Why It's Important To Have Weekly Planning Meetings With Yourself

"Every minute spent planning saves ten minutes in execution." ~ Brian Tracy

Working from home is far different to going out to work every day.

The biggest challenge I find is self disciplin. It's so hard to keep working on my own without a boss standing over me telling me what to do and giving me deadlines.

But without deadlines I find I waste too much time. And in order to have deadlines I have to have a weekly  meeting with myself to figure out what I want to achieve during the week, what I need to do to achieve it and how long it's all going to take.

And this is why weekly  meetings are important even if you have to have them with yourself.
I usually have my weekly meeting with myself on a Friday afternoon.

This is a time when my weekly work is done (or not done) and I sit down and decide where to go from there and what has to be done the following week.

I'm a creature of routine. I have certain times and days when I do things. Even my housework has set times when I do it and how long it will take.

And I'm the same with my writing. It's my business and to keep it working as a business I need to treat it as a business and that means having meetings so that I can decide where I'm going.

I sit down with my big diary. I have an A4 desk diary where I write down everything that I need to do. I also write down the time it will take to do it, that way I know if I have enough time in a day to fit it all in.

By the time I've finished my weekly meeting with myself I know exactly what I'll be working on of the whole of the next week so my diary is full.

But I'm careful not to overfill my week with things to do otherwise I get frustrated and disheartened when I can't finish it all and I have to roll it over to the next week or work at the weekend.

So if you want to keep your business running like a business you need to sit down and have a meeting with yourself every week.

Then when Monday morning comes around you can quickly get to work because you know exactly what you need to do.

Being organised and knowing exactly what I  need to do and when to do it makes me really productive.