Personal & Professional Development: Creating Adaptive Planning Systems For Teams | Rahaf Harfoush | Skillshare
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Personal & Professional Development: Creating Adaptive Planning Systems For Teams

teacher avatar Rahaf Harfoush, Professor and Best Selling Author

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:24

    • 2.

      Identifying your Planning Baseline

      4:08

    • 3.

      Customizing Your Planning System

      2:52

    • 4.

      Embracing Your Whole Self

      2:00

    • 5.

      Aligning With Your Natural Rhythms

      2:03

    • 6.

      Embracing Constant Change

      2:29

    • 7.

      Setting End of Year Goals

      5:49

    • 8.

      Setting Quarterly Goals

      4:10

    • 9.

      Planning Your EOY Goals: Monthly

      4:08

    • 10.

      Planning your EOY Goals: Weekly

      4:23

    • 11.

      Final Thoughts

      1:34

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About This Class

Create an adaptive planning system customized for your team with digital anthropologist and author Rahaf Harfoush!

There is no shortage of planning tools out there to help us better organize our time, but finding a system that sticks can be tough. This is because many tools encourage us to accommodate overly rigid systems despite our unique needs. Our days are different, our priorities are different, and our goals are different, so doesn’t it make sense to build a system that reflects our uniqueness? Join Rahaf as she walks us through how to plan for and achieve our yearly, quarterly, monthly and weekly goals. 

Together with Rahaf, you will: 

  • Identify your planning baseline
  • Customize your planning system
  • Embrace your whole self
  • Align with your natural rhythms
  • Embrace constant change 
  • Set end of year and quarterly goals
  • Plan your end of year goals on a monthly and weekly level

Whether you are in a leadership position on your team or just starting out, this class will equip you with the tools to tackle any task or goal you set your mind to. 

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Rahaf’s class is designed for students of all levels to participate and enjoy.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Rahaf Harfoush

Professor and Best Selling Author

Teacher

Hello, I'm Rahaf.

I'm a Digital Anthropologist, Professor, and New York Times Best Selling Author.  I teach people how to become Humane Productivity practitioners -- how to supercharge their creative performance without sacrificing their mental, emotional, or physical well being. 

I am the Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture, where I research the impact of technology on the way we live and work. I've been named to France's National Digital Council and served on a Presidential Commission researching the role of technology in democratic elections. I'm also a visiting policy fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. 

