How to Create the Ideal Weekly Workflow That’s Unique to You
If you’ve followed along with me for any amount of time now, you know that I am all about earning more revenue in fewer working hours -- and that I am so not here for hustle culture or anything that promotes burnout.
It's completely unnecessary. It's a harmful way of thinking. It’s not sustainable in the long term.
You should be able to have a business that you love.
You should also have time for the other parts of your life. Hang out with people you care about. Do fun stuff. Have good balance -- really enjoy all the aspects of your life -- and don’t live to work 24/7.
I say all of this from experience.
Right now in my business, I make more money in way fewer hours than I have in previous businesses. It's a lot easier and a lot more fun.
Now I'm on a mission to teach other women how to do the same.
A big part of that is planning your weekly workflow. We’re going to get into golden hours, frameworks, workflows, CEO Days, and all the puzzle pieces that go into creating the best weekly workflow that works for you, using mine as an example and illustration of how that works.
Here’s the story of my process -- as well as my top recommendations -- to give you the inspiration you need to structure more balance into your life and work.
What Life Looked Like Before Optimizing My Weekly Workflow
When I started my business, I was on a mission to not work weekends.
If you've heard me talk about my previous business, I was in direct sales working pretty much every weekend. Before that, I had done different types of retail, selling, and management, which meant a lot of weekend work.
I didn't want that anymore.
I had two requirements for starting this business:
I wouldn't have to work on the weekends if I didn't want to.
I could work from anywhere in the world, only needing my laptop and a notebook.
I wanted to build everything else around these two key needs for a better work life.
This meant that I needed to change how I worked.
At the time, I would do my home parties on the weekends and all the other admin stuff for my business during the week -- including marketing, processing orders, packaging everything up, deliveries, and customer follow-ups and check-ins.
I was working around the clock.
On top of work, I homeschool my son. It was a constant juggle all day, every day. Mom stuff. Homeschool stuff. Life stuff.
I was fitting my business into nooks and crannies wherever I could and I felt like it was overtaking my life. Even though it was successful, I was not always super happy.
This is just how it's got to be, right?
That’s what I thought. And that was a big factor in why I closed out that business and started my current one. I realized there had to be a better way. My original method was unsustainable and I was missing out on moments with my family and my friends.
And I started to get resentful. I didn’t love that. It was time for a change.
Asking the Right (Transformational) Questions
Things clicked when I thought, “Oh my gosh, my son's getting older, he doesn't quite need as much one-on-one help with his work, he's a lot more independent with school stuff.”
I understood that the world was my oyster. I had the power to reconfigure my weeks.
But how was I going to do this?
First, I had to look at what I wanted my week to look like to structure it in a way that would promote optimal work.
I started with two foundational questions:
How many hours did I want to work?
What type of work do I perform best, and when? What times of day? What days of the week?
This took quite a bit of trial and error. Not every week is perfect.
Remember That Not Every Week Is Going To Be Perfect (And Things Will Get Better)
Case and point that not every week follows the exact format:
A while back, a friend and I launched a collaborative course for farmers market vendors. We had a very successful launch, but after the launch we were still building the course and delivering it at the same time, so we had a lot of extra weekly work on our plates.
The good news was, once it's done, it's done. Later, we could relaunch it without having to re-create everything from scratch. Other than some minor tweaks and edits, we never have to make the content again.
But that first time, we did. And it was a lot.
My schedule was a little bit wonky and a little bit more full.
It was also the end of summer and we were traveling a lot. I was out of town five weekends in a row. I was cramming a lot of work into fewer days.
And that's okay.
I knew once October hit, things would be back to a more normal flow.
Sometimes knowing that things are temporary (and having a lot of really cool travel in the mix) helps me think, “All right, if I can buckle down, if I can do a little bit of extra work and work ahead so that I don't have to bring my laptop with me on my travels, it will be all good.”
This is not the pace of life forever. And when things go back to being more routine, I’ve got my ideal weekly workflow ready to keep me balanced.
How to Figure Out Your Ideal Weekly Workflow
Here are the 4 steps for structuring your framework to create a workflow that works for you. I’ll illustrate how it can look with my weekly routine so you can see how it works.
Just remember: your ideal weekly workflow is probably going to be different from mine based on many different factors. Still, it’s crucial to figure out what works for you and try to stick to that as often as possible.
1. SeT ThE FRaMEwORK FoR wHeN yOu DO NoT WaNT tO wORk.
If you have little kids or if you're still working a full time job, you might not have a lot of control over your framework yet.
If you’re doing the lunchtime power hour, putting in an hour or two after the kids go to bed, or working at a coffee shop on Saturday mornings, that might just be the season of your life right now.
And that's totally okay. I've been there too.
But if you have a little bit more leeway -- which is amazing -- figure out when you don't want to work.
