A LOT with Audra

Ep43
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Audra Dinell: Hey, welcome to a lot with Audra. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much. For those of you who continue listening or we are new to you and you have just started listening, it's just so much fun to work on this project, and anytime I hear feedback from you, whether in person or online, I just feel really grateful that you spend your time with me.

Introduction to our hot topic at The Thread
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Audra Dinell: Okay, so today we are going to briefly. Talk about a hot topic within my community at The Thread. If you're not aware, The [00:01:00] Thread is a business and organization I started five years ago. We support women leaders and entrepreneurs in their efforts to gain clarity and confidence.

Their purpose in business or their career, and do it while building real authentic connections with other growth-minded women along the way.

High Performance Habits Webinar
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Audra Dinell: So recently we did a webinar with a group. Out of California, and it was called High Performance Habits. It was a very well attended webinar, kind of something different than we normally do, but we had about a hundred women on the call, and it just really sparked some great conversation.

The Ideal Weekly Schedule
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Audra Dinell: The hottest topic we talked about was an ideal weekly schedule. So my question to you is. Do you have an ideal weekly schedule? Is this something you've put thought [00:02:00] into? What is your ideal week? And I'll tell you a little bit about my background with using this tool.

My Experience with Ideal Weeks
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Audra Dinell: Gosh, I have been building ideal weeks for a long, long time.

I don't know when I started. But most recently, my entire team has used the full focus planner and they have an ideal week map, really just like built into their planner. So every quarter when you open up a fresh planner, you get the template to think about what your ideal week.

Creating Your Own Ideal Week
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Audra Dinell: Is if you're not a full focus user like I am no longer using that planner, but I still create my own ideal weekly schedule and I just use a Google sheet that I've created for myself.

You can easily Google right now ideal week template, and. You will have many free resources at your fingertips. So this is an accessible tool to everyone. You can create your own, you can [00:03:00] download one off of various sources at the inter of the internet, but I wanna argue that it's a good thing to have.

And so. Now that you know kind of what I'm talking about with this Ideal Week template and you're on your way to maybe creating one on your own or finding one, pause this until you do that. And then when you come back, I want to talk about the purpose.

Purpose of an Ideal Week
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Audra Dinell: Like what is the purpose of having an ideal week laid out?

I will say I come from definitely a high level view. That's the view I like to live in when creating this ideal week schedule, you can be like me and just want something. Kind of high level that you can reference, or you can be someone like some of the women on my team who really like to be down in the details.

You can be a person who likes to batch or theme, and we'll talk about ideas for all of that. [00:04:00] But what the tool is, is. Ideating, what an ideal week in your world would look like. And hey, the goal is not perfection here. The goal really is to just get it out of your head and get it down on paper.

If I had an ideal week in my normal life, not vacation life, not dream world, right? In my normal life with my normal responsibilities, my normal passions, my normal hobbies, the things I'm doing, or things I really, really wanna be doing, what would that ideal week look like? So that is. The question, what does my ideal week look like?

And here's why I think we really need to know, and it's three reasons. We need to know what an ideal week looks like in our world, because again, it's not about perfection for me. I love to hit it like I don't know. [00:05:00] 80% of the time.

Big Rocks Concept
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Audra Dinell: The reason I want to know what my ideal week is going into every new season is because I wanna make sure that I get those big rocks put in there.

And when I say big rocks, I'm talking about that concept. I don't know who is introduced by, but that you have this glass jar and you have to stack your, you know, three to five big rocks in the glass jar, and then you can put the medium pebbles in and then. Ultimately you can pour the sand of the little minor details in, but if you start with the sand, the little minor details, you won't have room for more than one or two big rock.

So I think it's important to have an ideal weekly schedule and not necessarily be militant by it, but just have it in mind so that you know you're fitting in, you know, those top one to three to five priorities in your life, You know, if spending time with your kids away from productivity is [00:06:00] important, maybe you are choosing, a day or a half day every weekend to say no plans.

We're saying no to things on this day so that we can be together as a family and do whatever we feel like doing that day. So that's the first reason I think it's very important to have an ideal weekly schedule. Second reason is because, you know, just as well as me that.

Balancing Requests and Priorities
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Audra Dinell: Requests are coming from everywhere.

Everyone has their own goals and their own to-do lists, and you do too. But I worry if we don't know what an ideal week looks like in our world, we will one day just look up and realize, wow, I've been spending way too much time responding to. Everyone else's requests of me and not spending enough time putting boundaries or bumpers or structure in place so that I make sure the most important things in my world happen.

The third reason I think it's [00:07:00] important to know what our ideal week.

Handling External Requests
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Audra Dinell: Would look like is so that when those external Quest requests do come in, we know where to put them. So for me, I'm a person who likes to take meetings in the afternoons. I like my morning time to be focused on my initiatives, pushing along my goals.

But if someone says, Hey, would you like to grab coffee? I've got an idea and I'd love your brain on it. And I decide to say, yeah, you know, I have space and would like to. Meet you for coffee and chat about what's up. I'm gonna try and do that in the afternoon, and I just know that that 1230 to two 30 is a really good block for me to funnel any external requests that I am choosing to say yes to.