I teach Innovation and Disruptive business models at the School of Management and Innovation in SciencesPo in ... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: There's no shortage of planning tools out there to help us better organize our time. But I've always struggled with finding a system that sticks, one that works in the exact way that I need, even when those needs change. I've tried everything, planners, bullet journals, calendar hacks, and inevitably I end up with a system that I abandoned after just a few weeks. I'm Rahaf Harfoush. I'm a digital anthropologist and New York Times bestselling author. I teach people how to build personalized humane productivity systems so they can tackle their big goals without burning out. [MUSIC] Adoptive planning is a unique approach that's flexible and adjust to your needs. There's enough structure to help you build solid foundations, but then you have the freedom to really make it your own. I call this humane productivity. By the end of this class, you'll have your own custom built adaptive planning system, including clear ways to tackle your yearly, monthly, quarterly, and weekly goals. I encourage you to make this content your own. I think everyone should take this class because learning how to make consistent progress on goals, especially when each week or each month looks a little bit different, will be essential in helping you get big things done. I hope you'll share some of your work with other learners and feel free to ask any questions. Let's get started. 2. Identifying your Planning Baseline: One of the biggest setbacks with traditional planning systems is their rigidity. You spend all of this time setting up a system, but then life happens and everything changes. You get a new project. Your family visits you from out of town. A last-minute event pops up, or you get knocked out with the flu for a week. You get the picture. Suddenly all of your careful planning goes right out the window. This is where adaptive planning comes in. As you'll see in this class, there is a way to maintain consistency, even one-year work and life are constantly changing. The first step in building an adaptive planning system is to understand who we're building the system for. In other words, you. To understand you, we'll be looking at our baseline of current needs. You'll need the productivity baseline sheet, so be sure to have your copy ready. We fill the sheet out because if we don't understand why other systems failed or what our planning needs are, we won't be able to create a system that's custom tailored just for us and we might repeat the same mistakes over and over again. To start, I want you to think about your planning strategy if you have one. For example, do you just automatically accept meeting invitations as they come in? Do you have a process to set and accomplish goals during the year? Do you have a morning routine or an evening routine? Basically, I want to know how do you organize or manage your day-to-day life and I want you to write down the details up here. Now, if you don't have some of these things or any of these things, don't worry, because many of us were never taught planning skills. Just fill it out with what it is that you do have. Maybe you use your phone calendar, or notebook, maybe you stick a dozen Post-it Notes all over the place or send yourself email reminders. Whatever your strategy is, write it down. Next, what do you prioritize? How do you decide where your time goes each day or what pulls your attention? Are you someone that just goes with the flow to see where the day takes you or do really like to have your time allocated in advance? Moving over to the box right next to it, I want you to write down if you have a strategy to accomplish your goals. Like do you set goals at the beginning of the year? How do you tackle the big things you hope to accomplish? If you wanted to finish a professional certification, if you're trying to learn to play an instrument. Again, if you don't have a specific strategy, that's okay, that is what this class is for. Now, down here is a big one. This is a really important box. What planning systems have you tried before and why didn't they stick? For me, I kept running into the same issues over and over again. The systems were only useful at certain points of the year, they were overly prescriptive and sometimes it was too much work to set them up, they were too rigid. That leads to the next question, which is, what do you actually need from your planning system? My weeks look so different, but I really creeped consistency. I want to be able to make progress on my goals. Sometimes I was teaching, sometimes I spent the week on the road, sometimes I was with clients and sometimes I was at home. I was getting lost in trying to use these rigid systems. I kept missing project milestones so I'd write all of those needs down in this box. The final question right down here is, how do you want to feel? I know this sounds a little silly, but it actually is a really helpful thing to think about. We're so focused on the nuts and bolts of our calendars that we don't check in with ourselves to make sure that the systems we're trying to put into place are also aligned with our emotional and our mental needs. For me, I want to feel calm. I want to feel in control, joyful and at ease. Because if you're balancing different projects, if you're working with colleagues in different time zones, if you have personal obligations that change from week to week and all other variables, I'm sure you'll appreciate feeling calm and in control. If you don't think that's possible, I used to think that too, but I promise by the end of this class, you're going to be looking at your calendar in a whole new light. 