Plan your week effectively and you’ll get to your goals faster than you ever thought possible. Plan ineffectively—or not at all—and your dreams will slip farther and farther into the future, always remaining just out of reach.
If your weekly planning routine doesn’t have you well on your way to achieving your biggest goals, join me today for a chat with my good friend Lisa Michaud—success coach, speaker, real estate investor, and host of the Goalden Girls podcast.
In our convo, Lisa shares some of the biggest weekly planning mistakes that people make, the best weekly planning tips, and which planning systems work best for whom.
We discuss:
- Is weekly planning essential for success?
- What are the biggest weekly planning mistakes people make?
- What are your best weekly planning tips?
- What are your tips for those who are in a season of life that makes planning very difficult (a new baby, multiple jobs, etc.)?
- How can routine-resistant people make weekly planning work for them?
- How do we recover when our plans get thrown off by the unexpected?
- Do certain planning systems work better than others?
Interview
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
“If we fail to plan, then we plan to fail.” These are very wise words from Benjamin Franklin and they lead me back to our topic of conversation today, which is weekly planning. I just sat down with my great friend, Lisa Michaud. Lisa is a success coach, speaker, real estate investor, and the host of the Goalden Girls podcast. Lisa shared with me some of the most common mistakes that people make when sitting down to do their weekly planning. And she also shared some really great practical take home tips that we can all use to be more effective with our weekly planning. When we can do this, when we can be effective with our weekly planning, it allows us to actually achieve some of these goals that we set out for ourselves. And it allows us to achieve them a whole lot faster. If you’re new around here, my name is Rachel Harrison-Sund, and I help people create a passive income stream selling journals, planners, notebooks, and more on the Kindle, direct publishing platform.
If that sounds interesting to you, then don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell so that you can be notified every time I put out one of these videos, which is each and every Monday. Alright, let’s get talking to Lisa Michaud. Alright. Hello, Lisa. Thank you so much for joining me again today. It’s been a little while since you were here on the channel, but so glad to have you here again. So for those that haven’t met you yet, can you just give us kind of the Coles notes version of who you are and what you do and who you help?
Lisa Michaud:
Yeah. Hi, Rachel. And hello everyone. I’m so excited to be here again. Thanks for having me. So Coles notes version. I am a success coach speaker and the host of Goalden Girls podcast. And I am coming to you today, live from Vancouver, but I’m going to Cole’s note this and take you back a few years and tell you that my life was completely different about six years ago. Six years ago, I was living in Northern Canada in a really small town. My husband and I both had really fantastic jobs. We had a house, we were buying our real estate empire and building it up. And then I had a health scare. And for me, I faced the reality that I only had a year or two left to live. And I remember laying in bed with my husband that night and turning to him and saying, what do you want to do?
Like, what are we going to do if I only have a year or two left to live? And my husband, he’s a pragmatic guy. He looks at me and he said, Lisa, you’re the one with the timeline, what do you want to do? And the first thing that came to my mind was move to Vancouver. And Rachel, you probably know this. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved this city. I loved being here. I would come here for dance, conventions and concerts, and my parents would fall asleep in the hotel room. And I would sneak out to the window and stare at the city lights and listen to my Christina Aguilera CD, now y’all know how old I am, and just dream about living in the city. And it was one of those things that like a lot of our childhood dreams, and maybe you can relate to this, it just became impossible.
At the time I was 12, I couldn’t move out on my own, but then my university wasn’t in the city and then my boyfriend wasn’t in the city and then my next boyfriend wasn’t in the city and my house, wasn’t there, my mortgage wasn’t there, my job wasn’t there. And it became so expensive. And I had just written off this whole idea, this whole life that I wanted as impossible, not for me. But in that moment, when I had that health scare, it really woke me up to say, do I want to listen to my excuses? Do I want to keep looking at these list of reasons why I can’t or am I going to start asking, how is it possible? And for me, that was the decision I made, the decision to stop looking at the list of reasons why I can’t do something and start to say how it is possible.
And so when I say that I’m coming to you from downtown Vancouver, I mean, it took a little while we had to quit our jobs, sell some houses, sell a lot of stuff, call our parents and tell them, yes, we just got married. Also we’re quitting everything and leaving it all behind, but it’s really cool to get to be here in Vancouver because we started to ask, how is it possible? And that’s kind of the Coles notes version of what I do as a speaker, as a coach is to really help women and entrepreneurs and executives, parents ,ask for whatever your dream is. First of all, give you the permission to really understand what that is and the courage to go for it and make a plan to get there and start to ask, how is it possible and then get you out of your own way to make it happen. So that’s what I’m all about. That makes me so grateful to be here in Vancouver. Every morning I wake up and I think I’m so grateful to be here and I want to help as many other people live, whatever your dream is as possible too.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
I love that. I never ever get tired of hearing that story. You’re always one of the most inspirational people in my life. So I just love all of that. That’s great. And I’m so glad to have you here today talking about weekly planning because that’s definitely something that I’m sure has helped you experience all of the success that you’re currently enjoying, and I know it’s probably been a process as it is for all of us, but I know that you’ve got to have some good tips to share with us today, so let’s get into it. But first of all, I want to ask, do you think it’s possible to succeed without weekly planning? Like is weekly planning on that granular level? Is that actually essential for success or is it kind of just good enough to, on January 1st set your goals for the year or even on a quarterly basis and just kind of have those in your head and kind of go from there or is it really important to break things down on that small, granular, weekly level?
