Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: StephenPSmith.com

One of the pitfalls when you work at home is maintaining a consistent and persistent attitude toward getting your work done. When I am “working for myself” on a project that I have assigned to myself, the deadline seems less real, less urgent.

Last week I sorta jumped from one thing to another, until I was able to land a couple of client consultations and some marketing work. (…read more about my services here…) Then I was able to spring into action, getting the work done on time and under budget. This week, I have two of my own projects to complete, and there is a bit of a real time-element to them. I would very much like to have them done in two weeks. It’s time to buckle down.

Create a Weekly Schedule

I used my Open Office spreadsheet program to create a weekly schedule template. It runs Monday through Sunday, and includes all of the hours from 5:00 am to 8:00 pm (I like to get up early!):

This is a much-simplified version of the “7 Habits Weekly Planner” that we discussed previously. In fact, if you have trouble with filling in the 7 Habits planner, you may want to use the simple one as a rough draft for filling in this one:

In any case I used the worksheet on Sunday when I ran my Weekly Review in order to prepare for the tasks and projects that I wanted to accomplish this week. For more information about the 7 Habits Weekly Calendar please read these posts:Implementing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

And, as always, you can download the PDF version of the basic Weekly Schedule Planner.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People E-book

If you are looking to get more information on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system you are in the right place. Over the course of the next few pages you will encounter lessons in personal change that can transform your life.

Because this is not exactly a simple concept to implement, I have created a set of 7 lessons that will guide you through the stages of implementation over the next 7 weeks. This should give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before implementing the next one. Some of the lessons are supplemented by a follow-up worksheet that I have created to help you start implementing the new habit.

I would really like to hear your comments, start a discussion.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/3wjc9e. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen