Setting Up Your Day for Success

Episode 60 transcript: Setting Up Your Day for Success

Hey there, and welcome to episode 60 of your fun and profitable online business. I’m Wendy Muzzy, a certified money coach and online business strategist, and I help women entrepreneurs take all their ideas, plans, and goals and turn them into a business that feels good to run and actually makes money. And today we’re talking about your day, not your quarter, not your year, not even your week. We’re talking your actual real deal lived in day-to-day life. Because here’s the thing, you can have the best goals, the most beautiful quarterly plan, fancy weekly layout, but if your day isn’t set up to support that, it all kind of falls apart. And not in a dramatic way, but in a really quiet, sneaky way. You know, where things are working and you’re doing the things, but at the end of the day, you feel like nothing’s actually moved forward. So today, I’m going to show you how to set up your day for success using something I call the priority pyramid, and more importantly, how to actually use it in real life. All right, let’s get to it. I want to start by painting a picture for you, because I’ve been there. You know, where you sit down at your desk, and you have a list, and you have the best intentions, maybe even a little excitement, and you’re like, today is the day. I’m getting this thing done. Then somehow you check email, you respond to a few DMs, you maybe scroll Instagram for some inspiration. You open a tab to look something up and suddenly you’ve got 12 tabs open and your brain’s like, well, while we’re here. And suddenly it’s 2 p.m. and you’re questioning what you actually did today. Now, I get this. If this sounds familiar, know that you’re not alone. And I know this is the frustrating part. You weren’t doing nothing. I mean, you were doing things. But the thing that would actually move your business forward, it’s still sitting there, still untouched, still waiting for later. And later keeps becoming tomorrow. and then the next week and then the next month. And this is the cycle that creates that feeling of working so much, so hard, all the things, but not getting any real results. Now, here’s the truth. This isn’t a discipline problem. I can tell you that for a fact. It’s a structure problem. And this is exactly why I created the priority pyramid because without it, your day becomes reactive. Your inbox decides what you’re gonna do your notifications make all the decisions for you, and everything else keeps piling up. With it, your day becomes intentional. You decide your day. Now, here’s what I really want you to know. Your business doesn’t grow because of what you plan. It grows because of what you do consistently each and every day. And if your day isn’t connected to your bigger goals, you’re essentially building a puzzle without looking at the picture on the box. You’re putting the pieces down, maybe even connecting a few of them, but you’re not working towards the bigger idea, the bigger picture, the bigger plan. And that’s why this matters so very much. All right, let’s break this down. The priority pyramid looks like this. You start with your annual focus and you use your annual focus to create your quarterly goals. Now, your quarterly goals are then used to create your monthly milestones and your monthly milestones lead to your weekly focus and your weekly focus drives your daily top three. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes. Go to wendymuzzy.com/45 to hear more about that. Now that we’ve talked about the layer, like we’ve talked about before, we’re gonna zoom all the way down to the bottom layer, which is your daily top three. Because this is where everything becomes real. We’re gonna go step by step. Number one, we start with your weekly focus here. This is not your to-do list. This is where so many people go wrong. They start their day with what they’re gonna do or what they feel like doing or what’s on their list instead of asking themselves what actually matters this week. So before you even think about your day, you need to know what your three priorities are for this week. Now, because your daily actions should be in service of something, this is why this matters so much. Otherwise, your day turns into a collection of random tasks. This is your anchor. Without it, your day is just floating along. All right, number two. Then you choose your daily top three. Here, every day you ask yourself, what are the three things that will move my weekly priorities forward? I want to slow this down for just a second though, because this question, without it, it turns into, what should I get done? Nope. You want to know what actually moves things forward. These are two very different things. checking email feels productive. Organizing your Google Drive feels productive. Researching something for 45 minutes feels productive. But do they actually move your business forward? Sometimes, but not always. Your daily top three are about movement, not maintenance, not busy work, movement. And I get it. This might feel too simple. You might be thinking, this can’t be enough. But here’s what I see again and again. Simple works when you actually do it. That’s it. Simple. Number three, make them small enough to finish in the day. This is one of the biggest shifts I see people make because your brain loves big, vague ideas. Create a new offer, work on my website, do marketing tasks. And your brain is right. Those things are important. But it also doesn’t know where to start in those places. So you avoid it, or you delay it, or you replace it with something easier. So instead, we need to make it very specific. For example, outline offer structure for XYZ offer, or write sales page headline and bullet the who’s it for section. Draft one sales email. You get it it’s very, very specific. It’s tangible, specific things you’re going to do. Now here in this space, Your brain hears, oh, I can do that. And here’s the key. You should be able to finish your top three during that day. Because finishing builds evidence. And evidence builds confidence. And confidence builds momentum. All right, number four, let everything else be bonus confetti. And I’m not saying just do three things, close your computer and be done for the day and go take a nap. If that’s what you want to do, high five, do it, I get it. But you can do other things other than your daily top three. But those get to be bonus confetti moments. This one always makes me smile to think about it because there’s so much unnecessary pressure out there. And whenever you can make it bonus confetti, it gets to be fun, it gets to be light, it gets to be those joyful things. Email, bookkeeping, random ideas, they can all be there. They can all still happen. We’re not ignoring them, but they don’t define your success for the day. Your daily top three do. So instead of ending your day thinking you didn’t do enough, you can remind yourself that you did what mattered. And that’s a completely different feeling. Number five, do a quick daily reset. At the start of each day or the night before, take two minutes and identify your daily top three. This is not a full-on planning session, not a deep dive, just a reset. This is what keeps you from drifting. Because without this, you start your day in reaction mode. With it, you start your day with direction and purpose. Okay, after you do this, imagine this. You start your workday already knowing If I do these three things, today is a win. You’re not guessing. You’re not spinning. You’re not opening your laptop thinking and wondering, what do I do now? You have a starting point. And that alone removes so much friction. And by the end of the day, you’ve moved your business forward. Not just maintained your business, but built it. And over time, this is where things start to really shift. Because those small daily wins start to stack. They’re quiet at first. But then they’re noticeable. And then they’re dramatic. And suddenly, the new offer is out in the world. The system to simplify your onboarding is up and running. That revenue goal is so much closer to being reality. Not because you worked more, but because you worked with direction. And the best part, you start to trust yourself. Because you’re not just planning, you’re following through and making it happen. All right, let’s get to your action step for today. Before you start your workday tomorrow, write down your daily top three. Put them on a sticky note. I don’t care. Make sure they connect to your weekly priorities, are small enough to finish, and actually move the needle forward. And then this part really matters. At the end of your day, pause and celebrate that you got them done, even if it feels small. Because this is how you start to train your brain to recognize progress. And confetti is definitely required here, by the way. Digital or real, I don’t care. All right, let’s wrap this all up together. Today, we talked about how your day fits into the bigger picture of your business using the priority pyramid. Starts with your annual focus, moves to your quarterly goals, then to your monthly milestones, then to your weekly priorities, and then your daily top three. And your daily top three, that’s where it all becomes real. This is where ideas turn into action and action turns into results. You don’t need a better plan. You don’t need more time. You don’t even need more motivation. You just need a clear next best step and the willingness to follow through on it. Now, if this episode clicked for you, I’ve got a couple ways you can take this further. Number one, you could join me inside CEO Hour where you actually work through your daily top three in real time. They’re most Wednesdays at one o’clock Eastern. You can sign up at wendymuzzy.com/CEO. Number two, you can grab my planner tool to map out your weekly and daily priorities. You can find it at wendymuzzy.com/plan. All right, until next time, happy setting up your day for success.