Lisa Michaud:
Such a good question. Okay. So I say my husband’s a pragmatic guy, I’m the dreamer. So I’m going to say, I believe that anything is possible. I think if you have the right time, the right situation, the right money in your bank account, the right connection, I am sure that anything is possible. There are people probably that have had higher levels of success that have somehow made it work. But I believe a lot of that is luck and circumstance and it’s the exception, not the rule. Stephen Covey even writes about this in his classic book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People around weekly planning. And that’s really what was introduced to me in the last 10 years. And it’s been over a decade of practicing this. So I’ll share with you all my best tips and all the mistakes, all the things over the last 10 years.
But I do believe that it’s essential for success. And I think there’s a couple pieces to it. Number one, I think the biggest thing is it’s not necessarily about the planning, it’s just about being proactive. It’s about sitting down and being intentional and saying, Hey, this is what I want to create. This is where I want my life to go. This is the kind of relationship I want to have, this is the kind of business I want to have. This is the kind of lifestyle I want to have. This is not how I want to be spending my days. And its about being proactive about that because, 10 years ago, this was true. I think today it’s even more true, probably, and if YouTube is still around and this is still up on your channel in 20 years, it’s gonna be even more true.
So much of what we do everyday is reactive. The bills came in, I better pay these bills. The email came in, that’s other people’s agendas. I better respond to that Facebook notification that the podcast came out. I better go listen to that. It’s other, people’s agendas, other people’s things. And we’re often reacting to it. And what I see is so important to success is to be proactive instead. To not just look at what are the right things to do, or what are the things I’m expected to do. And again, from a granular level to reply to that Facebook message, that email, all the way up to doing the right thing and going to school, getting a job with benefits, all those things it’s about really about taking back control and saying, this is what I want in my life.
I’m going to make it happen. So I think the bigger picture is it’s about being proactive. And I say, it’s probably pretty hard. You might be able to have success without being proactive, but it’s probably pretty hard to have aligned success, the kind of success that you actually find meaningful. This is what I want without some sort of proactivity. And weekly planning to me is one way, one really powerful tool to be proactive in your life. I find that so often when we set, I mean, 2020 was a great example of this. If you set a goal for 2020, like good luck that things would have stayed the same by April of 2020. And also sometimes day by day, things just change so fast. We don’t always have a hundred percent control over everything we do in a day. So I find a week is just a great timeframe where it gives you enough time that you can make some progress, see some things happen, but it’s not so little time that things get in the way and you can’t come up with that. So I find the week is a nice balance in there. So, I mean, yes, anything is possible, is it likely, probably not. And even if you do get success, it’s probably not aligned success.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Right. Okay. So with the people that you work with and even yourself, where do you most commonly see this whole process fall off the rails? So I guess what I’m asking are what are the biggest mistakes you see people make when they’re trying to approach the whole process of weekly planning?
Lisa Michaud:
Oh, such a good question. Okay. So let me just say I’ve made all these mistakes. So number one, and I’m just gonna share the mistakes. We can talk about tips too, but big mistakes. I see so many times we put too many things on the list and I have been totally guilty of this. We put the laundry list of all the things we wish we would do. I’m gonna put them all down and say, we’re going to do it in the next week where it probably should be stretched out over a month or even a quarter. So that’s a really big mistake is putting too much on your plate and then getting disappointed at the end of the week when you didn’t get those things done and thinking the problem is weekly planning as opposed to being strategic about it.
One of the other mistakes I see is oftentimes focusing on things like busy work or things that don’t necessarily move the needle in what you actually want to achieve. So this can often be other people’s priorities coming in. Like, let me give you a good example. Achieving “inbox zero.” It sounds nice. It looks good. If you’re somebody who gets inbox anxiety, that must feel good, but have you actually moved the needle on anything actually productive? That’s the mistake I see is people don’t actually think about is what I’m putting on this list, what I’m saying I’m going to do, is that truly going to impact and make a difference in what I want in my life?
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Is that one of those like urgent versus important type deals?
Lisa Michaud:
I think urgent versus important, also other people’s priorities, also just not, not clearly understanding what you want. And then second of all, what are the things that are actually going to get you there? Because those are two things that I think we often don’t think about enough. And we think a lot about, I might have to have my website perfect or send out this many emails or have this blog post writer have this many followers without really thinking, well what’s the actual end game here? What do I want, what kind of a lifestyle do I want? What kind of team do I want to build? What kind of an impact do I want to have and what are the things that move the needle towards that? And then urgent versus important for sure. But here’s the thing, often the urgent things we can’t even plan for them necessarily, always in a week, sometimes things happen that your boss comes in and throws an extra project at you. School closes for the day, or somebody’s sick in your house. We often can’t even plan for those things. So yes. And also it goes deeper than just that urgent versus important.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Okay. Why do you think that we put so much stuff on our to do list to begin with in a week? Cause I do this all the time. Is this just a matter of overestimating what you can get done in a week? Or is it that we all do this and we end up with this list that’s got like 40 items on it and you get to Friday and you feel like crap because you’ve only got a couple of things off the list, but really it wasn’t really realistic to begin with. So I don’t know if you have any insight as to where that habit actually comes from and why we are doing this to ourselves
Lisa Michaud:
I think as I’ve been guilty of this too, that’s one of the things that I would say here’s a tip for you right off the bat., if you’re planning your weeks, I think a great practice is to also look at what’s the task and how much time do you think it’s going to take you to complete it and then add like 50% of time on there. When I did this, there was a week where I did this and I don’t even think I added the buffer time. I think I literally was like, Oh, this will take me two hours. This will take me five hours. There’s been weeks where I I tallied it all up, I planned myself 150 hours of work. Just to give you a perspective, you only have 168 hours in a week. And I was planning to work for 150 of those.