3. Customizing Your Planning System: Adaptive planning is based on a concept I created called humane productivity. It's a style of planning that believes that rest, joy, and play can co-exist with productivity and ambition. In this lesson, I'll be walking you through one of the four pillars of humane productivity. These pillars represent the foundational ideas that are at the heart of the type of planning we'll be doing together. I want you to think of your adaptive planning as a practice, like building a yoga practice or writing practice. It's something that you'll be doing regularly but at a pace and rhythm that works for you. The first pillar is personalization. The core of adaptive planning is the belief that you know you best. You are the architect, that means no more cookie-cutter morning routines or one-size-fits-all productivity hats. We're going to take our time. We're going to build on our baseline and make sure that everything we put into place is a direct reflection of our personal preferences and needs. What this also means is that while I'll be giving you general guidelines and tips to help you structure your planning practice, everything is up for personalization. If something doesn't work for you, change it, adapt it, eliminate it, increase it, whatever works to make it fit your life, you should absolutely feel empowered to only take what serves you and leave everything else aside. It's like Legos, I'm giving you all the different blocks, but you're the one who gets to decide which blocks to use and what to build. We will be filling out the personalization sheet today. Let's go through that together. Now the first part is about guiding principles or what you'd like the planning system to help you achieve. For example, my guiding principles are to always feel I'm in control and prepared in both my personal and professional life. I want to remember birthdays and send out holiday cards on time. I crave a consistent fitness routine in writing practice. I want to make time for the things that matter, so I would fill all of that out here. The second box is about your temperament. Do you replenish your energy from being alone or from being around other people? Do you like details or big ideas? How much spontaneity do you want to have in your day to day? Do you like routine or do you get bored easily? For me, I would fill out that I'm definitely an introvert. I like big ideas in general, but I need details in my planning. I always like some spontaneity because while I don't mind routines, if I don't change it up every now and then, I'll die of boredom. Now the third box is about meaning, what gives your life meaning? For me, it's about being present and prioritizing my family and friends and my health. You could say something like you want to make sure you're enjoying nature, you want to do work that matters. Whatever it is, take your time, think it over and fill it out. Once you're done, I want you to keep the sheet handy because you'll need it a little bit later. Now we're ready to move on to the next pillar. 4. Embracing Your Whole Self: Adaptive planning isn't just for your time at work, it has to encompass your whole life. This is why the second pillar of humane productivity is holistic. Holistic means that we have to take into account you as an entire person, including your physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. This builds on the personalization sheet we just completed, because now we're going to start getting specific about what things we need to make time for. This is your chance to think about and write down everything that matters to you in terms of your well-being, your health, your family, your community, and even your own personal development. You'll need the holistic sheet for this lesson. As you can see, there are four boxes that say my ideal day, week, month, and year. I want you to think about what it would look like if everything went according to plan. In a perfect day, I would meditate every morning. In a perfect week, I would work out 45 times. I would call my parents every other day. In my ideal month, I take a long weekend to explore a new city. In my ideal year, I take Summers off. This isn't a contract, we're just laying everything out so we can get a complete picture of what we actually want. What we're doing here is starting to think about real tangible actions that we want to make sure we incorporate in our planning. The next two boxes are the activities and people that replenish you, that make you feel great about everything. This is a good reminder of what activities you want to make sure you leave time for and who you want to connect with on a regular basis. I know we're going through this sheet pretty fast, but this type of work, it takes time. I want you to give yourself space to think about all of these things. Pause it if you have to, but take as much time as you need to fill this whole sheet out. Once you do that, it should look something like this. When you have your completed sheet, we can move on to the next pillar. 5. Aligning With Your Natural Rhythms: One of my biggest pet peeves about planning systems is that they just assume you're going to have the same level of energy all year round. I know that's not true for me. I feel differently depending on the time of year, the day of the week, or even at different hours in my day. I need an adaptive system that understands these ebbs and flows. That's where the third pillar of humane productivity comes in. Cyclical. I want you to take your cyclical worksheet, and we're going to go through it. Here we're going to think about our average day, week, and monthly rhythms. To do this, you'll have to start paying attention to your energy cycles. On the sheet, I've given you some areas to think about. For example, are you a night owl or a morning lark? When are you most creative during the day? When do you lag? How does your energy track over the span of a week? How do the changing seasons affect you? Let's fill this out together. I'm a night owl, which means I do my best work in the late afternoons or early evenings. I'm most creative between 4:00 PM and 10:00 PM. Over the course of the week, I find I'm most energetic Tuesday to Thursday. I like to ease in and out of the week if possible, and I get more into a nesting mode in the winter and I have way more energy in the summer. Now here's a sheet from a client of mine to show you how different each person's cycles can be. She is an early bird. Her most creative hours are between 7:00 AM and 1:00 PM. Her most energetic days of the week are Monday to Wednesdays. She is an avid skier in the winter, so she likes to spend as much time as possible outside, and she likes to relax in the summer and have a lot of downtime. We're total opposites energetically, so how could we use the same planning system? You might need to observe yourself for a few days to figure out your own patterns, so don't worry if you don't have all the answers right away. Now that you know what to look for, you'll start noticing your own habits, and you can come back and add more detail to these sheets. Now in the next lesson, we'll tackle the final pillar. 