How I ACTUALLY Stay Productive (My Weekly Planning Process)

As a business owner, there is a lot you've got to handle. And if you have small children or if you have a life outside of your business, it can be hard to really figure out how to start managing all of this. Like what should you be focusing on? How should you be getting those things done? Like, what should my week look like now? When I started my business, I had a one year old and got pregnant in my first year of business. So I had to quickly figure out how to how to manage all the things that I needed to do in my business. Prepare for maternity leave, then deal with a newborn after that. Going through that process at the very beginning of building my business, I've come up with some systems and some routines that I want to share with you in this video because I think it's going to be helpful for you to see how I plan my week, to stay productive and to know what to focus on. Because when I break down the hours that I work every single week, I'm only working about 26 hours. So. So when we look at it by day, Mondays and Wednesdays I'm only working six hours. And that's after preschool drop off, which is about 9:30 is when I start working on Mondays and Wednesdays. And then I got first grade pickup at 2:30. Thursdays and Fridays are a little bit longer because I don't have preschool drop off. And so I get seven hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can start work at 8:30 because I have my mom come here and watch my 5 year old. And then I don't work on Fridays because I don't have childcare for my little guy until school. School starts this fall. But when you add that all up, that's only about 26 hours a week that I have to spend in my business. Now there are times when I may work on Fridays and get child care. Like right now I'm filming these videos because I'm late on them. So I am recording these on a Friday. So there are times that I do need to be a little bit flexible. But in a normal week I'm only working those 26 hours. So how do I figure out what to be focusing on? So I'm going to dive into. Before I can actually show you my weekly planning routine and what I do to plan my week, it's important to understand that I plan 90 days in advance. So I like to plan in quarters. So January, February, March, I have plan April, May, June, I have planned so on and so forth. And so if you're curious about how I really plan 90 days out and what that process looks like. I'm hosting a free private training called how to create consistent monthly revenue in your business. It is a private training, so you will need to go to trinalittle.com private training to apply. Once you apply, we will be in contact with you for the next steps. But this has never been really covered by me before. I'm talking about planning and your funnel and your content and how these things all work together. So this weekly process will show you how I do this by week. But. But I'm only able to dive into the weeks once I know what my 90 days looks like. And I'm going to be talking about that in that private training. So make sure you apply trinalittle.com forward/private training. The reason that I plan out 90 days is because there are certain projects that I need to figure out what I'm working on during that quarter. Like if I'm just coming out of the gate thinking I'm going to work on all these projects, I'm quickly going to burn out. Been there, totally learned from my mistake. And so when I'm looking at 90 days, it helps me realize what projects am I actually going to be focusing on so that I can then start breaking that down into what that looks like in my weeks. I love putting this all into asana because I can color code my projects and then when I look at my asana calendar, I can see by color, okay, am I working on this program during this week? Am I working on my content during this day? And so it just makes it so much easier for me to visualize. But I need to know that 90 day plan for first. The first thing that I do every single Thursday is I will lock my calendar for that next week. So I have, you know, call links out there that people can book calls with me, people can schedule calls. And I want to make sure going into the weekend that I'm not going to be surprised on Monday morning with phone calls. This is again a lesson that I have learned from. And so every Thursday before I wrap up my day, I go into my Google calendar and I just block out that next week. I literally put at the top it says locked. And I mark myself busy. So nothing can be added to my calendar for that next week. Now I generally then like to plan for the week that Thursday after I've walked my calendar. Sometimes Thursdays can get a little bit busy. So I will also work on this on Sunday. The first thing that I'm looking at are things that are set in stone or like family things. So there are certain calls that I have every single week. So those are immediately, you know, Mondays at noon, Wednesdays at noon. Then I'm looking at, okay, are there any doctor's appointments? Are there any dentist appointments? Are there any things that. That I already have scheduled? So now I can see how much I have on my calendar. And yes, I like to color code this in Google Calendar. The reason why I do this in Google Calendar is because, again, I can link this up with my husband so he can see what's going on. I can link this up with my scheduling calls as well. My team can see it. And so I just like Google Calendar for that purpose. I like Asana then for my specific task. So you can see in Google that I have chunks of time blocked off. So then in Asana, I know what the actual tasks are for that chunk of time. I just want to explain, you know, the difference between the two. So once I have those things that I cannot move or change, I do a brain dump. I literally just sit down and put everything that's on my mind that I want to do or that I thought I should do or that I think I need to do on paper, because this is going to help me start weeding out what I actually need to do. I like to take a look at my previous week to see if I got completed my daily big three. I've been using the full focus planner for almost a year now. And I do really enjoy the system in this planner. And so I'm able to look at this and see, okay, what didn't I get done last week? Do I need to pull it forward to the next week? Or is it something I should probably just forget about it, Maybe put it on a list for later? So once I have this massive list, normally I go through it and I start evaluating, is this something that needs to be done or not? Can I get somebody on my team now? If you are a team of one, you need to look at this as, will this task help me