Recently I missed sending my weekly newsletter.

I was out of the office on the Thursday and again on the Monday. I tried to cover Monday’s activities on Sunday, but I only managed to get through a few of my standard activities.

I got behind because I wasn’t ahead on my standard activities.

This experience highlighted the value of getting ahead. Some people are naturally gifted at getting ahead, but I believe most of us aren’t.

If you want to make running your consultancy easier and much less stressful, getting ahead on your regular activities will help. Regular activities can include anything and will definitely include:

• Marketing

• Sales

• Finances

• Customer relationships

• Planning

When you get ahead of yourself, you’ll find you have an increased capacity to deal with the unexpected. You’ll also give yourself more time for strategic thinking and analysis of what is and isn’t working.

Here’s a method to start getting ahead now:

1. List your regular activities.

2. Identify if you can get ahead with it or not. (Some you’ll just have to live with staying on top of)

3. Score the activities you can get ahead on by personal/team impact, client impact, and revenue impact (score each low - 1, medium - 2, high - 3) - sorted by total score.

4. Take the top-scoring regular activity and determine how much work it needs on a weekly on monthly basis.

5. When you understand the level of work it needs, give yourself a target to get ahead by - I suggest a timeframe between 1 and 13 weeks (a quarter).

I will give you an example using marketing - as it is a subject I know well.

My regular activities are:

• LinkedIn posting

• Weekly email newsletter and blog post

• Advertising management

• In-person networking

• Website reviews and updates

• SEO

• Review of key profile listings e.g. LinkedIn profile

I can get ahead on LinkedIn posting and my weekly email newsletter. I can also get ahead on in-person networking by planning the events I want to attend a quarter in advance.

I can’t get ahead on advertising management as most activities depend on results. The best I can do with this is make sure I have regular time planned for it so I don’t get behind on it. It is similar for website reviews and updates, SEO and reviews of key profile listings. These are best done in planned time rather than attempting to get ahead.

Getting a month ahead for the LinkedIn posts and weekly newsletter is a great start. This will give me plenty of time to analyse the results and adjust the next month’s activities as needed.

I’d then start with the weekly newsletter, as writing these will give me content ideas for the daily LinkedIn posts.

When I’m a month ahead on these, I’ll then work on getting a quarter (13 weeks ahead).

Can you use this framework to start getting ahead on your regular activities?