Success Advice
Design Your Ideal Week – The Simple Idea That Will Change Your Career.
Recently, I got introduced to the idea of designing my ideal week. Some of you may have heard of the “Design Your Ideal Day” exercise but this is an entire week and it’s heavily focused on your career.
I went into the exercise with a relatively low expectation as to the results it would produce in my own career.
The power of intention.
The reason I fell upon this powerful exercise was that a recruiter asked me to list the Top 10 Companies I’d like to work for as either a contractor or employee – or even as a collaboration.
Again, I thought this exercise was dumb, but I’ve adopted the mindset to always try new things and see where they lead.
I wrote down my list of top ten companies and for the last five years there has been one name that’s been at the top of the list. This company was the reason I changed my life and they are responsible for my obsession with personal development.
Once I committed this list in writing and sent it to my recruiter, it made everything clearer.
What happened next was where the surprise came: The owner of the company that was at the top of the list reached out to me on LinkedIn.
I mean WTF. How does that happen? It’s called the power of intention.
“When you’re clear about what you want, things start to align”
The owner of this business then had several phone calls with me and eventually after a few weeks, flew to Melbourne to spend four hours with me.
At the end of the session, being a man who’s been surrounded by leaders in the personal development industry, he asked me to design my ideal week. I did what he said.
Start with putting aside a day.
The very thought of this exercise felt like a mammoth task. I sucked it up like the princess I can sometimes be and set aside a whole day. You can’t truly get into designing your life and career unless you put aside time.
I began the task at 8 am on a Friday and ideas and thoughts started to flow out of me. I was in a state of flow the entire day. I felt the passion oozing out of me and boy was it exciting!
“The artwork that is your life cannot be painted in an hour – you need significant chunks of time set aside to do what most are unprepared ever to do”
The nuts and bolts of designing a 7-day week.
Like all my advice I’m going to keep the How-To part dead simple.
- Open a blank Word Document
- Title the document “My Ideal Week”
- Set aside one page per day and start with Monday
- List all the tasks and habits you’ll be doing for each day (ensure career tasks are there too)
- Map out every task with a time next to it and include sleeping/eating too
That’s it! So freaking simple that a five-year-old could do it. We need to keep chatting about this though because there’s a few things to know before you begin the exercise.
If you’re trying to mimic similar results, you’ll need some inspiration as well.
This was a hack I learned from Ryan Holiday although I do it differently. Ryan advocates that you should listen to the same music over and over while you’re in a creative space and completing an exercise like this.
I tried is hack and it failed. Listening to the same soundtrack over and over gets boring for me and it becomes annoying quickly. What works for me is to go to YouTube and select an 8-hour long movie soundtrack playlist. There will be huge peaks and moment of near silence.
This type of music that is continually different allows you to reflect on your thoughts with a variety of different perspectives. Different types of music affect you differently.
Designing your ideal week requires emotion.
That’s one of the reasons for the music playing in the background. I also did another house clean out (yes I’m a crazy minimalist!) before beginning the exercise. There were letters from ex-girlfriends and reminders of past businesses that failed badly.
I chose to discard these items right before designing my ideal week (my new life) as a symbol that change is coming. My mind began to adopt the same thinking and triggered states of massive change in my physical being.
Completing a task that has the sole outcome of producing change needs emotion. Emotion moves you into action and gives you the energy you need to execute rather than procrastinate.
Empty space and procrastination are required.
Throughout the day of designing your ideal week, you’ll discover moments of empty space and procrastination. Tim Ferriss talks a lot on his podcast about the value of procrastination.
“I used to think procrastination was a disease until Tim Ferriss opened my eyes to the benefits”
As I designed my ideal week, I scheduled an hour on Saturdays for procrastination so I could stop feeling bad about it.
Procrastination and empty space are where ideas will come to you that you can add to your ideal week. It’s a beautiful thing procrastination.
Your habits will be revealed.
Habits and success are spoken about as being directly related all the time. I agree.
By designing your ideal week, you’ll see what you do consistently. There will be common themes.
During my day of designing my ideal week, I saw that blogging and health were key themes in my life. I realized at the end of the exercise that I could not live without either.
I even wrote a quote at the end of my ideal week document that said: “To not blog equals failure to me.” That’s how powerful it can be to write your days down in this format.
Where your time is spent can be difficult to see.
This exercise will allow you to clearly see where you’d like your time to be spent. After you’ve completed the exercise, you can compare the results with what your actual week looks like.
This incredible comparison will show you how your career is right now and where you’d like it to be. You’ll have a roadmap of exactly the differences of where you are today and where you want to be.
Epic isn’t it?
The separation between life and work should be blurred.
Your ideal week will have tasks that are related to your career and tasks that are outside of that area of your life. What I found so magical about this exercise is that by the time I had completed the seventh day, both my career and life seemed to blend into one.
What I was doing in my career was the same as what I wanted to do outside of my career. My vision to inspire the world through personal development and entrepreneurship is currently done outside of my career mostly.
In the new context of my ideal week, I could now see how the two could become one.
When the intersection of your career, life and passion comes together, that’s when you go on to experience the success you’ve always wanted.
That’s what it’s like to live your passion and jump out of bed.
Review 48 hours later
Upon completing the ideal week exercise, I want you to go back and review it 48-hours later. I want you to make any necessary changes to each day.
When I did this, I realized that I had left out date night with my girlfriend which is a key component to my week. In the rush of passion that comes from doing this exercise and the state of flow that you’ll be in, it’s easy to leave things out or forget items that matter to you.
Time to design your ideal week.
Everything I have just mapped out for you has the power to change not only your career but your life. This exercise is transformational – and it will give you a clear picture of what you want.
Half the battle is knowing what you want before you can go out and get it. I get so many emails from people that have all the so-called “Success Habits,” and I find the biggest challenge is knowing what your passion is, and what you actually want.
Enjoy designing your ideal week.
You only get one life and one career. It’s time to design it how you want it.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
Success Advice
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We’re constantly told about how stores are closing down and how shoppers prefer online options, but is it worth questioning this theory?
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Success Advice
How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
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These words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds
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Motivation
From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone
By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality
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