6. Embracing Constant Change: In order for us to keep growing and learning, we have to push ourselves to try new things. But if every minute of the day is already scheduled or if we're overcommitted to a rigid system, we might miss the opportunity to try something new that can have a big and positive impact on our life. That's why the fourth pillar of humane productivity is called adaptive. This means we're building our adaptive planning system to not only handle change but to actively seek it out. This is important because your needs, goals, and priorities, they'll shift depending on where you are in your life, your career stage, or even the time of the year. By being intentional about checking in with ourselves, we're giving ourselves the chance to stay on track with our goals and our hopes for the year. In the adaptive sheet, I want you to think about any activity that you've been doing in the same way for a long time. Do you check the same websites every day, go to the same yoga class every week? Do you rotate through the same five recipes for dinner? Write all of these things down. In the box that says things I'd like to try, I'd like you to think about how you would change things up a little bit. Remember, this isn't about changing your core habits, it's about making time to explore and try new things. For example, you can have a habit like working out 4-5 times a week. But instead of going to the same yoga class, you could challenge yourself to try a new type of yoga once a month or leave some space in your fitness calendar for something totally new, like rowing or boxing or pilates. Who knows, what if you find something really great? What if there's a new type of yoga that you just love doing or an instructor that really gets you? The point is we should always be learning, testing, and growing so we don't fall into ruts. The next part of the sheet, tackles anything you'd like to change about your status quo. Maybe you want a better nighttime routine or you want to move more during the day. Write all of those things down. Then finally, I want you to think about how you'd like to grow either professionally or personally or both. These can be some longer-term objectives like wanting to go back to school, or trying to live in a different country. The four pillars help us ensure that we understand our needs, behaviors, and preferences. You'd be surprised at how many people never take the time to get to know themselves or their own patterns. But now that you have this knowledge, we're ready to start tackling our adaptive planning practice. 7. Setting End of Year Goals: The secret to adaptive planning is to have the right balance between planning for your long-term goals staying on top of short-term obligations and having enough flexibility to account for well, life. It's this lack of balance that gets so many people stuck because they aren't setting long-term goals, or they're getting distracted by short-term stuff, or they're getting completely derailed when their rigid planning system experiences unexpected change. In this lesson, we're going to start with the yearly overview because I like to start with the big picture. It's actually my favorite part because this is where we get to dream up the experiences, milestones, and goals that we want to tackle in the coming year. You're going to need the year-end goals, the goal breakdown, and the end of your overview sheets for this lesson. The main objective is to ask yourself, what do you want to have accomplished by the end of the year in different areas of your life. I like to think about different categories like professional health or hobbies. As you can see, the sheet is blank, so it's fully customizable because personalized is the first pillar and that way you can decide what category makes sense to you and the number of goals that fill right. Again, you're the one that knows you best. Remember to include some holistic categories from your sheet as well. This part of the process might take you the longest because you might need some time to think about what you want to accomplish, so be sure to give yourself the space to do that. Here are some different examples of professional goals that you could say you want to try to accomplish. You could say, I want to take a course to sharpen my skills, you could learn a new software, you could improve your public speaking skills. You get the idea, whatever inspires you be sure to write that down. Mine would maybe look something like this. I would like to have my non-fiction manuscript finished by the end of the year. I want to update my website, I want to learn how to use Obsidian, which is a research software. I want to take one Skillshare course every quarter and I want to get my driver's license, do a handstand, and be able to row 50 kilometers by the end of the year. I would put all of those down on this sheet. Now, we're going to take each of these goals and we're going to break them down into the different steps that they'll take to complete. This is where you'll use the goal breakdown sheet. Again, the number of steps is up to you, so go ahead and in each of these boxes fill in a goal and break it down into its respective steps. Once you're done, it should look like this. Now put that aside for a second and turn to your end-of-year goal sheet. As you'll notice, it's unlabeled so you can