How to create a weekly schedule that works for you

Making it as a successful online entrepreneur means developing a disciplined work ethic, even if it’s only a side hustle. As a freelancer you will most likely have deadlines to keep. But if you’re building an online business of your own from scratch, like I’m doing, it’s completely your own time to use productively or to waste. 

And if like me you’re the type of person who has some difficulty with that, and keep getting stuck procrastinating, you have to create a weekly schedule that works for you. 

In this guide I give you two types of schedules that can help you with staying disciplined and increasing your productivity.

• A very detailed weekly schedule that lists every daily activity for very organized people
• And a more general easy to follow Check schedule for those with a more creative or relaxed attitude.

Both are based on the systems business consultant/lifestyle coach Caleb Jones puts forward in his book ‘The Unchained Man, The Alpha Male 2.0’. This book is mainly about masculinity in the modern era, but is also perfect for finding excellent advice on building a successful, stress-free business.

He has designed two time management systems that are both flexible and tailored to your personality type:

The E3D system and the Check system.

The E3D system is perfect when:

• You’re by nature a more organized or detail oriented person
• Your work life is very varied. One work week can be completely different from another
• You have many varied small tasks

The Check system on the other hand is great for people who:

• Are more lose or creative by nature
• Are not that organized
• Don’t have a very complicated routine

Both systems can be done with any type of scheduling or calendar platform you can think of, as long as it suits your personality and way of working. You can use an old fashioned calendar, legal pad, time management app on your smartphone or PC, cloud based calendars like Google Calendar (which I prefer to use) or Trello or an excel sheet designed to your needs. Most important here: use whatever method or platform works for you!

In this first part of this scheduling guide I will focus on the Check system, which I use with great success. By nature I am not the most organized of people. I won’t forget appointments and I am actually quite punctual. But when it comes to scheduling and doing the work that needs to be done for my own business I was hopeless. While I was motivated and filled to the brim with great ideas I would become stuck. I wrote in my  earlier article about some proven methods to overcome procrastination. These methods in combination with the Check System have been perfect for me in increasing my productivity tenfold!

The Check system is quite easy to maintain and actually fun to fill in every week. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

The Check Time Management System

First, pick your favorite scheduling platform (Google Calendar, Trello etc).

Then divide your daily (or weekly) activities you do for your business into 3 categories:

• Useless Work
• Standard Work
• Improvement Work

Useless work

This is every type of business activity you’re doing that is basically and absolutely useless. Those shouldn’t be too hard to recognize. Scratch these from your calendar and planning.

Standard work

These are the activities in your business that have to be done and make your current earnings. They can be working for a client. Or doing some bookkeeping before tax season. So basically the every day to day activities of your business.

Improvement Work

These are all the time and effort you spend on either improving your business or you personally. They can be hiring and vetting the perfect new employee when you’re expanding. Or taking a business course to improve your own knowledge on marketing strategy. 

Setting your priorities

Useless work is a waste of time, so scratch all useless activities. Both Standard and Improvement Work are equal important, but you can prioritize according to what you and your business needs at that moment.

For instance if your business is doing OK, but stagnating somewhat you need to focus more on doing Improvement Work.

Filling in the actual Check Systems Calendar

Now you’ve set your priorities we can start filling and using the actual Check System.

• First choose 1 to 4 activities that need to be addressed daily. They can be both Standard and Improvement Work activities and you can add personal activities like exercising or reading a book.
• You can choose more than 4 daily activities, depending on how organized you are. If you’re not, keep it at 4 max.
• Draw or print a 7 day schedule   at the start of every week, including dates. You  must  have a physical copy at your place of work, next to a big black marker
• Write down your daily activities on every day of the week
• Every time you have done and finished an activity you cross it out using your big black marker
• Make sure to include separate appointments and important dates like deadlines
• At the end of the week count all the activities you have crossed out. If at least 75% or your weekly activities have been done and crossed out you can count that week as a success!

Using this method you will notice that within a couple of weeks your overall productivity has been increased. Over time you will finish 100% of your activities as much as is needed. But know that with 75% finished you will still have had a successful week.

Conclusion

As I have said, for me this Check System, in combination with a couple of small exercises to overcome procrastination, has been perfect. At the end of every week I can look back with satisfaction at having done an impressive amount of work for my business. While having a lot of free time I can spend as I please as well!

Next I will write an article about the E3D System. This schedule is far more detailed and if implemented correctly very, very productive. 

Bart