Business Balance with a Structured Week

No matter what time you have at work it is always filled with endless tasks, meetings, emails, phone calls and to do lists. This is fine up to a point but is this effective use of your time? In the companies I have worked with I would estimate that all could work a 3 day week in hours and be just as effective as working a 5 day week.

So my objective was to introduce a structured week within the companies incorporating The Enlightened Business, with the purpose of increasing performance and also finding more balance and time to enjoy life more.

I feel that there is an inherent need to be ‘doing’ all of the time. When you continually do and don’t have breaks to enjoy life more you miss out on what life is all about.

Creating time isn’t about cramming more things into your day or allowing yourself you complete more things on your to do list. It is about realizing what steps move you forwards in business and in life, taking those and then freeing yourself up to Live more, Be more and Do less.

The key to this is firstly to establish what one step can I take today to move my business forward and then what one step can I take to move my life forwards. Once this has been established take the steps as early in the day as possible. This could be getting an important piece of work done or exercising to improve your health. Whatever step you decide to do in a day to improve your whole life. Take it.

A business stays alive by generating revenue. A wise step therefore would be to do something that would increase revenue or at least improve revenue flow. A personal life that is happy, fulfilling and healthy is also a priority and so taking one step to improve your personal life in a day also needs to be taken.

It is with this Awareness and by practicing every day you will be able to look back and see how far you have come. It is point specific and in balance. You are doing something which improves your life and your business life every day that is tangible. In doing this you will move forwards in the areas in your life that matter most. Having a successful revenue generating business and having a personal life which is focused on happiness, fulfillment and fun.

The next step is to look at all of the typical things your need to do in a week. If you are an Entrepreneur dependent on the size of you company it could involve, Sales, Marketing, Admin, Finance, IT, Leadership, HR and so on. The list is long for most of us but once again if we make this list we increase our awareness..

Following this look at your list and mark what are revenue generating activities and what are not. The objective here is to isolate the activities in your week which create dragging and a heavy feeling inside of you and do not propel you forwards. Meetings about meetings, managing and responding to email flow, administrative, HR, Financial reporting are just a few areas which often take up time and put you in a different frame of mind than the one you  need to revenue generate and propel your business forwards.

Now take all of these heavier non-revenue generating  aspects to your work and create one day to do all of this. For me I choose a Monday as it frees up the rest of my week, to create, free up time and enjoy what I am better at for the rest of the week.

In compressing everything into one day and communicating this to your team instantly you will notice that you will have spare time. Your effectiveness will improve dramatically and your momentum and engagement in doing the things in life you want to do will be enhanced.

It can sometimes create little barriers where your team might feel the need to drag you away from what is going to move your life forwards but as long as this is non-essential you should stay focused on taking the two steps in each day, compressing the admin tasks into one day and become free to have more time, be more effective and enjoy life more.

When we go on holiday our work intensity often is heightened as we compress what needs to be done into the last days before we go. We work hard, efficiently and effectively. Operating and running a structured week is the same. Compress what needs to be done into one day and free yourself up.

Once you have got to this stage deploy this structured week to those around you and encourage them to do the same. You will find that although slightly different to how you might have been used to the free time will become yours to do as you please.

In the Enlightened companies I am working with. If someone hits their objectives and targets then they should be allowed to do less and not more. If they are effective in revenue creating activities in less time than others then they should be congratulated at being great at what they do.

When you create a structured week you create more balance within yoursef and your company. An increase in performance, more time, more effectiveness and most importantly you have more fun. Creating Flow in your company isn’t hard it is about being definite on your objectives, staying focused and then going with the flow.