set it up for the next 12 months. Because we're focused on cyclical, holistic, and adaptive planning, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to identify major time blocks during the year that might change your day to day routines, things like conferences, team retreats, vacations, family obligations, trips, graduations, extracurricular activities. For example, if your team takes a corporate retreat every November, mark that down. If you have a big conference in May or you take a long weekend in July with your friends every year, put that down too. At this point, you should also reference your holistic worksheet and make sure to include whatever you wrote in your ideal year in this overview as well. If there are times of the year when you're going to be busy, whether it's with performance reviews or other deliverables, this is your moment to mark it down. We do this because when we're planning on accomplishing goals, we're not always going to have the same amount of time each month to work towards them. When we assume that we're going to have the same amount of time, we end up inevitably falling behind, and then all of our carefully laid plans get pushed to the wayside. Here's my calendar. As you can see, I've marked off birthdays, trips, retreats, events, busy times at work. This gives me an idea of how much time I'll have to work on each goal for that specific month. Tackling a goal during a slower month is a completely different experience than trying to get things done during your busiest time of the year, and that's what we're trying to solve for here. Now, in my ideal year, I had marked down that I wanted to take August off and some time off in December too, so I've made sure to include those as you can see in my yearly overview. I have a friend whose family members have birthdays that are all in the same month. She knows that that month is going to be busy with personal stuff and parties and preparations. She understands that she'll have less time to work on her goals than during any other month of the year, and so she can plan for that in advance. Now, go back to your goal breakdown and start slotting in the different steps of each goal in whatever month makes sense. For example, if I want to have my manuscript done by December, I'll need to have a rough draft done by April, a final draft done by July, and have all of the other stuff done by November since I like to take holidays in December. Remember I wrote down that I wanted to take August off so I can't put anything in August. I need to take that into account as well. What I like about this yearly overview is that it also make sure that you don't overload any one month with too many things to do. The boxes are small on purpose. If you jam pack each one, you're going to find yourself overwhelmed. Start easy with the biggest and most important goals first and then work from there. Remember when we looked at how your behavior changes seasonally, go back to your cyclical sheep and make sure that you're taking those changes into account as well. For me, you can see that I'll do more writing in the winter and more research in the summer because that's how my energy flows. It's a pretty cool roadmap and one that takes into account all the different facets of your life. Once you're happy with your yearly overview, you can move on to the next lesson. 8. Setting Quarterly Goals: At this point, you should have your yearly overview road map, which by the way is a huge accomplishment so congratulations. From this point on, the process gets easier and faster, I swear. We're going to continue breaking down your big goals into smaller, more manageable, and realistic steps based on your own constraints and rhythms. For this lesson, you will need the next 90-day sheet, and if you notice there aren't any monthly labels so that you can use it from whatever month you're in right now. Personally, I really liked the 90-day view. It's just long enough to offer flexibilities that I can make real progress on my goals, but short enough that I always have the finish line in sight. There are three reasons I use this view. One, it makes accomplishing my goals seem less intimidating because I'm only worrying about 90 days at a time instead of a whole year. Two, it gives me the chance to adjust my goals based on what's happening in my life as a whole, so for example, if I know I had family visiting, I can adjust my goals accordingly for the month before and the month after to take into account this time blog. Three, I can keep revisiting my annual goals and change them as needed. Unlike a monthly plan, there's enough flexibility in a quarter to make adjustments and adapt to any unexpected events that come up. This means I have a higher likelihood of accomplishing my yearly goals. Now, this happened to me recently, I had my 90-day sprint all lined up and then I got a sinus infection followed by a bad cold, and then I hurt my back. The results, I only got a tiny portion of my goals done. But luckily, I had my 90 days sheet handy and I was able to redistribute the goals for the quarter without throwing off anything else. In my case, I ended up working on two Saturdays in the next quarter to catch up, which was an acceptable exception to stay on track. My point, these unexpected things happened and instead of freaking out and feeling awful, I turned to my tools and I was able to find a fix quickly and easily. Say you've just had your annual review and you've set your goals with your manager. A 90-day plan is a great amount of time to make progress on those goals and then schedule a meeting for some feedback to make sure you're on the right track. For example, let's say you want to improve your public speaking. You could make a plan that in the next 90 days, you're going to try to present three times each month, and then at the end of the quarter, you can invite your manager to a presentation to solicit feedback. This type of strategy makes sure that you make progress on your professional goals regardless of what else is going on in your life. The other great thing about doing this