If you have teenage kids and you’re anything like me then your weekends are probably crazy busy with being a taxi service to get the kids to part-time jobs, sporting commitments, parties and the like. It also means early mornings and late nights, so anything I need to do for myself I try to fit in around the gaps before the next activity we need to dash off to.

Consciously I have more structure to my days during the working week because I believe having a defined daily rhythm helps me in achieving goals and basically getting stuff done in the shortest possible time. When I’m out of rhythm then I usually notice that I’m busy but not all that effective.

My activity can be largely driven by customer availability, but some of the guiding principles I have are to try and process various activities in batches because I believe I’m 25% more productive when I do this. Basic examples are:

· As many prospect or customer meetings I can organise on the same day to minimise travel time

· Prospect phone calls because I usually then need to update the CRM database

· Reading and responding to emails

· Process high impact work when I’m fresh and the more basic administrative type tasks when I’m tired

Another way I’ve seen people do this is to group activities by day where the weekly rhythm could look something like:

· Meeting free Mondays

· Customer activity on Tuesdays

· Internal meetings on Wednesdays

· Key outcomes on Thursdays

· Catch-up Fridays for anything that may have fallen through the cracks

And if you haven’t really thought about what your rhythm is or should be then maybe it’s time to start.

The key is we all have some form of unique ways to how we work so find a rhythm that best suits your style. When you do, you might be able to reap either additional productivity benefits or feel less overwhelmed because you’re better in control of your workload.