Productivity
Intermediate
16 min
Planning and decisions — a weekly plan that survives contact with Monday
The problem
Monday morning you list fourteen things. By Wednesday you have done four, three of which were not on the list. Friday you carry nine into next week and feel behind.
The workflow
1List the work
2Estimate hours
3Subtract meetings
4Name the one outcome
5Fit and cut
6State trade-offs
7Decide the no
★Review Friday
What you need
Hours available: 45. Meetings already booked: 16.
The tool
Any assistant, ten minutes on Monday
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. THE ARITHMETIC — 42 hours estimated against 29 free.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- The 30% correction is an assumption. Track your own estimates for four weeks and replace it with your real figure — for some people it is 20%, for others 50%.
- The 'should be saying no to' answer is a judgement based only on what you listed. If Zenith is strategically important for reasons you did not state, the analysis is wrong — and that is your job to know, not the model's.
- Check that the priority order genuinely works backwards from your stated outcome. If it does not, your stated outcome may not be your real one.
- The buffer is the first thing you will spend. Decide now whether it is protected.