So I’m completely guilty of this. And I also think it’s kind a tangled ball of yarn that we each have to kind of pull the strings and figure out why we do this. So let me share with you a couple of the reasons why I do this and maybe some of these will resonate with you or resonate with anybody listening. I think it’s important to remember you’re your own best expert and start to ask yourself why, where does that come from? For me, one of the things I definitely noticed was an addiction to being busy. And I realized I thought being busy means I’m important and busy means I’m making progress. And I really have this attachment to being busy. And I noticed this when I went from having my daughter at home and only getting six to eight hours of work in a week to her going to daycare, where I thought, Oh my gosh, everything’s going to change for me.
I’ve got literally 30 something more hours a week. I’m going to go to the gym. I want to talk to friends and this is pre COVID, I’m going to leave my house. Like I’m going to crush my business, all these things. And what happened is I ended up still being in the same position of having way too many things on my to-do list. Still not getting things done, still not going to the gym. And I was like, what the heck? And what I realized is that when I had more time, all they did was just add more things to the list and I wasn’t necessarily more strategic about it. So when I looked back and I realized I actually could have literally tripled the time I was working and had a couple of days off a week and felt good, but I didn’t.
Instead I had 10 X the amount of things that I wanted to do just cause I wanted to feel important. I wanted to feel like I was making progress. So I think addiction to being busy in our culture, I think that’s really big too hustle culture, grinding, all that stuff. I think a lot of people struggle with that. Another one for me too, has been people pleasing. So saying yes to everybody, every opportunity, everything and helping everybody. And that can also soak up my list too. And so I ended up doing things for others before I do things for me. I can start with my list for me being only this big and by the end of the week, it’s expanded and I’m putting other people’s priorities before mine. And so I think if you’re listening and you’ve ever done this and if you’ve never tried weekly planning, trust me, you’ll probably run into this at some point.
It’s important to also look at the patterns, understand what is happening. You can do an audit in reverse and say, okay, what are the things I didn’t do? And why? What are the things that kept coming up, kept getting my way, but spot the patterns in yourself because some of them might be better boundaries – lock the door and have open hours maybe at work, or better boundaries with your kids or better boundaries with clients or bosses. And some of it might be deeper stuff like like feeling like if you’re not busy, if you’re not being productive, you’re not worthy of things. Saying yes to everybody else instead of saying yes to things that matter to you and putting everyone else’s needs above yours. So I think there’s two levels of it. There’s a tactical and then there’s also the emotional, there’s the deeper stuff that absolutely impacts the tactical things we think we’re going to do.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Right. Okay. So before we get into some good practical tips, are there any other kind of big mistakes that you see people making that you want to call out?
Lisa Michaud:
Yeah. So we kind of talked about it, but I just want to call it out, cause it’s a big one. It is totally underestimating how long things are going to take, you overestimating how many things we can do, underestimating how long it’s going to take us. I also see a really big mistake is a lot of just transferring anything you didn’t do last week or last month and just putting it on the next list without really questioning, Is this still the right thing I should be doing?
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
I do that all the time. I’m sorry.
Lisa Michaud:
Some of It’s legit, some things still have to get done and they weren’t a big enough priority last week. But if you’re continuing to do that and it’s still not a priority, then the question is like, why? Should it be a priority? And if something else needs to come off your plate or is this something that you feel like you should be doing? And on some level it’s not the right thing. It’s not the right next move. And number five, I kind of touched on this, but I think a really big mistake we make is by keeping everything tactical, keeping everything in the head and not realizing that there’s often deeper pattern of why things keep coming up, not understanding what is it that I can actually change? Because when we look week by week by week, things might look very different.
Like, well, this week it was the kids and then the next week, it’s the neighbors. And then in 10 weeks, it’s my partner. But the underlying pattern is putting out other people before you, or maybe not having the support systems that you need or not being able to say no. So that’s, I would say the last one, which is looking at any patterns and people just think that it’s all tactical is like, Oh, well, weekly planning just doesn’t work for me or I can never get ahead or I’m not in charge of my time. And that puts us in a mindset where if we always believe that we’re not in control, well, we’re never going to be in control. We’re never going to be able to change it. So I think it’s about taking ownership and realizing how can I look at this maybe a little bit deeper so that I’m still in charge and how can you make planning and strategies work for you.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Yeah, that’s all so great. Alright. So with those big mistakes out of the way let’s talk about some practical tips that people can actually take away with them today when it comes to actually sitting down on a Monday or Friday, and maybe that could be one of them, when are we supposed to do this weekly planning? So let’s talk about those tips that people can actually use to take away and do their weekly planning a little bit more successfully moving forward.