Flexibility in Ideal Weeks
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Audra Dinell: So I will say for me, I have an ideal weekly schedule and there are many weeks I do not hit it. I run in-person events and virtual offerings and today in particular, does [00:08:00] not fit within my ideal weekly schedule because yesterday we hosted an in-person program for our alum.

Today I have front to back virtual calls and obligations all day long. Tomorrow we have a workshop for cohort 10 and so. Those things are good things. Just because they don't necessarily fit into my ideal weekly schedule doesn't mean they're not good things. It also doesn't mean I'm failing at hitting my exact plan for what an ideal week looks like.

It just means that this week has more events than normal, and that's just the truth. You know what? I'm not gonna lie, the next week does too, but the first week in November does not. I am back on the ideal weekly schedule. So I just think it's important to have this so that we know what we're aiming for.

The goal is not to hit it 100% of the time. If I have convinced you that an ideal weekly [00:09:00] schedule would be a great tool for you to have in your toolkit to building the type of success that you aim for, and you have created your own sheet or Google sheet, that will suit you. I wanna talk through just a few ideas I have on how to get started on this.

Starting with Big Rocks
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Audra Dinell: And the first would be to start with those big rocks, those super high level ideal week blocks. So for me, I know on my work week, the time blocks that I wanna spend working many people. Have work that consumes them from, let's say 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM I'm not one of those people. I drop my kids off at school at nine and pick them up at four.

And that's just a priority to me in this particular season of life. And, and so I know my timeframe that I would be able to work would be nine to four Monday [00:10:00] through Friday. Now, do I sometimes take meetings or attend events outside of those hours? Yeah, sometimes I do, but I know that my work block is nine to four, so I break that down into two hour chunks, and I know in the morning is gonna be my most precious time that I get to get work done that I'm excited about.

Morning is also my best time for ideating, so I really try and protect those morning blocks as much as I can. In two weeks, I'm starting my Monday morning off by moderating a panel that is not typical for me. But it was something that was definitely like a heck yes, I wanna do this. And so I made the decision.

That's not ideal for my week, but I really want to do that thing. So I'm going to step outside of my ideal week to do so. First, put your big rocks in. I'm talking about, tasks, I'm talking about family time, time spent on your [00:11:00] goals, time spent on your physical health. Anything that is important to you, put those big rocks in at first.

And I will say I am the type of person that big rocks can be enough for me in some seasons, just knowing, you know, in the mornings from. Nine to 10, I am going to walk my dog and get my exercise in. And then 10 to noon, I'm gonna do my creative work and I'm gonna give myself some space in the middle.

And then any external meetings or coaching sessions I'm going to do in the afternoon. And then I'm gonna have some space again for some personal projects, whether that be. Cooking dinner or doing something around the house or working like we're getting ready to have our bathroom redone, working on that project.

That's something I could do during that sliver right before I pick the kids up.

Medium Rocks and Morning Routine
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Audra Dinell: So, high level can sometimes be enough for me, but it's also helpful to like, go down a notch and look at [00:12:00] your pebbles, like the medium things. So. Morning routine. That's one where I tend to get a little bit more granular, and I know my mornings are best when they contain these components.

I'm not super rigid about it, but I know for me in particular, I like to wake up at five 30. Have my coffee and I've got a goal I'm working on. So I've started using 5 45 to six 30 as a writing block, and then six 30 to seven I get to either continue writing if I'm really into a flow or I read or I journal.

And then at seven I know it's time to get the morning started and get breakfast and get ready and help the kids with their morning routines. The second thing I would suggest doing, once you've got your schedule and you've put your big rocks in there, your high level things is looking at those like medium things that you wanna put some detail around.

Managing Little Rocks
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Audra Dinell: And then lastly, what I do for all my little rocks, all those [00:13:00] details that do have to happen. I like to list them out week by week and kind of gamify it. So my ideal week doesn't necessarily have time for all of these little tasks. Those are something that I know I need to make time for in those afternoons.

If I'm not giving my time externally, which I can't, you know, every day, of course. So that's when I know, okay, this is gonna be a really good time for me to have a weekly list of all my punch items, all the things that need to get done that aren't a part of my big rocks, but still need to happen. And so I just list them out on Monday.

For the week and then kind of gamify it. See how many I can get done a day. Typically I pick three to accomplish on, you know, any given day and I order them. This is most important, second, third, and go from there, roll them over and just see if I can maybe get to number four [00:14:00] today. And if not, I know I'll have some time blocked tomorrow.

Conclusion and Call to Action
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Audra Dinell: That's my take on an ideal week and why. I think it's a really, really good tool for each of us to have. We can use it in different ways. We can get really, really detailed or we can stay big picture and just know, Hey, this is really what I want my weeks to look like given like my Real reality of what's going on in my world and things I want to accomplish.

It can just help us make decisions. So I would love to hear from you if you have ideas, if you have created your ideal week. If you totally disagree with me and you're like, that is just a lot, I would love to hear from you. Thank you for being here and listening to this episode. This. I don't know if it's a hot take, but it's a hot conversation in my community, so I thought, you know what?

It might be fun to bring it to the broader podcast community. Either way, thank you for being here. I'd love to hear from you. Tell me what's your ideal week? Tell me if you agree, disagree, [00:15:00] ideal week. Let's talk. Let's go have an ideal weak friends.