What would be your perfect week?

When you think about your "perfect week", what do you envision?

Is it cruising the mediterranean sea in a luxurious yacht? Attending the most exclusive events? Infiltrating the elite circles? Mingling with the powerful? Seducing the villain's mistress to get the secret access code. Sabotage the evil organization's plot to take over the world?

Or it's chilling at a beach somewhere, surrounded by loved ones, with no obligations. The only preoccupation in your mind is whether you want to order another mojito o switch to a piña colada.

How about Barney Stinson's perfect week? In an episode of the show How I Met Your Mother they said it's a week in which you hooked up with a different person every day. That might be a little too much, but it had a nice insight underneath. They compared it to a pitcher's "perfect game", when they strike out every batter of the opposing team.

Is that it? Is the "perfect week" is a week in which you do everything you're supposed to, when you're supposed to do it? Sounds ideal. Imagine all the things you could get done if you focused on the right things. If you managed to plan your week in detail, and then stick to the plan. Imagine the compounding effect it could have.

Despite our best efforts, distractions are inevitable. How often do we lay out a plan, only for unforeseen circumstances to completely alter it? As you diligently work through your To-Do list, it seems to grow endlessly with new tasks. Before you know it, you're overwhelmed with so many responsibilities that you don't even know where to start.

However, failing to plan is planning to fail. If there were no distractions, no unforeseen events, and nothing to shake you off your tasks... What would your ideal week look like? What would you do every day? And every hour? What tasks do you focus on before plans get disrupted? What's your ideal routine, essentially?

A routine? Doing the same thing every day? That's a far cry from the thrill and excitement of the life of a super spy. Why would I want to repeat the same things every day, when there's adventure around every corner?

That's what I used to ask myself years ago. I used to recoil at the thought of having a boring routine before. This is the whole reason I started working in the nightlife business. Every day was different. Every weekend was novel and new. New event venues meant I had to learn new things. New faces, new DJs. My morning routines were as simple as recovering from a hangover.

But even then, as years passed, everything became a big blur. Same pictures, same poses, same tunes. Same little dance talking with security to let me go backstage. Same hangover remedies. Same sitting down for hours, to go through the thousands of pictures I shot last weekend. Same broadcast lists talking people into going to the next party.

Without realizing it, the idea of not having a routine, got me stuck in a different kind of routine. A routine I hadn't consciously chosen for myself. I was living a very reactive life, only attending to external commitments, and wasting the rest of my time. Worst of all, I wasn't dedicating any time to crucial, needle-moving tasks. These are the important, but not urgent task that help you reach your personal goals.

Whether it's taking that course, starting a side hustle, launching a company, sending that sales pitch, and so on. These are the kind of things nobody asks you to do. They must come from within. They are key to fulfilling your potential, and living a meaningful life.

That's why you must allocate time, much like money, for specific purposes, or you risk wasting it. With every paycheck you need to sit down and determine where every penny is going to go. Otherwise, you'll live an exuberant beginning every month and struggle before every paycheck. Similarly, you need to schedule your time and plan your activities. If you don't, you'll spend countless hours on social media every week, wondering why your tasks remain unfinished.

So wouldn't it be ideal to set up a schedule that allocates time for every task, both work and leisure? A schedule that takes into account your energy levels. When you're most productive, and when you need to decompress and relax.

That's where the concept of the "ideal week", or rather, the "Absolute Ideal Allocation" of hours each week, comes in. It's a system pioneered by CEO Business Coach Eric Partaker, that I learned from Ali Abdaal. The idea is that you plan out what your default weekly routine looks like. Sure, there's always unforeseen commitments. But ff you had a regular week, without any distractions, what would you do with your time?

According to Partaker, you must set up "timebox" in your calendar. Each timebox determines what you're going to be focusing on at any given time. You determine what you're going to do every waking hour of every day. By following certain steps, you can determine the kind of weekly routine that works best for you. That way, whenever you find yourself sitting down to work, you'll know exactly what to do and when to do it.

Writing things in your calendar to manage your time? Groundbreaking concept, I know. The main thing here is that you don't only write down commitments to other people, but also to yourself.

