Planning your future together beats winging it.
1. Productivity: Strategic Planning for Couples
The missus and I have been doing quarterly strategic planning sessions for our relationship for a couple of years now.
The process: pick a nice location away from home, spend 2-3 days reviewing the past quarter and planning the next one. Cover your top 3 issues, review progress, discuss core values, and set objectives together.
Most couples never talk about any of this. They argue that formal planning “kills the romance”.
But planning actually structures your romance. It creates alignment, keeps you accountable, and helps you understand what you each want from life.
(Yes, I know. Spoken like a true consultant.)
2. Ops: Strategic Planning for Your Business
Okay so even if you don’t want to run your relationship with a strategic plan… you will want to run your business with one.
Without one, people start working on things they shouldn’t be. Processes aren’t followed. Team members head in different directions.
The result? Lower revenue, lower profits, things mysteriously “stop working”.
Strategic planning is systematic goal setting at a company level that creates top-to-bottom alignment.
You start with your company core: mission, values, long-term objective. Then work downwards — what needs to happen in 3-5 years, this year, this quarter?
Each person should see clearly how their daily work contributes to the company’s objectives.
If you’ve achieved product-market fit and are asking “what’s next?”, strategic planning is for you.
3. Tech: Work on Desktop, Not on Mobile
Do your real work on your desktop or laptop, not on your phone.
Your phone is fine for quick captures, reviewing notifications, and consuming content. But for actual work, be that writing, analysis, or deep thinking, you need a proper computer with a proper keyboard and screen.
Why?
Your phone is designed to keep you distracted. Every notification, every app, every interface element is optimised to grab your attention and pull you away.
On your desktop, you have more control. You can block distractions, use proper productivity apps, see more information at once. You can access files and open multiple apps on the same screen.
Use your phone for captures on the go. Knock out the actual work on your computer.
4. Courses
I have a range of online courses that teach business people what they need to know about productivity and AI:
1. Next Level Productivity
A practical, straightforward course that teaches you how to achieve elite-level personal productivity in today’s constantly interrupted world.
2. The AI Agents, Automations and Agentic Workflows Guide
This non-technical course shows business people and non-coders how they can build and use AI agents in ChatGPT and Zapier.
3. The Complete Claude, Claude Code & AI for Work Productivity
A comprehensive course taking you from beginner AI concepts like prompt and context engineering, to cutting-edge AI productivity using terminal-based AI tools like Claude Code for non-coding office work. Usable with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other current LLMs.
4. The AI Playbook
This is my longer premium course on how businesses can deploy AI tools and technology across their processes and teams.
5. ChatGPT for Managers
See how AI can solve complex management challenges in less than 30 seconds. Full prompt library and examples included.
That’s it for this week!
— Aaron