For many salespeople, one of the most impactful techniques for time management is the “ideal week.” I’ve written in-depth about creating your ideal week and helped many people implement this ideal week blueprint into their schedule.
If you’ve used the ideal week method to take control of your time, you know it works!
Unfortunately, an ideal week won’t work forever. When you take control of your time and you’re able to accomplish more in fewer hours, there’s a good chance that you’re going to have to deal with success.
Success means more business, more responsibilities, bigger numbers, and bigger goals.
When you’ve got new things to do, the old way of doing things won’t work. If you’re making progress, your ideal week needs to progress with you!
What Breaks An Ideal Week?
Your ideal week is simply a plan to manage your time in a way that works best for you, but this plan is NOT “set-it-and-forget-it.” It must be updated, altered, or completely renewed as your scenario changes. Here are a few examples of when your ideal week will need to change:
New Hires or Direct Reports
Your sales team expands through a big hiring initiative, or your company is consolidating and you absorb a new department. Now you don’t have enough hours blocked for one-on-ones and other management tasks for a team this size.
New Travel Requirements
You used to work from your office every day, but a new promotion has you traveling 20 weeks a year. You realize there’s no way to stick to your ideal week when you’re on the road.
New Responsibilities
Your company reorganized, and now you’ve got a new workflow with new processes and new paperwork. Your old ideal week can’t handle all the new stuff on your plate!
Or, Time Simply Goes By
It’s pretty obvious that a big change in your job calls for a redesigned ideal week. But even if nothing big happens, your business and your goals still change a little bit every day. Over time, it adds up—and your ideal week is out of date.
Make A Plan For Tweaking Your Week
The ideal week doesn’t last forever! I set aside time at the end of every quarter to review my goals, make adjustments, and examine my ideal week.
After any change in your responsibilities—or at the end of a quarter—ask yourself these three questions:
- Is this ideal week still working for me?
- Could anything about my ideal week be tweaked to make it better?
- Am I still doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing, according to my ideal week?
If you’re on track and still love your ideal week, great! If not, it’s time to make some changes—and no, the answer is not adding more hours to your workday! Take a look at my process for adjusting your ideal week.
New travel requirements might mean you need two ideal weeks—one for when you’re traveling and one for when you’re in the office.
If you’ve got a new increase in your workload, from new hires or new requirements, there simply might not be enough hours in a week no matter how you block your time, and you’ll need to learn to delegate. (More articles on that subject are coming soon! Be sure to sign up for updates!)
What’s Your Ideal Week?
Keep your ideal week up-to-date! It’s the key to taking control of your workday, maintaining balance, and getting more done.
Until next time—go sell some stuff!
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.