How to Improve Productivity by Theming Your Week

Plenty of entrepreneurs have lots of different demands on their time.

Whether because of parenthood, a more traditional job, or a second business, it can be hard to devote the energy and focus necessary to work on our entrepreneurial pursuits.

In my life, I’ve often found it difficult to keep straight the different goals, relationships, and ideas in my two business when I work on them side by side.

It’s not just that it's hard to keep details, like who I’m meeting or what I want to write about, straight.

It's pretty intuitive that the mental energy you expend to “shift gears” between one business or pursuit and another takes time and energy.

That transition is costing you some of your precious hours each day. Todd Herman refers to this as “context switching” and it’s estimated to cost your 70% of your productivity, if not more. Yikes.

So what can we do?

How to Improve Productivity by Theming Your Week

One strategy I've found really effective is creating “themes” for different days of the week, based on which business or pursuit I’m working on.

For example, Tuesday and Thursday could be dedicated to your blog or your book, while the other days of your week could be dedicated to another project.

Giving yourself more time to focus deeply on the work you're doing will allow you to be more efficient and focused.

I've definitely noticed as I've shifted to spending one day a week on my health and nutrition business, and the other four on this business, that I've reduced the amount of energy I spend switching gears.

You don’t have to have 2 businesses to make this work for you. You could also theme your days by project or by similar tasks such as a writing day, a video day etc.  

Theming your days allows to truly immerse yourself in one world.

Obviously, your work style should reflect what works best for you. But theming days of the week might give you back some of the time spent trying to reorient yourself from task to task as you move through your week.

Have you ever tried theming your weeks?  How has it worked for you?