Mastering Your Weekly Plan.
How to create breathing room and renegotiate your time for a more productive week
Do you find planning the week daunting? If so, you are not alone. Many people I talk with tell me they don’t have time to plan the week, or that it takes too long.
Yet, a plan for the week helps to keep you focused on your objectives. It reduces overwhelm by clarifying what you want to accomplish and limits the chances of missing something important.
Weekly planning serves one purpose. It allows you to see the big picture of what you have to do and lets you decide what, among the hundreds of things you could do, you will do over the next seven days.
This means that as long as you know what needs to be done and what you would like to do, you have completed a weekly planning session. You do not necessarily need to go through all your projects—though it’s a good idea to review your active projects. A cursory look would be enough if you already know what you want to accomplish.
As you go through your plan, you may notice you have a day with several meetings. You could limit the number of tasks for that day. You won’t be able to spend six to seven hours in meetings and complete 30 tasks.
The purpose of your weekly plan is to ensure that you are not over-scheduling and to leave sufficient breathing room for the unknown “emergencies” that will inevitably arise during the week.
It’s also about renegotiating deadlines and meetings where necessary. Never be afraid of this. It is all part of becoming more productive and less stressed. If you are unwilling to renegotiate things when your week is already bursting with activities, you will abandon your plan. This will leave you reacting to whatever comes along.
A good weekly planning session leaves you feeling relaxed and on top of things. It means you know the critical things, where you need to be, and when. And that’s it.
If reaching that position takes only twenty minutes, great. If you need an hour, that’s okay. It’s never about how long a planning session takes. It’s always about knowing what needs to be done over the next seven days.
If you consistently do a weekly plan, your planning sessions will naturally take less time. If you’re inconsistent, it will take longer as you will have more to consider.
Be consistent with your planning. Make it a ritual and try to do it at the same time and place each week. Perhaps you enjoy going to a local cafe for coffee and a bagel or sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad and pen. How and where you do it is not important. Doing it is.
Further help.
I’ve done a few videos on weekly planning. These are:
How To Make Planning Your Week Way More Fun! →
Introducing The Weekly Planning Matrix →
If you want to dive deeper into the art of planning your day and your week, you can join my Planning Mini-Course. This will give you everything you need to create a powerful planning habit.
My FREE COD course will introduce you to the 2+8 Prioritisation Method. It is a powerful way to plan your day that brings tremendous focus.
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