Working for yourself can be super stressful, super overwhelming. There's no getting around that, especially if you're working by yourself. Maybe you're a solo developer or an artist just trying to get their business going in the space. There's a lot of pressure on your shoulders to know what you should be doing on a daily basis to move your business forward.
If you're not careful, you can get hit with that analysis paralysis. You have so many options that you end up doing nothing, or you end up doing so much and taking on so much that you no longer have a life, and you no longer like what you do. Neither one of those options is ideal or anything that you should accept.
Here is a quick tip that has brought some more peace into my life, brought me a lot more work-life balance, and has still helped me maintain productive things.
The Sunday Night Strategy
At the beginning of every week, like Sunday night before your week starts, or whenever your week starts, take out a piece of paper and write down everything that you think needs to get done that week. Everything that's floating around in your head that's causing you anxiety: "I could be doing this, I could be doing that." Write them all down. Make a little bullet list of all those action items.
The Magic Wand Game
After you've done that, we're gonna play a game where I wave a magic wand, and we're gonna say that five of those things are guaranteed done and perfect, couldn't have been done better, but all of the other things don't get done this week. You have to pick five things that are done perfectly this week.
What that's gonna do is it's gonna cause you to think of which ones are the biggest needle movers for you. Which ones, if I can only get these five done, will make the biggest difference for me. Once you highlight those five things, you now have a daily action item for every day of the week, and you're gonna approach every day knowing, "I just need to get this one thing done today, and it'll be a productive day."
The Big Domino
What this does is it saves you so much time agonizing over little minute details that really don't make that big a difference for you. It gets you to focus on the things that are actually going to move your business forward, the things that actually make an impact on your daily actions.
Tim Ferris calls this the "big domino" because it's the one thing that if you push that over for the day, it launches you forward more than any other things you could have been working on. Knocking this out at the beginning of the week takes away all of that brain power that you use on a daily basis figuring out what you should be doing today.
You already know if I get this one thing done today, it'll be a productive day. If you start practicing this, you're gonna be blown away with how much less time you spend agonizing over what you should be doing and how much quicker you start moving towards your goals.
Give it a try and see how it transforms your work week!