A&B #124

How to win the week, take notes while reading, and more.

January 15, 2023

🙏  Support:

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👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is Winning the Week by Demir and Carey Bentley.

This book provides a practical strategy to plan and execute your week to become more productive. If you want to become a better planner or get the most out of your calendar, you'll enjoy this book.

Here are 3 key lessons from the book:

1) Aim To Learn One Lesson Every Week

To get better at anything you need effective feedback.

If you ever played a sport in high school or college, you know that the day after a game the coach will tell you what you did well and what you need to improve on. After that, they'll have you work on your weaknesses in practice so that you perform better for the next game.

The feedback loop goes like this: practice, play, reflect, and repeat.

The same feedback loop can be applied to our lives, but we're both the player and the coach. You want to take time at the end of each week to reflect on your wins and losses, see where you can improve, and then try to do a better job the following week.

As James Clear says in his book "Atomic Habits", get 1% better each day and you'll be 37x better by the end of the year.

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2) Plan For Friends, Family, and Fun

When planning your calendar don't just fill it with meetings, projects, and chores.

Add the things you're most looking forward to doing such as:

  • Going to the gym

  • Reading a new book

  • Hanging out with friends

  • Calling your mom or dad

  • Date night with your partner

  • Taking the kids to the zoo or museum

In fact, start planning your week by adding all of the fun activities you want to do first and then adding all of your work projects around it. This will make you less anxious when it comes to planning your week and chances are you'll look forward to planning your week.

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3) Quotes That Will Inspire You To Give Planning A Chance

It'd be impossible to summarize an entire 250-page book in a short newsletter and if I tried a lot of the context/details would get lost.

So instead, here are a few quotes from the book that will (hopefully) inspire you to start planning your week:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax." –Abraham Lincoln

"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail." –Benjamin Franklin

"The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought." –Sun Tzu

"Plans are worthless. But planning is indispensable." –Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority." –Garr Reynolds

"The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive." –Seneca

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✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Take 2 minutes to reflect on this week:

  • Write down your wins from last week.

  • Write down your losses from last week.

  • Pick one area you want to improve on and focus on it for this upcoming week.

2) Start planning your calendar with fun activities: 

  • Add the fun activities to your calendar first such as time with friends and family.

  • Then add work projects, chores, and other tasks.

3) Give planning your week a chance:

  • Pull up your calendar today and plan your whole week.

  • Worst case scenario: You spent 10-15 minutes and it didn't do much for you.

  • Best case scenario: You realize how powerful and effective planning your week is and you develop a new life-changing habit.

📖  Reading Lesson:

⭐️  Weekly Quote:

"We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way—that we’re not puppets that can be made to dance this way or that way just because we feel like it. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people."

From "The Daily Stoic" by Ryan Holiday.

Thank you for your support everyone, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.

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