Lisa Michaud:
So first of all, great question, asking when do you do it. Depends on you. It depends on what works for you. And that’s going to be kind of a theme throughout everything that I share. It’s about experimenting and figuring out what’s going work for you. When I worked in my corporate job, I found Friday afternoons were perfect time to do this. I don’t know where everyone else was, but they weren’t bothering me. So it was a great time to plan my next week. Now that I run my business, I find Monday mornings are a great time for me to do this. Some people find Sundays a really great time. Maybe you work shift work, and we’re here talking about weekly planning, but your shift is like a six day, six day shift, and so it might be at the beginning of your shift where your plan or the beginning of your time off where you plan.
So it’s really about figuring out what’s gonna work for you, depending on what your life is. And don’t be afraid as with everything else to experiment, try something. And chances are as your life changes, as you go into different seasons, different spaces, different priorities that might change. Like I said, I went from a Friday, I’ve done some Sundays and now I’m on Mondays. So it really depends on you and what’s happening in your life. Figure out what works for you. That’s the most important thing. So the first thing I would say in terms of how to actually do this, if maybe you’re a digital calendar person, maybe you’re a paper person pick one and stick with it. See what works for you. I think that’s the number one thing. Number two, put aside 30 to 60 minutes to actually plan. So put away your phone, maybe leave it in a different room, turn off your notifications and really sit down and give yourself that space to plan.
Because if you can do weekly planning effectively, it will save you hours and hours and help you move the needle on all sorts of stuff if you do it really well. So give yourself that time and that space. What I’ve also found, here’s another little tip with your weekly planning. I used to just sit down and be like, okay, what do I want to get done? And I love to do lists, but also sometimes I find there’s a lot of guilt with it. Like I should’ve gotten this done before, or why am I still carrying this over? Or there can be a lot of heaviness, like, Oh, I’m dreading doing this. So what I like to start with instead of going right to the what do I need to do? I like to start with celebrations and reflections. So first of all what am I really proud of from last week?
And sometimes it’s small. Sometimes it’s like, man, I’m really proud that I took a nap when I was tired because I haven’t done that in a long time. And sometimes there’s bigger things like I’m really excited that I finally got that page on my website up or I’m really excited that new client found me. And that was an amazing opportunity. So I think starting in that energy is a lot more powerful and bringing that as opposed to all the guilt and the dread, and then hoping we have a better week this week, which isn’t going to happen in that space.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
I started doing with my weekly planning too. I would always start on the, what were the top three things that I accomplished last week that I’m most proud of and you’re right. It just puts you in a feeling of accomplishment before you even started tackling what you need to do next week. So yeah, for sure. That was a bit of a game changer for me too.
Lisa Michaud:
Oh, I love it. Yeah. It’s super simple, but it does make a really big difference. I also think it’s really powerful to reflect and I have some clients that have a whole system that they use and I have some clients that just ask a simple question. They have a sense of what their definition of success is. And I say, how successful did I feel last week? It can be as simple as that. I think some good questions are what are you proud of? What progress did you make? What’s a big challenge that you faced last week and what would you advise somebody else in that situation to do? Another great question can even be, what would my future self want for me to do this week? So I think those are some ideas of questions you can ask and make it work for you.
Ask what am I happy about? What do I wish I had done differently? Whatever that is, even as simple as what worked and what didn’t, but having a bit of that reflection piece. And I think, especially in uncertain times, when things are changing, when things are evolving really quickly and I don’t even mean on a global scale, like if you have a side hustle that you’re trying to create, things are changing fast and new platforms are coming out, new rules are coming out. It’s really important to have that reflection piece built in. So I always start my planning celebration, reflection, get myself in that space and then look at my goal. And I’m an advocate of having one goal at a time, one thing to focus on and look at your goal, read it, feel it, and then say, what am I going to do this week to move the needle on that goal?
That’s, that’s a big one. Then you can figure out, okay, how long are these things going to take me? Have I planned for 150 hours of work when there’s only 168 hours in a week, then maybe I need to trim a few things back there and then actually putting that time on your calendar. I think this is important to say too, because I’ve been very guilty of this in the past. I think, especially right now, it’s hard to think about ourselves. We have big goals, we want to achieve things, but it’s also really important that we take care of ourselves and feel good. So with my weekly planning I add an intention, and this is mine, you can borrow it if you want, or you can create your own. But mine says, “I’m stepping into the woman I’m meant to be and the impact
I’m meant to have. I am my best self. I’m healthy, thriving, and inspired. I’m energized as I grow and expand.” So yours doesn’t have to be like that. It could be something like, I am successful in my family, or I’m a happy parent or whatever that is, but I also have an intention. And then I say, what am I going to do this week to live that, to be that. And so that’s why I also think about things like, how am I feeling? Do I feel like I miss friends? We all miss friends right now.
