Sunday Planning: The Simple Habit That Defends Time and Values

Why Sunday Planning Is More Than Time Management

I have tried various productivity as well as time management plans over the years, but nothing has stuck like Sunday Planning.

I came from an industry that is dominated by LDS members, door to door.

Many of the largest door-to-door companies, whether in security or pest control or solar, have their corporate bases in the Mecca of Mormonism, Salt Lake City. It is an industry and profession that is an easy transition for a young returned LDS missionary.

The things that bring success in the industry are things that these fresh-faced missionaries already have in spades: freedom from the fear of rejection, a tight-knit network of contacts, and the discipline to pursue entrepreneurship.

The Discipline Behind Success: Lessons from Door-to-Door Sales

The top producers in the door-to-door industry are nine times out of ten LDS members who saw a lot of success in their missions.

I’ve talked to countless top performers in door-to-door sales, and one of the common themes I’ve seen is that while the average missionary converts around two to four people to their religion in their two-year mission, the top performers often do triple and above.

But all of them agree that it was their mission that allowed them to perfect the skills necessary for success in door-to-door sales.

And it isn’t just the social skills necessary to be a top-performing sales rep, although that certainly is important.

So much of the success in door-to-door is the ability to go from no to no without a loss of enthusiasm and the ability to get up the next day and do it all over again.

You don’t need to enjoy it, although that helps—you just need to do it.

And that key point, the ability to just do it and keep doing it, is the common denominator of success regardless of someone’s background when they come to sales or, more broadly, entrepreneurship.

The Steven Covey Connection: Structuring Life for Fulfillment

One of the secrets I learned about returned missionaries is that the structure they had was what made them successful in their missions.

A lot of what they had to do they had no choice but to do it. The structure, everything, was imposed on them from the leaders.

But the ones who were able to recognize that this was the key to their success were able to translate that in their life after their missions were over.

LDS certainly has a ton of influences both inside and outside, but one man was able to translate a lot of their teachings into a massive and influential framework that appealed to a large audience: Stephen Covey.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the central books that is always recommended to me by returned missionaries.

And it is through this book and this man that I first heard about Sunday Planning.

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The Rock, Pebble, and Sand Analogy: Building a Balanced Life Through Time Management

Some of the people that have been able to build enormous wealth through door-to-door security—Casey Baugh, Todd Petersen, Bowdy Gardner, Jeff Mendez, among others—have all referenced this practice of Sunday Planning and its relationship to Stephen Covey.

In his book The 7 Habits, Covey asks you to imagine a big mason jar as your life and has three sizes of rocks which you picture as the most important things in your life, mid-important, and everything else.

He sees these boulders as stuff like family, spiritual practice, and community—the things that, at our funerals, people will get up and talk about our impact.

The mid-size rocks represent stuff like work or hobbies or the important things that make life go round, and finally, there is sand, which are often very urgent things but are ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

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Why Sunday Planning Is Protection, Not Productivity

He asks you to think from the end in mind and to put first things first.

If we do not protect our time, the mason jar of our life will first be filled with the sand, and then we can only fit a few of the rocks and maybe a boulder.

But if we put first things first and place the boulders in the jar and then the mid-size rocks and then the sand, we end up being able to hold all of the things of life because we have structured them.

A product from being on a mission is a structured time on Sunday where the missionary plans their week, giving the important things their proper place.

It is the deliberate sitting down for 30 minutes to an hour and looking at where I want to be, Covey’s “begin with the end in mind,” and then structuring those things in my upcoming week’s calendar so that I’m “putting first things first.”

It is the deliberate process of blocking out my time so that the important things get the attention they need and are not allowed to be pushed away by the urgent things that can make up life.

I often think of it in the context of what Brian Tracy says: “Time management is actually life management.” If this thing we call life is made up of this finite resource of time, then it is in our best interest to determine where and on what to spend this resource of time.

I’ve seen it in my own life that if I don’t make the conscious choice of where I want to spend this time, then this time will be spent for me without my choice.

Sunday Planning is something that, when I’ve chosen to incorporate it into my life, I’ve seen a lot of success in managing my life.

When I have chosen to neglect it, I suffer the consequences.

It is much more than the idea of productivity and accomplishing things.

The practice of a weekly Sunday Planning becomes the structured time to reflect on who I am and what values I hold dear and then the ability to defend those values as the world tries to steal them away.

It is protection, not productivity.

It is the choice of freedom in a world which wants to enslave.

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