Here’s a simple tool for you to use every Sunday afternoon or evening to help you prepare for the upcoming week. I call it “The Quad”. You can use a piece of paper or a Word Doc like this one or anything that works for you. The main concept here is that The Quad helps you categorize your entire week’s activities – your upcoming meetings, tasks and other activities – into one of four “quads”. Three of the sections or quads relate to each of your three goals for the year. You do have goals you want to achieve this year don’t you? The last section or quad is reserved for all your activities for the upcoming week that are related to working IN your business – meetings, payroll, meeting with suppliers,etc.
Using this tool consistently every week allows you to easily see how much of your time is spent on working ON your business (and life) versus working IN it.
If you use the The Quad template I created – click on the header to add the upcoming week (example Jan 15, 2018) and then save it to a folder of your choice on your desktop. Create a new file each week – every Sunday – if you want to see your history of your work and your success. This series of weekly quads becomes a work history.
The benefits include a visual overview and history of the time you’ve spent on various tasks related to working on your business goals (growth) versus day to day business activities (maintenance). It also helps you allocate your time during the week to activities and tasks that are truly meaningful versus allowing time to be squandered on non-essential activities. It also helps you develop an integrated mindset – ensuring that some time during the week it dedicated to the long term growth of yourself and your business. A fan of Darren Hardy, I adapted his version of this tool called The Holy Trinity and the Devil’s Vortex.
