Drew Bridewell walks through staying productive by auditing your daily flow, building learning time into your week, and iterating when schedules fail. He introduces a simple weekly benchmark scoring clarity, productivity, joy, focus, and learning from 1-5, then assigns homework to create recurring rituals like calendar review and time-blocking.
Hey, what's up? So that challenge that you have when you're working through a plan and you're just trying to stick with it, you're trying to stay on top of it, but you run into some of those challenges or those obstacles when you're just like, how do I stay on track? What do I do? I'm going to show you a quick little training on how to stay on track when you're working through a new plan, because we're all working through plans, and I just want to make this super easy for you. When you're thinking about sticking to a plan, remember that you have to think about how you monitor the flow. Flow of your day. So from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, how is the flow of the activities of things that you're doing every day? Is it sporadic? Is it fun? Is it challenging, Is it easy, is it is a struggle? What do you think about when you're doing this? I want you to just start monitoring that flow of the day and start auditing what you're actually doing. Just if you were monitoring all the things you're eating throughout the day, think about what you're actually doing throughout the day. So just write it down in a journal and we're going to start there because we're going to work backwards and see why you're having so much challenge with sticking to your plan. So first we got to monitor the flow of the day. The second thing we got to do is we got to build in learning into our schedule. So throughout the entire week, Monday through Sunday, how are you integrating learning into your day? This could be your morning ritual where you're going to get your cup of coffee, you're going to spend 20 to 30 minutes listening to an audiobook or a YouTube episode or a podcast. But make sure that it's relevant to the things that you're actually working towards. Make sure that it's relevant to the project, maybe that you're working towards. But you want to be able to build this learning into your day so that you're building skills and the momentum around the topic that you're trying to move forward. Right? That plan that you're trying to stick to. But if you feel like you're growing exponentially around a topic, you're more likely to stick with it. So the third thing that we got to think about is we got to iterate when things are not working and learn from the things that are working. So if you're doing that audit and you're thinking about what's happening throughout the day. What are we doing? Oh, this meeting really slow me down or not having a plan to do this thing really slow me down as well. That's why it's so important to audit your day, your week. That way we can start course correcting and figuring out a better schedule for you to really get it done, do a better job on top of doing a better job. We've got to perform. We got to show up, we got to put ourselves out there, we got to clock in and do the work. And that's so simple, so simply put. But it's actually really hard to do. But if you can prepare and know what you're actually stepping into, then it's going to be a lot easier for you to plan, perform when it's time and when it really matters. The next thing that we got to do is after we start performing, it's time to dial in to your groove and start learning that that productivity that you're facing, it's not by chance, it's actually by design. So as you go through and you start dialing in that groove that you have, we're going to start having some fun building those mechanisms. So how do we do that? We have to start thinking about what that Monday through Sunday flow is. This could mean your Mondays or more focused around gaining your priorities for the week, understanding where you need to focus on, and then working through each day. A very strategic plan. And here's an example of how I would approach it. But you can literally just audit your weeks, figure out what your standard schedule or standard meeting schedule is, and start figuring out all the time blocks that you're going to need to actually make move the needle forward in those projects, in those plans. The other thing that we have to start thinking about is you might need to benchmark your weekly activity so that you can actually just put a stake in the sand and figure out where you are. So to do that, you can do a quick little benchmark around your clarity. And clarity is, did you know what you were doing and what you were actually doing this week? So see the score from a 1 to 5 on this and then you can go to your productivity. And were you efficient in the actions you took and plan this week from a 1 to 5, where were you at? Did you bring a little joy into your calendar, into your daily actions that you're working towards so that you're starting to build some momentum around the joy? Were you doing that? The fourth one is, how was your focus this week? Did you find it easy to get things done that you planned and you can score that from a 1 to 5 as well. And then the last one. Are you learning? Did you allocate time to learn and develop yourself from a 1 to 5 this week? So go ahead and do some scores this week. I'm just giving you some examples here. Maybe you're at a 4 or 5. Don't beat yourself up over this. You can score yourself as much as you want, answer these questions so that you can start taking an audit and benchmark your week. I want to give you some challenge homework too, before we end the session. Here is I want you to develop some weekly rituals. This could look like some of the things that you do every single week. Maybe it's mapping your week out. Maybe it's a calendar review. Maybe you're just looking at how much time you spend in certain areas and then how much time you're spending on execution. So do this as a first step, write it down and then let's continue the conversation so you can reach out if you have any questions. But take stock this week in the actions that you're doing and then start working through, bringing some joy, understanding your productivity and how you're working through those things. And have some fun this week. Have a beautiful rest of your day and I'll see you in the next one. So hope you enjoyed that quick tutorial on taking an audit of your week to get into a better flow, into a better rhythm so that you can achieve more throughout the week. But also take into account, am I learning new things? Am I bringing a little joy into the week? Am I tapping into my highest levels of productivity and am I having some fun, some bringing some joy into that and just doing what I can to make sure that I have continuous flow for all the things that I'm creating and all the projects and initiatives that I'm trying to move forward. So remember, you got to take audit so you know how you're actually flowing. Because if you have no audit, then you have no idea if you're actually on the right track. So do a quick benchmark and you'll be on your way. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. You can DM me at Drew Bridewell on Instagram or you can find me at LinkedIn. Have a beautiful rest of your day and I'll see you in the next one. Sa.
