The Growth Club

Designing Your Ideal Week

Your schedule is a design choice — not a series of things that just happened to you. This worksheet helps you step back, understand your own energy and rhythms, and intentionally build a week that actually reflects who you are and what you're building.

We're not going for perfect. We're going for truer than what you have now.

Before you start Work through each section in order — the early sections inform the calendar. Don't design the calendar until you've mapped your energy, your domains, and your roles. That sequence matters. This is a dreaming exercise first, a planning exercise second.
Part One
Your Energy Map
Before you schedule anything, understand how your energy actually moves
When does your energy peak — and fall — through the day?
For each time slot, write one word describing your typical energy (High / Low / Creative / Foggy / Social / Sharp / etc.)
6–7am
7–9am
9–11am
11am–1pm
1–3pm
3–5pm
5–7pm
7–9pm
Energy
Best for
Genius / Deep Work
Admin / Meetings
Creative
Rest / Recovery
Connection
Health / Body
Free / Unscheduled
1. When in the day do you do your best thinking, writing, or creating — without forcing it? Be specific.
2. When does your energy reliably crash — and what have you been scheduling there that it should not be?
3. Are you a natural morning person, evening person, or something in between — and does your current schedule honor that?
Cal Newport: Your two to four hours of peak cognitive energy each day are your most finite resource. Guard them like a board meeting. Everything else — email, admin, calls — can live anywhere else.
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Part Two
Three Kinds of Days
Dan Sullivan's framework — the secret to protecting your best work

Strategic coach Dan Sullivan teaches that all days are not created equal. The most effective solopreneurs deliberately structure their weeks around three types of days — and protect each fiercely. How many of each do you want per week, and which days?

Focus Day
Your Genius Days
100% of your energy goes to your highest-value activities — the work only you can do. No meetings, no admin, no interruptions.
How many per week?
Which days?
Buffer Day
Your Prep & Admin Days
Calls, emails, planning, prep work, meetings. The stuff that keeps the engine running. These protect your Focus days from being interrupted.
How many per week?
Which days?
Free Day
Your Full Rest Days
Completely off. No work, no email, no "just a quick check." These regenerate the creative energy that Focus days spend. Non-negotiable.
How many per week?
Which days?
🗂️
Part Three
Your Weekly Domains
What categories of life and work need space — and roughly how many hours each?

Check every domain that needs a home in your week. Estimate your ideal hours per week in the field on the right. (You have ~80–100 waking hours. Let's see where they go.)

🌿 Genius / Deep Work
Your highest-value creative work
📞 Client Calls
Coaching, delivery, meetings
📝 Admin & Email
The back-office work
✍️ Content / Writing
Creating, publishing, sharing
📈 Sales & Outreach
Lead gen, conversations, follow-up
💪 Health & Movement
Exercise, sleep rituals, body care
❤️ Family & Partnership
Quality time, presence
👥 Friendships / Social
Real connection, community
🕊️ Solitude / Spirit
Prayer, meditation, reflection
📚 Learning / Reading
Growth, curiosity, input
🎨 Play / Hobbies
Creative joy, restoration
🌀 Unscheduled Time
White space, wandering, rest
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks): You will never have enough time for everything. The liberating move is to decide what actually matters — and say no to the rest. Time is not managed; it's allocated.
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Part Four
Roles & Relationships
Who and what has a claim on your time — and is that claim honored?

Name the key roles you hold and relationships that need consistent attention. Then ask: is each one currently getting enough of the right kind of time?

Partner / Spouse
Children
Close friends
Community
Clients
Team / Collaborators
Self
Other
Which relationship is most under-resourced in your current week — the one you keep meaning to protect but haven't?
Part Five
The Dream Questions
If your week were a work of art — what would it feel like?
1. Describe your dream Monday morning. Be specific — where are you, what's happening, what are you not doing?
2. What would it feel like to end your Friday genuinely satisfied — not just relieved? What would have happened that week?
3. What rhythm or ritual has been missing from your weeks that you know — if it were there — would change everything?
4. If you had a magic wand and could instantly remove 3 things from your current weekly schedule — what would they be?
5. What would you add if you trusted yourself to protect it?
Michael Hyatt: The ideal week is not about getting more done — it's about doing the right things at the right times, with enough margin left over to be a full human being.
✦   Design Your Ideal Week   ✦

Using everything you've explored above — fill in your ideal week below. Name what goes in each block.
Use the color legend to indicate block type. This is the dream version — start there, then dial back to reality.

My Ideal Week
Fill each block with what you want to be doing — not what's currently there
Genius Work
Admin/Calls
Creative
Connection
Health
Rest/Free
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
Early
5–7am
Morning
7–9am
Deep Work
9–11am
Mid-AM
11am–1pm
Midday
1–2pm
Afternoon
2–4pm
Wrap-Up
4–6pm
Evening
6–9pm

Pre-colored blocks are just suggestions — click into any cell and type what belongs there. Let it be yours.

🔒
Part Six
Your Non-Negotiables
What goes into your calendar first — before anything else gets scheduled

These are the blocks you protect with your life. They go in your calendar first — fixed, recurring, non-moveable. Name up to 8.

✦   From Dream to Real   ✦
✦   Synthesis
What Actually Changes Next Week
The biggest gap between your current week and your ideal week is…
The one rhythm or block that, if you protected it starting next week, would create the most positive ripple through everything else…
My 3 practical changes — starting next week
Change 1
Change 2
Change 3
What's one thing I'll say no to — or stop doing — to create space for what matters most?
How will I know in 4 weeks if my week is working? What will I feel, and what will be measurably different?
· · ·

"The way you spend your days is the way you spend your life."
— Annie Dillard

Share one non-negotiable from your list in the group thread this week.
What are you protecting — and what does it say about what you value?


Inspired by Dan Sullivan · Cal Newport · Michael Hyatt · Oliver Burkeman · Gay Hendricks  ·  The Growth Club