Focus and Workload Design

Rebuild your working week around the work that matters, and make the change hold past the first fortnight.

Level: Beginner
Duration: 5 weeks
Price: $149
Course code: PR-105

Overview

Most productivity advice assumes the problem is your willpower. Usually the problem is that you are carrying more commitments than the week has hours for, and no system will fix arithmetic. This course starts by measuring what you have actually taken on, then removes things.

Over five weeks you audit two real weeks of your own time, cut your commitments to something the week can hold, restructure the calendar around the work that only you can do, and build a short weekly review that keeps the whole thing from drifting back. It is deliberately the shortest and least expensive course in the catalog, because five weeks is enough for this and twelve would be padding.

It suits people whose calendar stopped being theirs some time ago, and people who suspect they are busy with the wrong things but have never checked.

Who this is for

People whose calendars filled up faster than their job description changed
Managers spending the whole week in other people's meetings
Specialists doing focused work in the gaps between interruptions
Anyone who has tried three systems and abandoned all of them

Next Cohort

Applications open

Q4 2026Monday 5 October 2026
Q1 2027Monday 11 January 2027
Q2 2027Monday 12 April 2027
Q3 2027Monday 5 July 2027

Applications for the Q4 2026 cohort close on Friday 18 September 2026. We reply to every application within two business days.

Desmond Whitlark

Delivery planning and workload design

You bring a live project. By the last week you have a plan for it that survives contact with your actual stakeholders.

Read the full profile

Beginner, no prior training assumed. One live session of ninety minutes each week, plus about three hours applying it to your own work. Sixteen seats. Full details on how enrollment works.

Apply for PR-105

Module plan

5 modules across 5 weeks.

Each module has one live session and one piece of practice applied to your own work.

Week 1
Measuring What You Actually Carry
Two weeks of honest tracking, then listing every standing commitment so the total is finally visible in one place.
Week 2
Cutting the List
Deciding what to stop, hand over or renegotiate, and rehearsing the conversation where you tell someone you are stopping.
Week 3
Designing the Week Around the Real Work
Placing the work only you can do into the hours where you are actually capable of doing it, and defending those hours.
Week 4
Interruptions and the Cost of Switching
Reducing the number of places people can reach you, agreeing response times openly, and handling the genuinely urgent case.
Week 5
The Weekly Review That Survives March
A fifteen minute habit that catches drift early, and what to do in the week you inevitably skip it.

Outcomes

What you will be able to do.

By the last session of Focus and Workload Design you will have practised each of these on your own work, not on a case study.

See your full commitment load in a single honest list
Stop or hand over at least two standing commitments
Protect recurring hours for the work only you can do
Set and communicate a response time that reduces interruption without hiding you
Run a weekly review short enough that you keep doing it