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💡 The Big Idea: Plans Are Worthless, But Planning is Everything

I just got back from my quarterly Personal Retreat. Every quarter, I go to one of these tiny cabins in the middle of the woods and spend an entire day reflecting on the past quarter and planning the next one.

Side note: I’ve got some really fun things planned for 2025 😉

I do this in Obsidian, and if you want to download my template file for yourself, click here.

I’ve shared about the whole process before, but in this newsletter, I want to zero in on a specific and often-overlooked part of the Personal Retreat:

Planning your perfect week.

The Real Value of The Plan

"My plan is just going to get blown up anyway, so what's the point?"

This is one of the most common objections I hear when it comes to time-blocking. And I get it. I prefer to have things all planned out, but I used to get really frustrated when things went sideways.

But the real value of the plan isn’t the plan itself. It's the intention you put into making it.

Former president Dwight Eisenhower (for whom the Eisenhower Matrix is named) encapsulated this perfectly when he said:

The act of creating the plan does a couple of things:

• It helps you carve out time to take action on the things that are truly important
• It provides intention for the hours you have available
• It helps you get clear on your priorities by visualizing them on your calendar

Everything you do must be done within the context of time. So, the best way to make sure you follow through on your intentions is to decide when you’re going to do it ahead of time.

But this approach provides value beyond just scheduling your most important tasks.

It also works on a macro level when you plan your perfect week.

How to Plan Your Perfect Week

Planning your perfect week is not the same as making a weekly plan.

When you make a weekly plan, you’re deciding when you’re going to work on your important projects. It’s specific and detailed.

When you plan your perfect week, you’re identifying what modes you’ll be in.

For example, a weekly plan would have events like “Record Focused 218 with Stephen Hackett on Sabbaticals.” But planning your perfect week would have a block that says “Podcasting” on Tuesday mornings.

But the objective is the same as when you time-block your day: start with a blank weekly calendar, then give every hour a job.

Here’s how to do it:

• First, create a new Planning calendar in your calendar app of choice. Whatever device you are using to read this already likely has a built-in calendar app you can use for this. But you want your perfect week to appear on a blank calendar by itself so you can toggle it on or off.
• Once you have your calendar set up, block off time for your regular working hours. Make sure to put descriptors for the type of work you’ll be doing. For example, if you have regular meetings every week, block off those hours as Meetings.
• After you’ve blocked off your work hours, block off any other regular commitments you may have. This could be anything you want to do regularly, like Date Night on Tuesday night or Family Time on Fridays.
• Next, block off time for self-care. You need to protect the golden goose, so make sure you have time set aside for your morning and evening routines as well as exercise.
• Continue to plan your perfect week until every hour is accounted for. Use blocks like Thinking Time, Reading, Lunch/Dinner, Church, or whatever other labels you want.

When you get done, it should look something like this:

This image actually represents my perfect week. I use different colors to represent the different types of time blocks on my weekly calendar:

• Purple is work-related
• Red is thinking time or strategy
• Green is self-care
• Orange is exercise
• Blue is church/ministry
• Yellow is family
• Brown is planning

A couple of things you may notice here:

• I set aside an hour every single day for my morning end evening routines (this is critical)
• I have a couple of blocks set aside every week for thinking and business strategy
• I block time for my shutdown routine at the end of every workday
• I make sure to block time for the fun stuff (i.e., Board Games on Monday, Date Night on Tuesday, etc.)

When you’re done planning your perfect week, you should feel excitement when you look at it. When you see a visualization of your values on a canvas like this, it helps create motivation to show up for what’s important and clarity to say “no” to the things that aren’t.

😎 Something Cool: Widgets for Obsidian

This handy little iOS utility is developed by Joschua Glau, a long-time Obsidian user I’ve been following ever since I bumped into him in the Obsidian forum (he likes using Obsidian for Bible study, too). He released this app a couple of months ago (right before the LifeHQ launch), but I didn’t really get around to kicking the tires until recently.

Basically, this app does what it says on the tin: it lets you create widgets for interacting with your Obsidian vault on your mobile device.

Out of the box, there’s a handy quick-capture widget. For example, you can tap the widget to open a text box and capture text directly to a specific folder, like an Inbox folder. I actually prefer to have an additional layer of friction for the things I capture (as I talk about in my Creativity Flywheel framework), so this never really appealed to me.

But the hidden gem, IMHO, is the ability to create actions from scratch using the Obsidian URL scheme.

Using Widgets for Obsidian, you can create actions that use Obsidian URI that you can then add as widgets on your iOS Home Screen.

This is really only for the true nerds, but the URI scheme lets you unlock a lot in terms of automation with Obsidian (you can extend it even further using the Advanced URI plugin). Each command can be configured with an accompanying emoji or icon, and the different widget size options give you lots of ways to get quick access to just about anything inside your Obsidian vault.

This is definitely a rabbit hole, but if you’re interested in learning more about Obsidian URI, check out the documentation here.

I know a few Obsidian nerds who are going to love this 😉 Widgets for Obsidian does have an in-app purchase to unlock full functionality, but also a free plan to help you decide if this is really for you first.

📚 Book Notes: The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

​The One Thing by Gary Keller & jay Papasan is one of my all-time favorite books. There are a couple of really powerful visuals at the beginning that clearly illustrate the power of consistent action and practical advice for finding and focusing on what matters. One of my biggest takeaways is this clarifying question to use whenever you’re unsure of what to do next:

This is a timeless book that I believe anyone would benefit from reading.

And if you want to download my mind map book notes from this incredible book, click here.

— Mike

P.S. I’ll be running another Practical PKM cohort in January, where we work together to dial in your PKM Stack and help you get more out of your notes & ideas. If you're interested in joining, I’ll be offering a special pre-sale discount to email subscribers before it officially opens. If you want to be notified when it's available, click here.

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