Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to check in weekly. If you are trying
Speaker 1: to hold yourself more accountable for something, checking in weekly
Speaker 1: is a good cadence to allow for ups and downs,
Speaker 1: but to still keep yourself on track. So, as you
Speaker 1: might imagine, I am fascinated by time. Certain aspects of
Speaker 1: time are rooted in the natural world, days, for instance,
Speaker 1: and years. Other units of time are more human designed.
Speaker 1: Think the seven day week. One could imagine the cycle
Speaker 1: of life as we live at repeating every six days
Speaker 1: or eight days or whatever. But in most of the
Speaker 1: cultures where you might be listening to this podcast, seven
Speaker 1: days is deeply ingrained. Look at seven days and you
Speaker 1: have a pretty good picture of someone's life. Look at
Speaker 1: one day and you'll have to guess was it a Tuesday?
Speaker 1: Was it a Saturday? What's normal about this day? What isn't?
Speaker 1: But a week shows both anyway, I find a week
Speaker 1: is a good unit of time for evaluating lots of things.
Speaker 1: So if you are trying to hold yourself accountable for anything,
Speaker 1: designating a weekly check in time is likely to keep
Speaker 1: you on track. This is true for a few reasons. One,
Speaker 1: you will remember it, which is not true of things
Speaker 1: that happen less often than weekly. Until a few years ago,
Speaker 1: our local recycling pickup was every two weeks, and it
Speaker 1: was shockingly hard to rememb remember it was it this week?
Speaker 1: Was it last week? But if something happens every Friday,
Speaker 1: you come to associate it with Friday and you don't
Speaker 1: forget to do it. Second, looking at a week allows
Speaker 1: for natural ups and downs. Let's say you're trying to
Speaker 1: hold yourself accountable for working on an application for graduate school.
Speaker 1: If you check in daily, it is quite possible that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have worked on it on Monday because work
Speaker 1: got incredibly busy. But maybe you've carved out time Tuesday
Speaker 1: night and Thursday afternoon to work on it. Rather than
Speaker 1: think that you have failed when you don't do something
Speaker 1: every single day, a week gives you the chance to
Speaker 1: see overall progress past that, though we tend to lose steam.
Speaker 1: If you checked in once a month, you might drift
Speaker 1: off and not really be able to quickly get back
Speaker 1: in the game. I plan my upcoming weeks on either
Speaker 1: the Thursday or Friday, and as part of that, I
Speaker 1: check in on how I'm doing on my goals. Did
Speaker 1: I stick with my daily intentions? Did I take steps
Speaker 1: toward my bigger goals. I can then also look forward
Speaker 1: to the next week and plan in priorities related to
Speaker 1: those goals. I know as I plan them in that
Speaker 1: I will evaluate at the end of the week if
Speaker 1: I did them. This provides a lot of accountability. I
Speaker 1: also check in with a few accountability partners each week.
Speaker 1: We state what we did over the past week and
Speaker 1: what we plan to do. A weekly rhythm isn't overwhelming,
Speaker 1: but it is frequent enough that we know what each
Speaker 1: person is focusing on, and we can point out if
Speaker 1: things keep getting bumped forward. If there is something you
Speaker 1: are trying to hold yourself or anyone else accountable for.
Speaker 1: You might also try designating a time weekly to do this.
Speaker 1: Now we can go overboard with this. I am not
Speaker 1: a huge fan of weekly meetings that exist just to exist.
Speaker 1: They still need to be well planned, but plenty of
Speaker 1: managers swear by fifteen to thirty minute one on ones
Speaker 1: with all direct reports weekly just as a way to
Speaker 1: keep on top of any problems and let the person
Speaker 1: know that there is a time for sure when they
Speaker 1: will have their manager's attention that can head off a
Speaker 1: lot of crises. A week may be a human invented
Speaker 1: form of time, but it is a very useful one indeed.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.