There I was — relishing a week in total ‘flow’ state[1]. Nothing could stop me.

I didn’t have 52 things pulling my attention away from what mattered. I could focus day in, day out on what mattered. The quality of my work reflected that heightened level of focus. Even things I expected to be difficult came easily.

But then a piercing beeping sound interrupted my focus. It started out faint, but kept getting louder, and louder, and louder.

Suddenly, everything was dark, and I realized that I was in bed and it was time to face another day in my fledgling business where I had way too much to do and way too many people expecting me to deliver work.

I had three calls with about an hour between each where I could ‘work’. In a full eight-hour day I really only had two hours that weren’t squeezed between meetings, and those two hours came at the end of the day.

Looking at the rest of my week, it didn’t look much better. A few calls each day meant I had no day where I could just sit down and work without interruption.

Oh, the ideal week

Way back then I knew something needed to change; I just didn’t have any idea how to implement that change.

I knew my weeks were crazy, but prospects kept asking for calls on random days of the week and clearly it would be a terrible idea to say no to them. They were the ones with money that would pay my bills.

Then I learned that I’m a maker[2]. I need large blocks of time with no distraction to get things done. Dividing my day up into little hour-long chunks is a sure fire way to have no project really move forward effectively.

So I started saying no and designed my ideal week.

[Tweet “When I started saying ‘no’ and designed my ideal week, my business changed. “]

When I work with an ideal week, most of the time I get into the state of flow a number of times every week. You can too, if you sit down and properly set up your week.

Wait

Now before you can define your ideal week you need a few things.

First, you need to know what your purpose is and you need to know how that purpose relates to your business.

If you’re having trouble defining your purpose grab my PDF with 8 Questions to answer that will help you figure out your purpose. You can find it at the end of the post.

Purpose in hand

Once you’ve got your purpose in hand you’re ready to build out that ideal week.

For the makers among us, it means confining calls to one, maybe two, days a week. I do all my new prospect calls on Tuesdays and take calls on current projects on Monday mornings, which leaves me the rest of Monday to make progress on any items that come out of the calls.

I almost never deviate from this because I want to get work done, not spend hours on the phone each week.

I spend Tuesday morning before calls writing for one of the many sites I contribute to, or working ahead on the content for this site.

After those calls I have no call availability for the rest of the week. It’s all about getting work done for three full days with no interruptions.

I even try to get all the business errands I need to run done in those first two days, and get all my writing done Tuesday morning so I can devote three full consecutive days to pushing client projects forward.

Now that I’ve designed my week properly and limit calls to two days a week, I can fill out my weeks with clear focus and work from a state of flow most days of the week.

I don’t have to jump around between way too many projects. I get to focus on what matters instead of getting pulled around on the whims of others.

[Tweet “When you control your time, you can do more work, with better focus. “]

If that sounds like something you want to achieve get in touch and I’d love to help.

photo credit: clement127 cc