every quarter and not all in advance is that when things shift and they will, you'll get to start the new quarter fresh. Meaning you can make accommodations to your goals to make sure that you're building the best plan for you instead of feeling like you're behind. This way, you get to meet yourself where you are. I've had some quarters where I have blown my goals out of the water and some quarters where I clearly over-committed and failed, and regardless, it's okay. Humane productivity is adaptive. It's about being compassionate with ourselves but also adapting to whatever is happening in our lives. What you do is that you're going to take your end of your road map and you're just going to transfer some of your goals over. Now we have a little bit more room. We can add details for that particular month. Things that didn't fit into the yearly plan like an upcoming doctor's visit or social events. This entire process should take you about 15 to 30 minutes. Once you get used to these tools, you will breeze through them. I promise this happens really fast. Once every 90 days, I take 15 to 30 minutes and I set up my next quarter, and then I just can focus on my monthly and weekly goals with the peace of mind that I am on track for my yearly milestones. Humane productivity, if you'll remember, is about feeling calm and peaceful, and in control. Once you're done with your sheet, it should look something like this. In our next lesson, we're going to tackle the monthly view. 9. Planning Your EOY Goals: Monthly: We're going to build on our quarterly overview by planning out our month, but with intention. We're going to start with the monthly preview, which is a sheet that helps set us up for success by giving us a chance to see what's coming up so that we can make the needed preparations in advance. First, go to your 90-day plan and make sure you've got the right month, pick the priorities listed, and you can write them down in this box that says priorities and goals right here. Next is the float days and workdays. I would like to see how many working days versus vacation days that I have to get a sense for how much I can get done. For example, in December, I'll have fewer working days than say, in June. Let me go to one of my favorite boxes, the routines and update boxes. This is where you look at what you have going on this month, and you plan on how you'll adapt in advance. This is key. For example, if I see that I have a conference coming up during the first week of the month, I might reschedule my language learning lesson and instead focus on increasing my vocabulary with an app while I'm at the airport, or if I know I have to stay late to finish a project with my team this month, I might schedule a meal prep session the weekend before so that I know I have something healthy to eat when I get home. The point here is that by knowing what's up in advance, we can plan to adapt, which means we have a higher likelihood of accomplishing our goals. The next two boxes are for you to be intentional about replenishing your energy and joy. Go back to your holistic sheet, take a look at the things and the people that replenished you, pick a few activities to do, pick a few people to connect with so that you'll have a great month. There's also a box for to-dos and obviously a box for notes and reflections to fill with whatever you feel like. At the end of the month, I also like to do a review to see how the month went. So let's fill this out together. First and foremost, what did I accomplish? What were some of my wins? What about some of my misses? Why did those misses happen? Next? You want to think about your planning practice, what worked, what didn't work. The last two boxes you want to refer to your adaptive pillar sheet where you listed activities you wanted to try and how you wanted to grow. Pick one or two, put them in here so that you can try them out. I want to point out that the preview and review documents are completely optional. If they aren't helpful to you, If they don't serve you, don't use them. Find what feels good because this is your system. For me, I found that when I did them once a month, that increase my likelihood of having more good days because I knew what to focus on, I knew what to work on, I knew what I needed to change, so it really helped me. Now, the last piece of the monthly overview is this magical piece of paper right here. This beauty is the one that unlocked the system for me, the magic for me. It's my absolute favorite page in the world. You're going to need your quarterly plan and also all the other pillar sheets that we've been working on so far, so make sure you have those handy. First, we're going to start with all the time blocks. You'll see that every week is represented by a block. Go ahead and block off anything, conferences, vacations, you know the drill. Next, go to your holistic sheet where you listed your ideal month, your ideal week, list those things out too, because we want to prioritize what feels good. Then you're going to take your monthly goals from your 90-day view, you're going to break them down into each task, what you're going to do each week. You're not going to figure out exactly when you're going to do the task on a specific day, we know that they just have to get done at some point during that week. We do this because schedules change. So if you went ahead and scheduled the entire month in detail, one tiny disruption and boom, all the planning goes out the window. What you want to do to make this your own is to refer to the pillar sheets. For example, my temperament is that of an introvert, so I want to make sure I'm giving myself a chance to rest. If I see that Week 1 is filled with social commitments, I know that Week 2 I'll make a note to make sure that I have time for a deep recharge. What I love about this approach is that I can adapt to whatever is happening and however I'm feeling. It keeps my life manageable, which I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again, humane productivity and adaptive planning is about feeling calm, empowered, and in control. 