Then, for the blocks of time that you have set aside for your “rocks”, what specific tasks can you do in order to make efficient use of your time? So you’re taking your larger chunks of time and making them more specific with detailed goals.
How to Plan Your Week: 7 Steps to Focus on What’s Important
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You may think to yourself on Sunday night that you have an entire week ahead of you to work on your projects, meet up with an old friend, get a proposal submitted, in addition to all types of things around the house that are just waiting to be done.
I’m and so often telling myself and other people that I simply don’t have time to do XYZ–and I get stressed out regarding the little amount of sleep that I get because I have to stay up to finish up everyday things.
Recently, I’ve started to be more objective in my weekly scheduling to reduce the short amounts of time that become wasted that add up in the end. I have become strictly organized with my schedule and I’ve found that I can now get through the week feeling more accomplished than I ever have before.
How to Plan Your Week
While we’re moving towards larger time-units, everything we said about daily management and productivity applies to your weekly schedule as well: routines, goals, task management, The Productivity Planner, scheduling for planning fallacies, staying in tune with your nature, and dropping the perfectionism.
1. Create a Master To-Do List
This list can go on and on, depending on your ambitions for the coming period. Once you have it ready, you need to define time frames for all list items. Then, you need to define how you’re going to achieve each of those things—define all the steps you need to take.
We already explained how you can use The Productivity Planner to maximize your daily organization. However, The Productivity Planner also requires you to plan out your weeks. If you have your goals and tasks outlined already, weekly planning should be a piece of cake.
2. Plan Ahead
3. List Your MITs
Remember how we said that with daily level planning you need to pick one MIT for the day? Well, instead of deciding on that every day, use your Fridays (or Sundays) to list all the MITs for next week and assign them according to their urgency/importance.
4. Divide Your Week Based on Your Personal Priorities
5. Manage Your Energy
For example, accounting your monthly finances is energy-draining, as well as three-in-a-row meetings with your business partners. On the other hand, a simple staff meeting in the office can be marked as neutral, while exercising, or getting new furniture for your office can be considered as energizing.
6. Stay Flexible
Being rigid about your schedule can become counterproductive. Planning stuff is great, because it allows you to avoid the unpleasant uncertainty of not knowing what to do next. But being inflexible about moving today’s tasks for tomorrow because something assigned for tomorrow needs to be done today, is just not how you should roll.
Short Summary
How to Plan Your Year
Planning your year is perhaps the most difficult part of the process. You need to define your goals and tasks, split them into steps, define time frames, think so much in advance, plan for your private and professional life, and so on. The tips we gave you for weekly planning, such as creating a master to-do list or staying flexible apply here as well (The Productivity Planner not so much at this level, as it doesn’t account for yearly plans, but you can use The Best Year Journal for planning your best year ahead).
1. Define Your Goals Using the SMART Matrix
To-do lists are great first steps , but they only remain wishes on paper if you don’t turn them into achievable goals. So, if you want your weekly and daily planning to make any sense, you need to define your yearly goals first, using the SMART matrix.
This means that creating a “running a half-marathon” to-do is not enough. How are you going to achieve it? How are you going to measure your progress? Is it realistic for you to prepare for the half-marathon within the given time?
2. Create a Yearly Theme
3. Spice It Up With a Bucket List
4. Reflect on Your Previous Year
In order to properly plan the year that’s coming, think about your previous year. Did you have any plans and goals for last year? Did you succeed in achieving them? If yes, what made you successful, if not, what was the sabotaging factor?
Try to figure out what was out of your control: for example, the coronavirus crisis sabotaged many people’s 2020 plans, but there’s nothing we could do about it. It was out of our control. On the other hand, not traveling to Athens because you didn’t pass all of your exams by summer is totally up to you!
How to plan your week to be productive
Those are my 9 tips for how to plan your week to be productive. I hope you now feel ready to jump into the week ahead with your own plan so you can have a super productive week in which you feel calm, focused, and accomplished.
Carly is a wife, mom, and former fashion industry executive turned blogger, who is on a journey to live life as the best version of herself. Through her website, littlevoicebigmatter.com, she shares practical advice and heartfelt insights to inspire and support women in motherhood, relationships, wellness, and life.
Sources:
https://www.developgoodhabits.com/plan-week/
https://www.intelligentchange.com/blogs/read/how-to-plan
https://littlevoicebigmatter.com/how-to-plan-your-week-to-be-productive/mind-matters/