Most people know their top three. Just imagine which priorities you’ll be most disappointed to have left untouched come Friday afternoon. 

I know you probably have five deadlines, twelve strategic plan goals, and twenty meetings, but hear me out. Naming the three that matter most brings greater focus. And three is a number you can hold in your head while you navigate those other to-dos.

Choosing three forces a decision. You have to look at everything competing for your attention and say, “These matter most this week.” The act of choosing is where most of the value of the practice lies.

Friday Rewind

 

Choose a quiet 20 minutes on Friday afternoon. Put it on your calendar. (I like to make this the last commitment of my week, while the many goings-on are still fresh.) Then walk through five steps.

• Revisit your three priorities. Reconnect with what you set out to do on Monday. Write your top three down again.

• Assess your progress on each. Jot down a few specific notes:

  • Where did you move forward?

  • Where had you hoped to make progress but didn’t?

• Celebrate your wins. This is the step so many leaders skip in favor of beating themselves up over the progress they didn’t make. Take two minutes to note what you feel good about and where your focus paid off.

• Name the obstacles you faced. Scan your calendar. What consumed your week beyond your three priorities? Look for patterns in what you allow to monopolize your attention: a particular person, a recurring type of problem, a meeting you should have turned down or left early. Ask yourself who else could have handled some of this. Where did you take comfort in the weeds or redo something someone else didn’t handle well rather than giving them feedback? Some detours were the right call, like a genuine crisis or a colleague who truly needed you. It helps to separate those from obstacles within your control.

• Set intentions for next week. While everything is fresh, choose next week’s three priorities. Some may carry over, and that’s fine. Big priorities often take months of focus to chip away at.

·        

Monday Focusing

 

After the first week, Friday’s reflection becomes Monday morning’s intention setting. From here on, use your 15 minutes each Monday for a few activities.

• Reconnect with your three priorities. Read what you wrote on Friday. Affirm that these are your top three. Write them down again. 

• Give them the calendar test. Ask yourself:

  • When will each priority get time this week?

  • Are there meetings I can recuse myself from now?

  • Can I block quality time when I am in a good frame of mind to tackle bigger issues (not 4:45 on Thursday)?

  • Have I also left space for the inevitable interruptions so that those interruptions don’t eat into the time I’ve set aside for my priorities?

• Review your obstacles. Remind yourself of avoidable obstacles from the week before and plan how you will manage them this week.

One piece of logistical advice: put both bookends on your calendar as recurring meetings with yourself, Friday afternoon and Monday morning. This weekly routine of intention setting and reflection will bring some order to your calendar (and, more importantly, your mind).

Oh … if you get good at this … you might have to save some time on your calendar for helping others find the focus you have.

Have a few tricks of your own for making sure you stay focused?  I’d love to hear.  Drop a note in the comments, reach out to me at gary@garybagley.com, or send me a note on LinkedIn.