10. Planning your EOY Goals: Weekly: We are in the final stretch. This lesson brings it all home. Once a week, you're going to find some time to sit down for 10-15 minutes and plan out the week ahead. You can take this weekly spread that I've provided or you can do it right into your phone or computer calendar. You just start to slot in the things that matter. Four workouts a week, a Zoom call, all your other goals, they can go here step-by-step. This is the time when you get to decide what day makes the most sense for you. I also like to add in any tasks here because if you don't assign a time or a day, I find that you just don't get them done. Now before I use the system, I would get to my desk Monday morning and feel overwhelmed about what to work on first, or wonder how was I going to spend my time. But now, I do my weekly planning on Sunday afternoons, and I get to check in with myself to see how I'm feeling when I'm planning the week to come. Do I have a full-day team offsite on Monday? Well, maybe then I'll say no to going out for dinner and I'll recharge at home. Or alternatively, if I was a big extrovert, maybe I would be sure to schedule a dinner that night to let off steam with friends or colleagues. The point here is you get to meet yourself where you are. You get to exist at the intersection of compassionate ambition. You get to meet big goals and not sacrifice your health or your sanity. I like to make it a ritual. I sit, I make myself a cup of tea, and I take a look at what's coming up for the week ahead. Now if you have a regular routine, this will fly by for you. But if you're like me and you're juggling different projects, hobbies, obligations, you'll start to understand why planning week-by-week makes so much sense, it's so much easier. Because the core parts stay the same, working out, focusing on the things that matter. But how you accomplish them might look very different each week. Here's an example of two different weeks. As you can see, the same outcomes, the same goals, but very different execution. Though it looks different each week and each month, by the end of the quarter, you'll be where you need to be, on track to meet your annual goals. This is why we need our planning to be holistic, personalized, cyclical, and adaptive. This is where your customizations really come into play. You can take into account your ideal day, your cycles, your energy rhythms, you get to make this your own adaptive planning system. If you don't have a lot of flexibility at work, you can still use adaptive planning to make sure you're recovering and replenishing in your personal time and for tracking different personal goals. The level of customization is totally up to you. At the end of the week, you just repeat the same process, adding and adjusting as necessary. Here's some tips that I use, but again, do what works for you. I always make sure I find the time to slot in my meaningful experiences and priorities first; writing, exercise, date night, food prep. I know that when I do these things, my quality of life improves and so does my performance. Don't over-schedule, leave some periods of unstructured time to play, or rest, or just be. You might have to experiment to actually find out how long it takes you to do something, and that's totally normal. You can have both structure and flexibility. You can build a non-routine routine. You can create systems that are designed to bend with you and go with the flow without ever losing track of what you want to accomplish. Plus, you want to have a strong enough system that if you get an amazing opportunity, you can take advantage of it and know that the system has enough give to catch you. I know this seemed like a lot, because we did the whole thing from beginning to end in one class. But once you get your annual goals set up, you do the quarterly planning every three months, the monthly planning once a month, then the only thing that you're doing on a regular basis is the weekly planning sessions, which is a 15-20 minute investment every week. Once you get to know yourself and your system, you'll be able to do it with your eyes closed. Plus the monthly reviews and previews ensure that you're always checking in with yourself to make any updates or changes that you need. In exchange, you get a planning practice that you have built, that is designed for your exact needs and your preferences in your life. This is the promise of humane productivity. 11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations on finishing the humane productivity approach to creating an adaptive planning practice. During this class, you have mastered the four pillars of humane productivity, personalized, holistic, cyclical, and adoptive. You took the time to understand your own needs and rhythms and constraints. With the annual yearly goal overview you not only figured out where you wanted to invest your efforts, but you turned the intangible into the practical. You mapped it out step-by-step. The quarterly overview gave you a good chunk of time to make some real progress on your goals, and the monthly review and preview ensured that each month you're being intentional and thoughtful about how you want to live your life. The weekly overview was the key. It gave you the structure to stay focused and flexible, to be in alignment with your body and not against it. It ensured that you move through the world with ease, open to exploring new things, embracing change, and taking the chance on spontaneity. You decided that to live an integrated life you have to balance both personal and professional obligations, and that to do so you have to build the system that was made just for you. Humane productivity is about the intersection of compassion and ambition. It's a way of working that refuses to choose between success and a full and happy life. I can't wait to see your systems and plans, so I hope you'll upload them to the gallery and of course I will be in the comments answering your questions and chatting about the class with you. This is your system, so make it work for you. [MUSIC]