Do I I feel like I have to be this to be my best self? |Do I need to take an afternoon off or an evening and read a book? Do I want to take a nice bath? Do I want to go have a workout. Do I want to do an online yoga class? Like what do I want to do? And really think about those things too, because most of us are probably really good at planning the work stuff and not as good at planning the fun stuff, the stuff that actually makes us feel good and allows us to then continue to do the great work that we want to do and build the businesses we want to build. So I really look at those two pieces.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Yeah. That’s really important because whenever I look at my to-do list, there’s never anything on there like take a bath, it’s just all the stuff that we have to, or should get done. How many of us actually build in those self-care activities as an actual to-do item? Like I wager that almost none of us do that, but of course it’s super important because that’s the foundation of how we are going to have the energy and mental capacity to actually get everything else done. So of course, why wouldn’t we be addressing that first? And normally it’s not even addressed second, third or fourth or at all. So that’s super important.
Lisa Michaud:
Yeah. It’s amazing how much we don’t talk aboutwhere everything good comes from you feeling good. And if you’re not thriving, if you don’t feel great, how can you be expected to perform at your best in anything else that you do? And also we’re not just here to be human doings. We’re also human beings. We’re here to enjoy our lives. We’re here to have meaningful relationships in our lives and to be able to learn and grow and move our bodies and do whatever it is that makes us create. Whatever you love to do – connect. So I think that’s really an important piece. It isn’t about like planning spot days every week, I mean if you can go for it, but this is about being intentional, like maybe on Sunday afternoons, I’m going to put my phone away and I’m just going to go play with my kids in the park or build a fort, just really thinking about who do I want to be and making sure you’re giving yourself time to do that.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Right. What’s your next tip for us?
Lisa Michaud:
Okay. So once you know the things you actually want to do, figure out how long it’s going to take you and add a buffer, always add a buffer, like 50%, maybe 100%, depending on how if you’re like me, when I was planning 150 hours worth of work, I needed a hundred percent buffer because I clearly could not estimate my time. Maybe you’re a little closer than I was, and you don’t need that much, but I always think start with a buffer, give yourself less things and then actually put it on your calendar. So if we’re talking about this week is the week you want to create Instagram reels as an example, or this is the week you want to update your client onboarding process, block it out in your calendar, put it in there, figure out when you’re going to do it.
Maybe workouts are going to happen. As soon as you come home from work, like whatever that is, actually put it in there. Date nights, pick a date, tell your partner that you’re doing it, book the babysitter, book the grandparents book the restaurant, or the bowling alley or whatever you’re going to do and figure that out and spend that time to actually go the extra mile and say, what is it going to take to do this? If there’s a meeting you want to have, a connection you want to have with somebody send them an email, get that going, get the things on your calendar that are really important to you.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Yeah, that was a big piece that was missing for me for a long time. I’d get the stuff, but the stuff would never make it onto the calendar. So as they say, what gets scheduled gets done and the flip to that is if it doesn’t get scheduled, it ain’t going to happen. So for me, that was a huge, huge piece of the puzzle that was missing. And thankfully, now I do that.
Lisa Michaud:
Yeah, it’s so true. I always say the best way to honor a dream in your heart is to give it time on your calendar. We can really tell what matters to you, what’s important to you, if you look at your calendar to see what’s on there. And if the things that you say are important, your goal, growing your business, starting your business – if that’s not on your calendar, is it really that important to you? And if it is, then we just have to make sure that we get on there, put that in there, give yourself that time. So make it easy, decrease that resistance, whatever you can in the time, book the childcare if you can, go to spin classes. Whatever it is that you can do to make it easy so that when you get to that moment, you’re not like, Oh, well now I have to figure out where I’m going to do my workout.
Or if you’re too tired to get a babysitter or deciding you’re going to go. Figure all that out ahead of time. I think communicate with your partner, communicate with your family, have family meetings, communicate with your team. Tell them, my Fridays are my day to do strategic planning with this work or to create these presentations, whatever it is, like, let your team know. Do you have any questions? Ask me any day except for Friday or block the time. So I think communication is definitely like that next level. My husband and I we’ve been together for, I think 12 years. I mean, we’ve been doing weekly planning for over 10 years. We just started doing this last year or so, but it’s been a game changer for us to sit down at the beginning of the week and say, what do you need with, how do you want to feel?
What are the goals that you’re working on? And what is that going to look like? And for me to do the same. And then we can then communicate things like who’s going to do pickups and drop-offs, who’s going to organize dinner. What are we eating for food? Cause otherwise that always fell to me being the last minute, what are we getting for dinner? While I’m trying to answer the emails and trying to do the thing, and all of a sudden, now I’m also trying to figure out what’s for dinner. We still need to eat. Kids still needs to be picked up from daycare. Our goals still need to happen. But having the conversation at the beginning of the week allows us to batch it. We’re doing it all at once.
It allows us to have those conversations where you discuss, Oh, I have a meeting at this time, you have a meeting that time, I’ll do this pickup. You do that drop off. As opposed to being in the moment, being perhaps stressed or anxious or having our expectations not met. That’s where I find we have arguments. That’s where we feel frustrated is when expectations aren’t met. And so having those conversations at the beginning of the week, whether it’s with your boss, your partner, your family, your team, doing that at the beginning of the week, airing that stuff out, making sure you can support them in the way they want. And they can support you in the way that you want allows your whole week to go so much smoother. So it definitely took us like nine years to get here, but it has been really helpful to do that.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Awesome. Any more tips?
