Every October or November, I step away from the office and my home, and venture out—sometimes by plane, sometimes by foot—to lean into my Think Week, or as I like to call it, my Dream Week.
I put this time on the calendar nearly a year in advance and protect it fiercely. In fact, as I write this at the end of 2025, I’ve already blocked my 2027 Think Week. That doesn’t mean it might not shift—it did this year—but having it on my calendar means the time will get protected. It might get moved, but it doesn’t get deleted.
What is a Think Week, you ask? I’d be glad to tell you.
What a Think Week Is—and Why It Matters
A Think Week is space for you. It’s time you take away from your daily work and life to dream, reflect, and plan. Practically, the output of my Think Week is a high-level strategic plan for the year ahead and an organizing word that helps me orient with intention.
Personally, it is my anchor and the reason I enter every year with clear intention. Spending time every year in deep thought makes me a better entrepreneur and leader, and it also makes me a better partner, parent, daughter, sister, and friend.
So much of our everyday lives are spent in distraction. We scroll and multitask and fight distraction, even when we desire to connect. This is your week to set aside everything and be present. To think, to plan, to dream.
This week changed my life. When I started doing these Think Weeks, I was living in Boise, Idaho, and dreaming of a bigger, bolder, more abundant life. Today, I am living the life I dreamed of. Of course, there is still room to go and grow, and I hope to always maintain a posture of deep thought and intentionality. That’s why I’m practically religious about my Think Weeks, because they provide me that anchoring I need to keep going after my dreams.
Think Week Ground Rules
There are a couple of important organizing principles for an effective Think Week.
First, you must be off screens as much as humanly possible. I know you’re a busy founder or parent or professional. I know your email inbox is screaming at you, day and night. But as much as you can, step away from the inflow of messages (WhatsApp, email, text, social media) and step into your own thoughts.
Set your “out of office” for the week, and if you must, devote only thirty to sixty minutes maximum toward the end of your day, say around 4:00 p.m., to reply to the absolute-need-tos. And let the rest wait for you to get back. Unless you’re a trauma surgeon, your emails can probably wait.
Second, it needs to take place outside of your home or office. Your everyday space is likely not the best place for you to think differently. I love taking a trip to do my Think Week, and that is the absolute ideal—being away from my normal life. But I’m a mom who travels a lot for work anyway, so there are years where that just doesn’t feel practical. So if I can’t travel, I’ll often rent an Airbnb in my town so I have someplace to work from, or I’ll select a few spots that I feel creative in and spend my time there, doing the thinking and work I’ve outlined below.
Third, it’s not all about thinking and work. It’s about fun too. I plan a fun or joyful activity every day, and I try to integrate some adventure and a lot of physical movement. The week should be intense but restorative.
And fourth, you must cultivate the right mindset coming into this week. Abundant, positive thinking is what it’s all about. Shut off the news for a week or two prior, and be sure to feed your brain all the goodness you can, so you can cultivate an expansive presence during this deep work.
5-Day Think Week Schedule
Below I’ve included my five-day schedule. Feel free to use this schedule and make it your own. I always bring a nice notebook, such as a Moleskine (this year, I worked from a limited edition Little Prince Moleskine—swoon!).
I print my Life Visioning Guide, as well as my profit-and-loss report from the previous year, in detail, not just the high-level summary report.
Of note, I do have a small team, but this is the same general schedule I used when I was a solopreneur with no support. So adjust to your needs—and have fun with it! After all, a whole week in thought is an incredible gift to yourself.
Day 1 – Monday
Meditation and mindset
Walk into town—coffee shop
Vision writing (Life Visioning Guide)
Word of the year*
Activity: bookstore browsing and walk through town
*A word of the year is an intention-setting word to organize your entire year around. It’s the beacon you keep coming back to, during both the wins and the challenges.
To uncover my word of the year, I review my vision writing and make a big list of words that stand out, then I ideate more words that I want to hold moving into the new year. I often can’t pinpoint the exact word on this first day, but I can at least narrow the sentiment. By the end of the week, I am typically able to uncover my word of the year, both personally and professionally.
For 2026, my personal word is Love and my professional word is Abundant.
Day 2 – Tuesday
Meditation and mindset
Reflection on 2025 (journal)—wins, challenges, and opportunities going into the new year
Key business and personal goals for 2025
Draw or paint vision
Activity: run cliffs, then read at the beach
Day 3 – Wednesday
Meditation and mindset
Journaling (open ended)
Goal metrics and revenue mapping*
P&L review**
Activity: paddleboarding or another high-energy activity
*I use sticky notes to organize my key revenue goals for the year, breaking my revenue streams into “buckets” and identifying clear targets for the year. It might seem counterintuitive to do this before I review my P&L, but I like to start first from my intuition and then measure against my performance and actuals from the previous year. I pull all my work into a one-page revenue plan for the year and define exactly how many of each service I will take on for the year. Later, I review this against my true calendar capacity and team resources. Doing this protects me from overworking or overcommitting.
**To review my P&L, I go through every single item, line by line, and highlight items I need to investigate, make notes of items that are miscategorized, and note areas of potential overspending. I tend to be very frugal—in fact, my bookkeeper has mentioned that I underspend—but my goal is always to protect cash flow while growing the business. My P&L is organized by service as well, so I can measure my actuals against my revenue goals and make any adjustments.
Day 4 – Thursday
Meditation and mindset
Journaling (open ended)
Annual planning*
Activity: art workshop or dinner with team member (if in town)
*For my annual planning, I break my metrics out by quarter, with clear milestone metrics to support success in the year ahead. This takes some time and often requires revisiting my revenue map and metrics and adjusting as I start to put them into a more practical, actionable format. Once this is complete, I map out the entire year, month by month.
Now that I have an incredible team, I often do this alongside one of my team members. This year, I worked through this with Rita, who runs marketing. We outlined our programs, marketing campaigns, retreat, and key blackout dates for the year (such as August, when I am off). Again, we tend to make some adjustments to the big picture planning, though usually not as much by this point.
Day 5 – Friday
Meditation and mindset
Journaling (focus: clarifying and anchoring from the previous week)
Pull everything into a presentation to guide the year*
Activity: something fun with my family, if I’m in town; if I’m traveling, I’m generally heading to the airport in the late afternoon/evening on this day
*When I was solo, I created this for myself; now, I use it with my team. I run two sessions with the team to first reflect and then goal set and plan. We also organize our key focuses and individual metrics for Q1 of the following year.
So there you have it: my Think (Dream) Week schedule! I hope this is useful as you organize your own time to reflect, dream, and plan.
Do you run an annual Think Week? If so, what would you add? If not, how will you make space for thinking in the year ahead, even if it’s one day? Please share with me in the comments. I read and reply to each one and love hearing from you!
P.S. This is a genuinely human article. No AI was used to write this piece.
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