Andy Neary walks through his weekly planning system. He emphasizes blocking time for planning itself, using a planner to track tasks, and prioritizing what actually matters so you're not just busy.
Questions this video answers
One non-negotiable hour on Sunday morning (sometimes as early as 6:30).
Clever Fox (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly planner).
Chapters
Tip number one.
Planning your weeks. Now, I know that sounds very.
Practical, like, no shit, Andy, I know I should plan my weeks, but are you actually taking the time to do that? I talk about non negotiables a lot. I think one of the non negotiables in your life and your business has to be the planning your weeks. So the first tip I'm going to give on planning your weeks is you have to block time to planning your weeks. For me, that is Sunday morning, sometimes as early as 6:30 in the morning. I designate an hour every single week, Sunday morning, no matter where we are, to planning my weeks. Non negotiable.
Now, I just got done planning the third quarter. So here we are, it's late July. About a month ago, I sat down and I planned not only July, but I had to plan the quarter. So it's a constant evolution of planning your weeks, planning your months, planning your quarters. That takes a little more time. But the majority of the time you're just going to be focused on planning your week. So the first thing you got to do is block time to plan your weeks. It's got to be on your calendar.
Now when I plan my week, I go through a series of questions. And if anybody, if you're listening in and you're like, hey, where did you get these questions from? These are questions I've actually developed myself. But ironically, since I've used this journal, if you're watching the video, you can see it. It's a Clever Fox. I should have an affiliate link. I have sold so many of these to clients and peers. Clever Fox is the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly planner. I use it as phenomenal.
And what I love about it is every week it forces me to ask the following questions. Number one, what were my wins from the previous week? So it forces me to look back and celebrate progress. And I look back and I say, okay, what were the small, small or big wins we had last week? Celebrate process, progress. Then it asks, what are you looking forward to this week? So now we look ahead and go, cool. What am I excited about this week? Maybe it's something progress professionally. Got a big meeting up, coming up with a prospector. I'm expecting a new client to become on board or personally, hey, we're going paddle boarding, I'm going golf with my dad, whatever it is, what are you looking forward to? And then it has me dive into my priorities.
What are my top personal priorities for the week? What are my top professional priorities? And then it forces me to look at those and say, Cool. Of all those to do's, what are the top three for the week? That if all you got done this week was those three, it would be a successful week.
And then it asks cool.
With your top three priorities, what's your number one goal? And this is what I love about the planner is.
If you're listening in and you are in the insurance industry, you have a large to do list. I get it. But not everything has equal priority. No matter how long your list is, there are things that should be sitting at the top. But the problem is you're not focusing on them because they're not easy.
Yet they're going to move the needle the farthest. So my first tip for you is you need to spend time every week before the week starts. By the way, if you're planning your week on a Monday morning to too late, it has got to be before Monday morning. Sit down, look back, say what were my wins last week? What insights did I gain last week? How can I be better next week? What am I looking forward to next week? And then start listing out the two the to do list and then breaking that to do list down to what are my top priorities. So I do that every Sunday morning. So tip number one, you have to plan your weekend.