Lisa Michaud:
Those I think are the biggest ones.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
I’ve got a couple of questions here. So first most of the people watching this right now are probably thinking like that all sounds fantastic, but what do I do when I’m at a job from maybe 7:00 AM to 6 or 7:00 PM, then I’m coming home. Then I’m making dinner for a family of five. Now it’s eight o’clock or nine o’clock at night. Like I I’ve got these goals, but like, how am I supposed to shoe horn all of this into my already jam packed life. Like I have a job, I have a family, I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got these wonderful things I want to make happen. But weekly planning almost sounds comical at this point because there’s just so much going on. Like, do you have any tips for those people? I mean, I’ve been one of those people myself.
Lisa Michaud:
I was just going to say you and I have had this conversation many times, we struggled for so long to get childcare for my kid. And so it was shoehorning my business when I maybe had family in town or could make something happen. So I will just say that I can relate to that 100% and I know it’s not always easy. And like I said, this has been like 10 years of making this happen in the tips that I’m sharing are like an ideal perfect week. Most of the time we get to 80, 90%, maybe you start with only 10% and that’s okay too. You start with like, Hey, why don’t we just start with celebrating what I did like remember that the week is over celebrate and reflect. Like maybe you just start there.
So give yourself a little bit of grace here, recognize the season that you’re in, recognizethe capacity that you have in your life and allow weekly planning to work for you. Not making it one more thing that you should do now. Now let’s talk a little bit tactical in terms of what this looks like. So one of the things I found is that often if you’re a bit of a planner already, which you probably are, if you’re watching this or interested in planning, probably your next few weeks are a little bit busy. What I find is that we tend to plan, maybe a week in advance, maybe two, three, four weeks in advance. And so the next couple of weeks are busy and then things slow down. So what I find I can be helpful is to look ahead and be like, okay, when do things actually slow down in my calendar?
Is it in three weeks? Is it in four weeks? And then go ahead and then start to block that time then, because often what happens is we book social things and we book a last minute class or maybe a doctor’s appointment or a dentist’s appointment or whatever those things are in the next couple of weeks. And then we have space after that. So if you have to look ahead a few weeks and find yourself some time to plan in there. Now, if you look ahead and you see for the foreseeable future, you have no time. Well, let’s have some honest talk here. I think this is where you really need to ask and say, how important is this to me? What can I give? What can I create? What kind of space and time can I give and am I willing to do it? And I think this is where we really have to understand ourselves.
Like we have children, we have responsibilities around the house. We may have a full-time job and maybe we have other businesses as well that we’re trying to manage and trying to make it all work. And the question has to be how is it possible? And if you ask yourself, how is it possible, for some of us that answer might be it is possible for me to still be a great mom and grow my business. If I’m okay with growing my business slower than I want to do it, growing at a pace that’s maybe going to take me two or three years as opposed to six months. And then really being honest. Am I okay with that? And if the answer is yes, which is great then I just say, okay, well, I’m going to spend a couple hours a week and I know it’s going to take me two to three years to get there.
And I’m okay with that. And here’s the flip side. If I’m not okay with that, if I’m not okay with it, well, then I get to change something, I’m in control. How is it possible? Do I ask my partner to step up and do more with the kids? Do I make a plan so that in a couple months I can go down to a four day workweek or a three-day work week. Can I get up earlier and carve myself out an hour before everybody else in the household wakes up? Can I hire someone to come clean my house? What can I do? And start to brainstorm those things. I think so much of time management really does come down to what is your goal and how much time does your goal demand and also what is your capacity and how do you match those two things in a way that feels aligned to you?
And the truth is only you know the answer to that, only you know what’s going to feel good and what’s not. For some people you’re going to be like, I don’t want my business to grow slower in which case like, well alright, then here we go. How can we make that happen? How can you still have that growth with the responsibilities that you have? That means we’re taking responsibilities off your plate. That means we’re outsourcing, we’re delegating. That means you’re finding ways to get yourself that time. And if I’m okay with growing slower than great, I’m just going to take that pressure off, keep picking away one piece at a time, one task at a time.
And my growth will come. So I think it’s honest conversations. I wish I had a magic wand and could say, Alright, here we are, you’ve watched this video. here’s all the time you want, here’s the house cleaner. Here’s the nanny, the chauffeur, the chef, the assistant, all those things. But I know it doesn’t happen like that,it’s piece by piece by piece. And it’s intentional decisions about what we want to create and how much we’re willing to put in the work to outsource, to sacrifice, to wait sometimes for the results to go and where we want.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Yeah. I basically asked that question for myself. Like I had a baby recently and, I’m such a planner. I’m really diligent with my weekly planning and it is just almost not possible right now because you plan for one thing and then something else happens. And for me there just has to be acceptance as to what the season of life you’re currently in. And it’s great to have all these big goals and dreams, but we can’t become untethered to the reality of the situation. Like I’ve really learned how to become patient and just accepting exactly where I am on my journey. And I know enough now to know that I will get there eventually because I’ve already proven it. And I think that can be really difficult in the beginning when everything’s so uncertain and you haven’t really experienced any wins and you’re just impatient and you want the success yesterday or today and tomorrow at the latest kind of a thing, but that’s been a real journey for me to get to this point now.
