How to Win Your Week Before It Starts

Anchoring Who & How You'll Be

Most professionals lose their week by lunchtime Monday.

It doesn't happen in an instant as there's no single moment when control slips away.

It happens when we open email without preparing our focus and how we'll operate. It happens when we quickly react to a Slack or accept a meeting on autopilot. By lunchtime our aims have largely disappeared because we've drifted into other peoples' agendas. Now the week you intended to have is filled with what others need.

I did this for years. I called it "being responsive."

What I didn't see was that I'd essentially put myself on call for everyone else's priorities while my own most important work was pushed to the side. There was always an urgent something to which I acquiesced and became involved, and my important work was sidelined by me of all people.

The simple reframe that changed things for me was this: Responsiveness isn't a virtue if it comes at the expense of the work that actually matters.

Urgency and importance are not the same things, and while what often fills a Monday morning is urgent to someone, it may not be important or yours to attend to.

A more sublte layer to consider too is that reactive work feels productive.

Clearing requests, answering questions, moving things along for other people — it has the texture of accomplishment and momentum. If at the end of numerous days, you've generated progress for others and you've made little to no headway on matters that are yours, your time may be unanchored to a diminishing degree when it comes to you, your work, what you care about, and what you do best.

Pick Three to Win the Week

Your inbox will always be full, and there will always be more work to do. Your task, if you are to lead yourself, along with who and how you are, is to attend to your own important work before you've spent your best energy on theirs. Before you respond to anyone at the start of your week, answer this question:

What three outcomes would make this week matter?

Not tasks — outcomes. The difference is significant. 

Outcomes force you to think about what the work is actually for.

Write down your three, block time for each, and be ruthlessly devoted to completing each by Friday. Impossible? Some weeks yes but if you treat that time the way you treat a flight (as something you don't casually reschedule, and if it's moved, you rebook immediately), things change because YOU'VE changed.

Your week will not protect itself. No one is going to pull you aside and say, "I noticed you haven't worked on the thing that actually moves X forward." Doing important, meaningful-to-you, non-urgent is on you. You're the only one in the room who knows which requests warrant your time. 

So -- WHAT THREE OUTCOMES would make this week matter? 

Make those outcomes your anchors.  Protect non-negotiable time for each, show up, and do your work.

You're responsible for your week. Make sure you're the one running it.