For me, that’s weekends and weekday evenings.
2. ALIGn yOUR FRamEWoRK wITh WHEn YOU Do gOOd wORK.
I do not do good work in the evenings. But I used to work in the evenings because I felt like I had to.
The reality is, I don't have to. My brain is very tired, especially the older I get. At night, I want to veg out, watch Netflix, or knit. Maybe I want to have a beer. But I don't want to be working.
The mornings are primetime for my brain. These are my golden hours.
I am fresher and I can do my CEO work for my business, so in my workflow, these hours get high priority tasks. So Tuesday through Thursday, I get up, I do my morning routine, ease into the day, and do some office work. Then around noon I will start focusing on clients in group or one-on-one coaching calls.
I do calls until about three, sometimes four, depending on the day. And then after that, I want to be done.
3. GivE yOURsELF fLEXIbILITY TP ACcOMmODAtE YOuR nEEdS AnD mOOdS.
In the busy season I'm in now, I've been doing a little bit of work in the evenings to stay ahead. I'm not doing my best and freshest computer work at night, but I know this is what will help me now and I know this is temporary.
I also know that sometimes even though I don't want to work on the weekends, sometimes that’s when I feel super jazzed to get stuff done.
Sometimes I’m freaking pumped. I'm excited. I want to record a podcast episode or write an email.
During these times, I will allow myself to be inspired and I will work on the weekends.
4. aDD BUfFErS wHErE YOU NeeD tHEm.
I don't want to start working at 4am. And I don't want to finish at 5pm or 6pm.
I want to have some transition time before starting dinner and switching hats to my mom-home-wife hat. I hate that feeling of having to constantly rush from one thing to the next because it stresses me out. Again, I start to get resentful.
But if I can have chill time in between work and everything we have going on in the evenings, I generally feel better.
I also want to give myself a buffer day. Monday is my CEO day. I don't do calls. I don't do anything else other than work on my business.
I might batch-record a bunch of podcast episodes. I might batch-schedule my social media. I might do emails.
I want to give myself that time to get all my ducks in a row before I start doing outward-facing work with clients. That way, I can focus on giving my best self to my clients Tuesday through Thursday.
Another thing I do on my buffer day is my Money Monday practice. The first thing I do every single Monday is complete a Trello checklist with eight things on it that all have to do with my business finances.
It is non-negotiable. I do it even if I'm out of town. It's quick -- it takes me about 20 minutes and it's done. It is an absolute life changer.
Lastly, I try to either take Friday completely off or only work a half-day in the morning when I'm fresh.
I may take the rest of the day off or meet up with people. I love going out for coffee dates -- sometimes my friend Kendra and I get together and I'll help her with stuff for her business. We just have a good time.
This is what feels like a sustainable workflow week after week for me.
Try A Few Things To Figure Out What Works Best for You
As for you, your sustainable weekly workflow might be different.
Maybe you work best in the afternoons. Maybe you’re an introvert and if you’re talking to people for your business, getting it done first thing works better for you so you can rest, recharge, and do computer work in the afternoon.
Maybe you're a super night owl and the evening is when you shine. Or maybe you want to wake up at 4am. Maybe because of your family schedule, you don’t mind working five days a week for four hours a day.
This is going to be different for every single person.
None of it is wrong. It's just important to figure out what works for you.
If you have the freedom to set any schedule you want, try a few different workflows and see what works best for you. Once you find a good rhythm, try to keep that as solid as possible week after week.
And if you are in a season of your life when you have limited time, try doing different sets of work on different days.
A client of mine who has a young son works out of her home Friday through Sunday and only has a few hours every day where she can do her work. We talked about batching her work -- finding some things that she can multitask and identifying what she shouldn't multitask. We settled on two or three different workflows to try out so she can see what feels best for her and then stick with it.
Simply put, this is what I recommend: Get some control and structure over your work so that you can run your business and not have your business run you.
I promise that when you do things in those constraints -- and when you work off your personal energetic desires and strengths -- you are going to be a lot more productive. You are going to be happier. You are going to get more done and make greater strides in your business.
This is what will end up bringing in more revenue and will enable you to actually work less.
Why? Because it’s sustainable.
You will procrastinate less because you won’t be at risk of trying to do work all the time. When you're not mentally and physically exhausted, you can bring the best of yourself to your work as often as possible.
So, remember:
Set the framework for when you do not want to work.
Align your framework with when you do good work.
Give yourself flexibility to accommodate your needs and moods.
Add buffers where you need them.
And, of course, remember that your structure won’t always be perfect. But that’s the nature of owning a business -- you can’t predict your weeks 100% of the time, but hopefully with busy times comes growth.
All the more reason to establish a workflow now.
So go run that business. And love your life. You deserve it.