And I still have moments during the week where I’m just frustrated at what I’m trying to do and what I feel like I can do and it takes a big reframe mentally, and then it feels great because then you can just say this is my priority right now, this is part of my dream building that is going to go a little bit slower. We’re not totally putting it on the back burner. We’re not saying no, it’s just going to unfold a little bit more slowly and that’s totally fine, slow and steady wins the race ,that’s been my mantra over the past while. And for the past few years actually, and it’s working for me.
Lisa Michaud:
No, that’s so good. That’s so real. I think it’s also important to sometimes zoom out. I think weekly planning is great for putting pen to paper and taking action, but we also do have to zoom out and say, where does this time, where does this goal fit into the bigger picture of my life? You have a brand new kid, maybe for others, you’ve lost your childcare and you’re trying to work from home with your kids and you’re homeschooling and you lost your support network. Maybe you’re looking after other people, like there’s a lot of things going on and you kind of just have to zoom out and say, where does this fit into the bigger picture of my life and what I want, do I want to create a certain financial stability? Do I want to have a certain relationship with my kids?
Do I want to have other relationships that are important. Do I want to like all those things, and what is the bigger picture of where you’re going and understand where this season, where this pocket of time fits into the bigger picture. And I would say if you’re feeling like Rachel, you’re feeling like, Oh, it’s just not happening fast enough. Then maybe shift what your goal is and shift what your plan is. And instead of looking at taking things off every single week, maybe you do look at it as every month. Like every month I can do these three things or maybe instead of your priority, or your big kind of goal being about your business. Your goal is the kind of mom that I want to be right now, or the kind of stay-at-home teacher that I want to be, (who knew we were all gonna be teachers) but just reframing the goal even to say like, Oh, who do I even want to be in this pandemic?
Like, what’s the story I want to tell at the end of this and is this story going to be that I am exhausted and overwhelmed and haven’t made progress and been frustrated through it? Or is this story going to be that I rocked my PJ’s every day, discovered some great new Netflix shows, tried new recipes, made lots of forts with my kids. Like, what is it that you actually want the story to be of this experience? And I think if you zoom it back out, it can give you a little bit more perspective. And I do think it is about building in lots of flexibility, giving yourself a lot of grace and also checking in often and saying, what’s working, what’s not, and you and I have had the conversation too, like, can I hire more help?
Yes, I can. Like, do I want to, am I willing to, is that really where I want to go? It has been at some points and it hasn’t been in others. And we also have to trust our voice inside and realize when are we listening to a value, which is like, this is important to me. And when am I listening to a fear, which is like, I’m falling behind or I should be doing more or I’m not doing enough, or I wish this had happened yesterday. So it’s really trying to discern between the two. In case you haven’t already guessed it, follow the value, listen to what you truly want, your value, your heart, your intuition, whatever you want to call it, listen to that. And not the fear that’s telling you, you’re not doing enough. You should be doing more. This should’ve happened yesterday. So discerning between that can be helpful.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Right? Okay. I’ve got one more kind of tip I want to ask you about, and this is for people that are super resistant to routine or planning. And I know there’s a lot of these people out there, they just feel really constricted when it comes to scheduling and planning and routine. How can people like that make weekly planning work for them?
Lisa Michaud:
Great question. Well, I think the first thing is to understand what is the resistance? What are you afraid of? What are you nervous about? What do you not want to have happen? And to understand what that actually is about? I think a lot of people think that they’re going to lose their freedom or their flexibility by doing planning, but I’ve also found that when you do planning the right way, it can actually give you for example, freedom and flexibility that you’re looking for. So I think it’s important to just find out what’s the resistance? What are you afraid of happening? And also what do you want? What are the things that you’re trying to preserve and see how weekly planning can actually serve you for that? So I’ve, for example, I’ve had a client who was very resistant to planning and we found out it was actually, she was resistant to actually growing her business because she was afraid that if she grew her business, her calendar was going to be full with appointments and schedules and obligations and client calls and meetings and all these things that was going to take away her flexibility, because what she really liked to do, she liked to be able to go for walks on a sunny day.
She liked to be able to putter around in her garden. She liked to be able to take a day off or go for three days off the grid. And she was actually afraid that if she planned too much, if she grew her business, it was going to take those things away. What we had to do is really discern that and ask is that actually true? A lot of times, these things are fears that we think are true. And we realized that what was also happening is that she didn’t actually even have that much freedom because, she wasn’t planning, because she didn’t have the clients, because she didn’t have the business. She was working so much that she never had time to go in the garden. She was so stressed and feeling so much pressure that she wasn’t taking weeks off at a time, or even days off, she was just working and guilting herself over this.
And so I think a lot of times that resistance can actually be something that we need to work through and move through to realize what we truly want to have. So what she’s discovered, and this has been a journey I’ve worked with her on and off for the last several years, and what she’s now found as she’s been able to move through this, through this resistance and this resistance to growth and planning is that she’s now in a place where guess what? She’s got two assistants and she’s looking at hiring some more support in her business. So she doesn’t have to start her day at 8:00 AM. She can start her day at 10 or 11 and do her morning routine. She’s been able to take weeks off because she has people to look after her customers while she’s away. She has more flexibility to get her groceries delivered. And so she’s not having to need like all that flexibility too. Like I need to make sure I have time to grocery shop and be worried about not being flexible. She’s so flexible. Now she just goes online and somebody else delivers it for her. And so understanding what do you really want and how can planning help you get that? Because the right planning is going to enable you to have what you want in your life. The wrong planning is going to restrict you.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Right? Okay. I’m going to wind things down a bit, but before we do, I’m super excited because you have recently published your very own planning system. And I want you to talk a little bit about that because it’s really cool. I picked up a copy for myself a few weeks back and, you’ve got a different approach. So just talk to me a little bit about your planning system, your new planner basically, and where people can find it if they want to check it out.