achieve the goal that I have? What is the goal that you have? If you're trying to make consistent monthly income, will this task actually help you get there, yes or no? If no, don't do it. You need to be focusing on the things that are going to get you to your goal. And you've got to be very, very picky about what you're actually working on. You have to be able to say no to things. I still say no to things. There were at least Three online summits that I would have loved to be a part of in Q1 of this year, but I just literally did not have the time. I was hosting a challenge, I was doing a live launch and I had to say no even though I wanted to do it. So you have to be very, very picky with where you are spending your time and is it going to help you get to your goal or not now that you have your list filtered down, dwindled down hopefully. I like to have themes each day for myself. Like I said, I only work Monday through Thursdays most weeks in an ideal week. And I know Tuesdays are generally my content creation days, meaning these are the days where I'm writing content, planning content, research content. I don't need to have my hair and makeup done because it's not the day I'm on video, it is the day that I'm working on the content that I want to be creating or on Wednesday. And then Wednesdays, the days I'm actually on video, when I shoot video, when I do reels, those types of things. So those are the themes. The main themes that I like to have on Mondays, they generally tend to be team and admin things. So I have my team call, I check in on our clients, I kind of filter out my email box, I see you know what kind of admin things need to be done and then on Thursday I leave that as my wiggle room day. I don't put anything in that day, but it allows me to have a catch up day. Most of the times I put more on my plate than I can get done on those first three days. And so Thursday is kind of my catch all day. So knowing those are my themes, I then take my list and knowing my themes and the full focus planner has this great page that lets you see the days of the week and you can start scratching in what you want to do. I start taking my to do list and start putting the tasks in what day it's going to fit in and it's going to tell me quickly do I have this day too overloaded or not. But it starts to let me see. Okay, what does that to do list look like for each day? Is it going to be way too much? Do I need to cut something down even after that first process? This will take me about 30 to 40 minutes, but it saves me so much time throughout the week because then I know when I sit down at my desk exactly what I'm working on. I can communicate to my team on our team call on Mondays that this is what I am working on. So they know, you know, if they want to jump in and help or they know not to bother me. We all just have a clear idea of what we are working on and then the most important part is to get it into my asana. Because these tasks are usually in asana anyways because they are associated with a bigger project. So as long as they're in asana, then I set those due dates for when they're actually going to get done. So I can sit down, I can look at my asana, or I can put my big three in my full focus planner. Because again, I still like to write, I still like putting pen to paper. And so I still put my big three. Like I said, try to keep every day to just three tasks. Because if you're only working four to six hours a day, it's probably all you're going to be able to realistically get done. So the more you do this process and the more you kind of track it like I do in my full focus planner, it allows me to see what I can realistically get done in a day. Because if you aren't sure, start tracking it, start seeing. Okay, this week I had planned on Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, these things. What did I actually get done, what didn't I, how much time did one particular project take me? Is it more than I expected? Less than I expected? Because on that Thursday I'm also reflecting on my week. What worked, what didn't work, what took too long, what took longer than expected. I know personally, anytime I've got to write things like sales pages, I have a huge block on writing these. So it's going to take me probably the entire day. So if I know I need to write a sales page, I gotta block that whole day for that sales page. So because that is just how my brain functions, I'm telling you, I get asked all the time by my entrepreneur friends like Trina, how do you get so much done? Are you not sleeping? Like, how do you know what to do? This is the process, this is how I do it. I start with my 90 day plan. And again, if you want to see how to do that, make sure you apply to that private training. Trina little.com privatetraining But I start with that 90 day plan that allows me to figure out what needs to be done for the next three months and then that allows me to zoom in on each week. Without that, I would literally be like shooting at the hips, not knowing what to focus on. I'd sit here at my desk, waste more time figuring out what to actually work on instead of sitting down here and getting great six hours of work and then picking up the first grader. If you've made it to this part in the video and this weekly process is something that you could potentially start incorporating into your week, let me know in the comments below. Weekly Plan so I know this helped you, because I know figuring out what to work on and how to plan your week and being productive are such trendy topics. They're such hot button topics. There are so many different ways to do it. But for me, as somebody that has a limited amount of time to actually work while we don't have kids full time in school, this has been the way I have done it for over four years. And this has been the process that has allowed me to have Fridays off, have the weekends off, and continue to scale my business in a way that most of the time I'm not overwhelmed and stressed. But I mean, that's not all the time. Trust me, there are plenty of times I'm overwhelmed and stressed. But this has allowed me to stay, you know, grounded, to stay focused on what to actually work on instead of like that squirrel syndrome and scatterbrainedness. And if you're still struggling to figure out how to get consistent with creating content, watch the video that's on your screen right now, because I'm going to walk you through a complete process on how to start getting consistent with creating content in a way that makes sense, like no secret hacks, no secret tips, but something that will allow you to stay consistent for months and years to come. So click on that video and I'll see you in it.