Many people complain that they can’t find time to focus on their life goals or work on a new skill they’re trying to build. But if they give themselves a chance to plan their week in advance, they will save hours of wasted time. Here are 10 instructions for how to plan your week effectively.
1. Pick A Time To Plan Your Week
Try to plan your week on Sunday. This is the time when you are more relaxed to think clearly about what you intend to do in the upcoming days. Not to mention that it will save you a ton of time not worrying about where to be or what to do on Monday mornings.
Of course, it’s not a rule! You can plan your week whenever you want, just be consistent and make sure to be in the same place planning next week.
2. Build A Weekly Routine
Find a quiet place in a calm environment and spend ten to thirty minutes planning your week. You can also bring a cup of coffee or tea to help you relax.
If you are easily distracted by your phone or the repetitive notifications of social media, you can use these apps to stay focused and eliminate distractions.
And if you prefer to plan your week in a notebook using a pen and paper, you can shut off your phone or keep it out of reach until you finish planning your week.
3. Plan Your Week Using One Tool
You can use a digital calendar like Google Calendar or a physical planner. Some people like writing things down because it helps them remember better. The most important thing is to choose one platform and stick with it.
Personally, I like to write down all I have in mind in my notebook and then organize it in the form of a schedule on Google Calendar.
4. List Your Appointments Before Starting To Plan
Before you start planning your week, make a list of all the appointments and responsibilities towards yourself and your family. For example, your appointments with the doctor, your weekly meetings with your friends or colleagues at work.
This is useful because it will help you know how much time is left for your other goals for the week.
5. Set You Priorities
Decide on your four or five biggest priorities for the week. Otherwise, you won’t know where or how to start.
Always aim to get the highest priority tasks out of the way first.
6. Include Your Long-Term Goals
Our goal is to effectively plan our week and our life. Therefore, you don’t want to go through this process without your long-term goals in mind.
Review all of them and ask yourself how you can progress in their achievement. This way, you will come up with actionable tasks you can include in your plan.
7. DON’T Forget Break Time And Leisure
Not all days are created equal. Some days you’ll be more productive than others, which means you’ll get more done or feel more accomplished.
It’s important to take advantage of these high-productivity days and do as much as possible. But it’s also important to know when to slow down and rest. Your body deserves a break after a hard day of work, no matter how well you think you’re doing.
Most people ignore this part, although it’s a very important one to avoid burnout.
Whether you are a student, an employee, a housewife, make sure to schedule some downtime for yourself. Make time for activities you find personally fulfilling like cooking, drawing, reading.
8. DON'T Overschedule
It is easy to fall into the trap of having your calendar so full that you don’t have time to breathe. The problem with this is that you are no longer productive. If you are constantly busy, it means you are constantly stressed. Stress has a negative impact on your health and well-being, which will harm your productivity.
Be realistic when scheduling your weekly planner. You are no superman or superwoman.
Packing your calendar with many tasks will add more stress to your life. You will learn how to estimate your tasks time more accurately with time.
Give yourself time to get to and from appointments, transition between tasks, and take breaks.
9. Check Your Plan Every Morning
Take 5 minutes every morning to check what you have planned for that day. This technique will help you stay on task and focus on important tasks rather than getting distracted with other futile small tasks.
It’s important to be able to pick something up when you have a day when you just aren’t able to accomplish much. Instead of letting the time slip away, check off what you can do to make sure that you’re staying on schedule.
10. Reflect On Your Plan Before Planning The Next Week
Before starting the process again, make sure to review what you did last week. Look back at what you accomplished and what didn’t get done. Find opportunities to grow and get better at what you do.
In order to create a solid game plan, you’ll need to take the time to reflect on your progress over the previous week. Doing this allows you to set reasonable goals for the week and gives you an opportunity to understand what went well and what didn’t go so well.
Make it a habit to reflect on your plan before you begin planning for the next week.
How To Plan Your week Effectively
Online Free Weekly Planners
There are many online weekly planning tools, but some of them are way too expensive.
In this section, I will share with you tools to plan your week online. I’ve tried most of them, they are completely free, and there are no limitations.
1. Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a free, web-based calendar that helps you keep track of the events in your life. It also helps you to organize those events into schedules, and lets you share your calendars with other people.
You can access Google Calendar from any computer or phone that has it installed. If you use Gmail, you already have Google Calendar installed on your computer. You can add events to a calendar by entering the details or selecting one from a list of existing events.
The Google Calendar website shows a different view of your calendar than the mobile app does. This tutorial will show you how to plan your week using google calendar.
I don’t know about you, but I am crazy about my Google Calendar. When I started using it, I found out that I was already using Google Calendar in different ways:
– As a shopping list.
– To keep track of the number of words written daily.
– To keep track of important dates.
Creating a project management board is the first step to organizing your life. Trello is a great tool that goes beyond a simple to do list with its user friendly interface and powerful features. Not only does this system help you organize your personal life, but it can also help you with your business.
If you want to be successful at managing multiple projects and tasks, you need a tool that can handle the complexity of the process. Trello is an online task management tool that allows you to visualize what needs to be done.
There are different features (boards), and you can add members to the board, create teams and add members to a team. You can also add the members of your team to various cards in order to assign tasks to the team members.
Related : Trello Vs Notion
Dynalist is a note-taking application with a few twists: it’s free, it’s cross-platform, and it turns text into a tree.
By making your thoughts look like a tree, you can easily break down each idea into subtrees. I’ve found that this makes it easier to organize ideas and come back to them later.
This video explains how you can use Dynalist to organize your ideas and structure your weeks tasks and responsibilities.
Final Thoughts - How To Plan Your Week Effectively
A big mistake we all make is to rush through the week, not having a plan. This leads us down the path of small tasks and distractions, and we lose sight of our goals and priorities.
Planning when you’ll do what will help you get your most important projects done, without getting distracted by unimportant things.
Planning ahead also makes sure you always have time for important tasks, and you never feel stressed out about how much work you can get done.