Lisa Michaud:
Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for grabbing a copy of that, that’s awesome. So I noticed that there was a lot of common complaints coming in from clients. A lot of them were asking me like what planner do you recommend? Or I’ve tried this and this isn’t working. And a lot of things I heard is that planners were either overcomplicated and felt like a second job, or they were so high level and people couldn’t actually figure out, like, what do I do with this? Often they felt like there was a focus on just the tasks. And again, the reactive stuff of just Oh, I’ve got to go to the doctor, I’ve got to pay this bill. I’ve got to reply to that email as opposed to figuring out like, what’s your action. Am I actually going and having that intention behind it? A lot of people also said they felt like they had planner guilt from half empty planners on their shelves because inevitably we all fall off the wagon.
Sometimes we take a weekend off, we take weeks off, we get sick, like things fall off. And I think another thing that we sort of touched on is like a lot of other planners focus only on the doing and not on the fact that we, especially during a pandemic, a lot of times for parents, women, if you’ve got other responsibilities, it forgets about the other balls that you still have to keep going in the air while you’re working on your goal. That’s kind of the problems that I tried to solve with this planner is like, how do we change that for people? It’s a process that I’ve been playing with for the last couple of years and worked really well for me. And I’m going to be the worst sales person in the world and say, it’s not the only planning system out there.
There’s others. You’ve got to find what works for you. But this is what I found has worked for me and for my clients. And what we do is we break it down into 100 day goals. So I say, okay, what am I going to focus on? What’s the most important thing right now to move the needle on over the next hundred days and commit to that. And I found that that’s been really powerful because a hundred days is long enough that if you take action, if you make progress, you’re going to see results and you’re going to get momentum. And there’s nothing more motivating than getting momentum. Like once you actually start to see things moving, you’re like, Oh, I can do this, you have things to celebrate. You build trust back with yourself. You build confidence in yourself and that creates more results and is also not so long that if you’re an overachiever or if you’re multi-passionate, you like to do lots of things, anybody can say, I’m going to commit to something for a hundred days, and then I’ll see you in three months basically.
So that system has been really powerful for that. So what we’re able to do with the a hundred day planner, you don’t need the planner, you can do this on your own. Just say for the next hundred days, this is my focus, the one thing, and then to make progress on this one thing that really matters to me. In the planner, there’s a goal setting guide that helps you figure out what is that thing? What is the right goal for you and helping you move forward on it? I go with undated. Like, I really don’t care if it takes you 92 days, or if it takes 122 days, it’s not about the exact number of days. It’s about being consistent. It’s about showing up. It’s about making progress and that’s the most important thing.
So I think when we talk about like, what’s the most effective planning system, it’s one that is going to work and it’s one that gets you moving. And so that’s what I’ve tried to create with this planner is something that you’re actually going to use. It doesn’t feel like a second job, but it also grounds you down to what’s actually here. And I shared my intention with you around being my best self, about feeling energy and energized and thriving. I built that into the weekly planning every single week. So in the planner, you set your goal, you look back at the last month and pull out any lessons and figure out what to plan for the month ahead. And then every week you’re doing the same. You’re saying what worked, what didn’t and what am I celebrating? And what’s my intention in both for my goal and for who I’m going to be and how I’m going to show up? So that’s really what the planner is about. So it’s a hundred days of structure to get you moving on that goal.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
I loved it. I thought it was so awesome. And I encourage everyone watching to check it out. There’ll be a link to that in the description below. So please do check it out. I think that’s a really great place to leave it. Thanks for doing this. It was so awesome to have you back. And yeah, I know that you’ve dropped a lot of really great tips here that people can take away and use on a practical level. So thank you so much, but before we go, where can people find you if they want to get some more info?
Lisa Michaud:
Well, thanks for having me. This is always so much fun. There’s not a lot of people I will show up for on a Sunday. I try not to work on weekends. I appreciate it. You are one of those people, you and your community is just incredible. So thanks for having me, it’s been awesome. So if you want to find me I’m on all the social platforms at the Lisa Marie show, Instagram is definitely the one where I’m there the most. My website is Lisamichaud.com and my podcast, if you like my style, if you want to learn more about this, actually I have a whole episode, episode number 39 is all about weekly planning. My podcast is called Goalden Girls podcast as in G O A L goals, and I talk, I can talk all day. So my podcast is where I do that.
Rachel Harrison-Sund:
Thanks so much. I’ll leave all of those links in the description below. And thanks again. We’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.
LINKS DISCUSSED
Get Lisa’s 100 Day Goal Getter Planner + Journal (available in 6×9 and 8.5×11)
Get some of Lisa’s free goodies.
Goalden Girls Podcast: Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher + anywhere you listen
Latest episode here.
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