Permission to Invent and Implement Your Ideal Week - Granted
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
Cal Newport has a podcast called Deep Questions. In one of his episodes, he interviewed another favorite counter-cultural crusader of mine named Laura Vanderkam. Laura Vanderkam is an author and podcaster who loves to study and write about how to make the most of your time. In Cal and Laura’s episode, they talk about the importance of designing your ideal week - like really sitting down and thinking about and refining what the building blocks of an ideal week are. Then, any instance a request is made for your time, you ask yourself how it would be possible to fit this request into your ideal week. Cal discussed his summer schedule as a professor. Mondays and Fridays he has no appointments on his calendar. Appointments happen on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, but not until at least 10:30 or 11am. Mondays and Fridays he’s working on deep work projects. He also tackles deep work in the morning Tuesday through Thursday. He aims to be done by 4pm every day. He keeps his ideal week in mind whenever a request is made of his time. If his Tuesday through Thursday appointment slots are full for a couple of weeks, then he might have to suggest a time that is three weeks out because he wants to be serious about his ideal week. You would never naturally schedule so far out if you were just ad hoc fitting things into your calendar. You would just offer the first available Monday or Friday time. But if you have an ideal week in mind, then you have something to push back on.
Laura Vanderkam reminds us that of course you can make exceptions. If someone you really want to meet with only has availability during your deep work time, then you can schedule that time. But in the absence of a very compelling reason, Cal and Laura are going to stick with the ideal week plan so they can have the week that they want.
I also have ideas on what my ideal week looks like. I like to do as much professional / computer work as I can on Mondays. I like to front load my week with work so the rest of the week is less full. I respond to any client inquiries that come in Monday through Friday, but I initiate communications on Mondays. I like to schedule training sessions Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday between the hours of 8am – 2pm. I treat Wednesdays as a third weekend day. On Wednesdays I go to my favorite tea shop and indulge in activities that spark joy in my life. That way I have the weekend, then 2 days of work, then an off day, then another 2 days of work, then the weekend again. This reminds me of my senior year of college when I was able to schedule all of my classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So I had a four day weekend every week, and it felt like the ultimate life hack. I like to recreate that feeling of cheating the system now that I can structure my weeks as I see fit.
If you don’t have any idea what an ideal week would look like for you, consider giving it some thought. The simple act of imagining it and mapping it out can be a powerful way to manifest it into your reality more and more. Not every week will go as planned, but far more will than if you let other people plan your time for you.
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Sincerely Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team