I know you love lists, so before I teach you how to do it, I'll give you a list of all the benefits:

1. Having a routine makes it easier for your brain to get ready to tackle the task at hand. If you write every day at 9AM, your brain gets ready for it. If you wrestle alligators every day at 3PM, by 2:30 you're already stretching and pumping up adrenaline.

2. If you decide in advance what you'll do at a specific time, you don't waste time making decisions when the moment arrives.

3. You can batch habits that go well together. If it takes you 45 minutes to drive back home from work, you know you can listen to your favorite 45min podcast. Your breakfast hour goes well together with journaling. Your lunch hour is great for reading a chapter in a book, etc.

4. It helps you harness Parkinson's Law. It states that work will expand to fill the time given for its completion. If you have a month to do something, it'll take you a month. If you have a week, it'll take you a week. If you have from 3 PM to 5:30 PM, because you have yoga class at 6, that's how long it'll take you.

5. It'll show you when you actually have free time. If you want to take up a new habit or activity, you can check out your calendar and see "hey I have some time free on Thursdays." Or maybe "Wait, I gotta move things around."

6. It's easier to move say no to things. If you get invited to something you don't want to attend, it's easier to say no if you already got something else in your calendar. And if you don want to attend, you can first ask "I can't on Wednesday, does Thursday work instead? If not, it's up to you to decide what you want to prioritize before committing.

7. It'll help you stay focused on the task at hand, and avoid context switching. This is when you multitask and switch your attention back and forth from one task to another. Each switch requires your brain to refocus. This leads to a temporary decrease in concentration and efficiency.

So how do you do it? Easy.

First, decide what time you're gonna wake up every day, and stick to it. Set aside an hour for your morning routine (brush your teeth, bathroom, shower, coffee, breakfast, etc).

Then, decide what time you're gonna go to sleep every day. Set aside an hour for your nighttime routine (screens off, reading, journaling, etc). Add another for your lunch time.

Then, begin to fill it up according to your needs. If you have a job with a fixed schedule, instead of adding a huge timeblock for "work", break it down into smaller parts. Talk to your supervisor about it. "I do my best work when there's less distractions. Do you think we can avoid meetings and messages from 10 to 12?" Or "Let's bunch up all group meetings on Mondays and Thursdays." If they hesitate at first, you can always ask them to try it out for a week, and see if productivity improves.

If you're an entrepreneur, or someone with a flexible schedule, you have more freedom to experiment with how you manage your time.

Either way, here's a few key things to keep in mind while you work on this:

• Keep your energy levels in mind when scheduling. Do you do your best work in the morning, or are you more creative in the evening? If you plan social gatherings on Wednesday nights, you might be a little extra sleepy Thursday morning. Four hours of nonstop deep work might be a lot. Try splitting them up in two, and adding a 20 minute walk in the middle and see how it feels.

• You can combine similar tasks. If you want to adopt a new habit, mix it with an existing one. For example, it doesn't take you a full hour to eat breakfast, so you might pair ir with coffee and journaling. If you slow down a little bit after lunch, instead of jumping back to work, you might want to read a chapter while you eat.

• Each day doesn't have to follow the same routine. Even with a consistent weekly schedule, you can dedicate different days to focus on distinct tasks. On Tuesday you may focus on deep writing work. Wednesdays might be for more superficial admin tasks, and so on.

• Set a notification for every single event. On the hour for task switching, or half an hour before if you need to get ready to commute. It'll be a simple reminder it's time to switch task, so you don't have to stare at your calendar all day. "Hey, it's time to begin working in X", or "It's time for lunch+reading". Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. If you're told what you should be doing at all times, you don't waste time and energy wondering.

• This default weekly planning is , of course, flexible. You can change and move things around to accommodate unforeseen or extraordinary events. Some days or weeks are more hectic than others, and none of this is mandatory. The idea is that whenever you don't have extraordinary events, you fall back into this routine.

• This weekly schedule is not set in stone. The idea is that you try things out and see what works for you. Change it up based on new habits you want to adopt, new experiences, and changes in priorities. Switch things up to find what works best, and actualize it as your goals evolve.

And that's it. Now go out and cruise the mediterranean in a yacht. Or seduce the villain's mistress. Or sabotage the evil organization's plot to take over the world. Or hook up with 7 different people in a week. Or pitch a perfect baseball game.

Or whatever it is you call your ideal week.