Scheduling Your Week to Maximize Your Focus
Imagine what you could achieve if your weeks were arranged around your highest priorities–and not around other people’s priorities. What could you accomplish if your weeks were structured to prioritize your organization’s mission-critical work? At 33Vincent, we believe that leaders should be focused on strategy and vision–not stuck in the weeds of scheduling or administrative tasks. Our executive assistants are strategic gatekeepers who help structure our client’s schedules to give them back the time they need for their highest leverage work.
Start by time blocking.
Start by planning out every minute of your day. We have a great side-by-side comparison contrasting the day of a focused leader vs. the day of a leader without an executive assistant. If you begin time blocking like the focused leader does, you would spend more time on important work, have time to do the things that matter to you, and end the day feeling accomplished. Keep these things in mind as you begin time blocking:
Map out every minute. This means bathroom, coffee, and lunch breaks, too!
Strategically place “rewards.” If you have a three hour block to prepare a sales pitch that you are nervous about, place a block immediately after for you to take a walk to your favorite coffee shop.
Stick to your time blocks. Time blocking is only effective when you use the time as you planned to.
Schedule your day around your energy levels.
Once you start time blocking, you may realize that you don’t always feel up to the task that you have planned. No matter how healthy you eat, how much coffee you drink, how much you exercise, or how much you sleep, you’ll experience natural ebbs and flows in your energy level throughout the day. Follow these simple steps to achieve maximum productivity:
Start by tracking your energy levels for a week. Have your virtual assistant set a reminder for you to rate your energy level on a scale of 1-10 every 90-120 minutes. If you don’t have a virtual assistant, set a quick timer!
Once you have an idea of your typical ebbs and flows, shift your time blocks accordingly. Plan to knock out that quarterly report when your energy levels are high and leave the email responses for when your energy levels are a bit lower.
For the first month, do a quick end of week reflection to see how well you planned your workweek. Make adjustments as needed!
Limit meetings.
Many leaders have shared that they feel overwhelmed by meetings—whether formal or informal, face-to-face or virtual. We can’t deny that some meetings are necessary, important, and effective, but some meetings are wasteful. When a portion of your day is stolen by a wasteful meeting, you miss out on valuable work time. Maybe your problem isn’t how many meetings you have, but when they happen. Perhaps your meetings fall in the middle of your best deep work time, or maybe they are scattered throughout your day giving you less focused work time in general. Here are some helpful tips on limiting meetings:
Require a purpose and an agenda for every meeting.
Try shifting to a quick daily huddle and a longer weekly all-hands.
Set strict “no meeting” times–or even full days. A virtual assistant can really help with this!
Delegate your attendance to another individual when appropriate.
The best solution to limiting meetings and protecting your time is a virtual assistant who manages up to you. At 33Vincent, our executive assistants are master gatekeepers and understand how precious your time is.
Set email breaks.
We’ve heard from many leaders that your inbox causes you to lose precious time in your workday. Checking your inbox and responding to emails throughout the day is inefficient, requires your brain to shift back and forth more frequently (draining energy faster), and is not a productive use of a leader’s time (you should be focused on more meaningful work). Delegating your inbox to an executive assistant, even just partially, adds valuable hours back into your day so you can spend more time focused on your most important work. If you don’t have an executive assistant, there are some simple steps you can take to limit the email disruptions in your day:
Set the standard with your colleagues that email is not a form of communication that is meant to be responded to immediately, and agree on an urgent form of communication like text or phone.
Identify a few times per day when you will check and respond to email.
Schedule these times in your calendar and close your inbox during email breaks.
Are you ready to schedule your week to maximize your focus? An executive assistant can help with that (and much, much more). 33Vincent is a community of high-caliber, virtual executive assistants offering flexible support to entrepreneurs, executives, and leadership teams. 33Vincent’s service is designed for high-performing leaders who are tired of trying to "do it all.” We elevate your impact, and help you invest your time in what matters most. Contact our team to share your support needs so together we can discover if 33Vincent is a good fit for you.
33Vincent has many other resources to help you maximize your time and communication with your executive assistant.
