Amidst the launch of The Mastery Journal, managing our team, creating new content, running our communities, maintaining our systems, and looking at a growing list of one-time tasks and projects, I have a really exciting week coming up: my girlfriend of 20+ years is coming to visit with her husband!

Preparation and planning

This has actually been one of the greatest previously unknown perks of moving to Puerto Rico: everyone wants to come visit!

A few weeks ago – just after the holidays – my sister came down for 5 days to visit and we had an absolutely blast. And since we moved to the island in May 2016, we’ve hosted nearly 10 different sets of guests!

Hosting family and friends is one of my favorite things – it means we’ll get to do lots of exploring and try new things, catch up, and of course, have tons of fun.

This is the beauty of owning and running your own business, right? You get the freedom to choose to take a Monday off, or have a 4-day weekend when your friends are in town.

However, it doesn’t go without a lot of preparation and planning because everything I just described – while incredibly amazing – is exactly what can derail your productivity, discipline and focus.

So, I thought it would be helpful to talk about some of the ways I prepare and plan for something like this so that my productivity, discipline and focus isn’t completely squashed.

Whether you apply these ideas the next time friends or family comes to visit you, or before you head off on your next mini-vaca, you’ll be prepped to the max when it comes to staying on top of business.

1. Productivity

I like to think of super-charging my productivity in situations like these, which means I’m going to create a very specific list of the individual things I need to get to done over the next five days.

When I don’t have to waste time trying to figure out what I’m going to do, then I have more time to make progress. Plus, then I won’t get caught spending my time on O.P.A. – other peoples’ agendas.

I create this list in Asana and that way I know where to go to find the specific tasks I need to work on.

Take the guesswork out of what you’re going to do so you can be most productive on the things that are most important to you and your business.

2. Discipline

There’s nothing like an amazing treat waiting on the other end of your hard work.

This is the reason people always talk about how important it is to know your “WHY”.

Your why is sort of like the biggest, most important treat of them all: it’s what drives and motivates you to work hard every single day, even when the outcome or progress doesn’t look exactly how you had hoped.

Same idea here: when I know that in X number of days my girlfriend of 20+ years is going to be here, I want to work my butt off to get as much done ahead of time as possible because this means I have more time to spend with her.

3. FOCUS

There are a lot of tasks and projects that I work on here at EOFire, but because of my preparation and planning, I know that each of them has a time and a place.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed – like you have too many tasks to work on and you’re not sure which one to work on first – then let’s take it back to step 0: create priority for your tasks and projects and give them a time and a place.

Again, this can be done in Asana: enter in the task or project, give it a due date, and it’s as easy as that when it comes to giving yourself peace of mind that you won’t forget about it AND you’ve just cleared your plate to be able to focus on the most important task or project for you RIGHT NOW.

When you prepare and plan ahead, it’s incredible what you can do. Leverage the opportunities you see in your everyday life to help you accomplish what matters most to you and your business.

It doesn’t meant the rest won’t get done, but remember, everything in your business should have a time and place.

When you prepare and give yourself a plan in the way I’ve just described, productivity discipline and focus become biproducts of your work. You can do this.