Notebook and pen for Planning

Anxiety and stress are inevitable when you go through a week without planning.

If you are unaware of what needs to be done, and you start working on it, the probability of being doomed is quite high.

To evade unnecessary stress and unwanted tensions lingering over your head, it is advised that you plan your week.

When you plan your week beforehand, you will have ample time and space to design a plan to fit in everything that awaits you.

No matter, if it’s your personal life or work life that you are trying to make progress at, planning your week, will help you reach your goal.

This post will walk you through the importance of planning your week, and the best way to plan your week.

Why Is It Important To Plan Your Week

When you don’t plan your week, you will have no hint about what to do and you will be stumbling your way through to get everything done.

Without planning you will end up flustered and unfocused, and this is something that you would want to avoid by all means.

Planning your week is important as it helps in making sure the time you have is spent in the most efficient way.

It will also allow you to really gauge how much you can get done in the amount of time you have.

Moreover, this will also help in developing a sense of accomplishment in you, once you achieve what you set out for.

The best way to plan your week is to reserve some time on Sunday evenings and review your goals and monthly plans.

See what needs to be done for the week ahead and what you can do.

Once you have your weekly plan then only you can be at peace, as you wouldn’t have to worry about what’s yet to come because you have already planned for it.

6 Best Practices to Plan Your Week

To make things easier for you we have devised a set of six practices that can help you in planning your week productively and efficiently.

1. Know Your Goals

When you don’t plan for your week it is bad, but planning without setting priorities in mind is even worse.

With no priorities in mind, you have everything on your plate, leaving you with no time to work towards your goals.

The whole point of planning is to ensure that you are not always caught up with sorting out the priorities of others.

The best way to plan your week is to proactively block time for things that you think are the most important in your life and your business.

Try to figure out:

· The top three goals of your business or personal life.

· Habits, activities, and projects that have an impact on these goals.

· The right instance when you can reserve some time for these activities, projects, and habits.

2. Schedule Everything on Your Weekly Routine Planner

If you tend to be forgetful about things, then there is no point in planning your week.

The best way to plan your week is to jot down everything in the weekly task planner.

Try using a weekly planner that is online, so that you can sync everything that you have already scheduled, on all your electronic devices.

As you set goals for your professional life, it is essential that you also set goals for your personal life as well.

And yes, those goals should be listed in your planner as well so that you don’t forget them.

3. Plan You’re on the Weekends

The best way to plan your week is to start planning for the weekends so that you have a kick-start when the week starts.

If you are aware of what the week will look like by the time you are in the office on Monday, not only you’ll be focused on getting the work done, but you’ll be less stressed as well.

Furthermore, when you proactively block time on your weekly task planner for the things that are important to you in your life and work, you are less likely to end up with commitments that are not aligned with your priorities.

The good thing about planning your week is that you develop a state where you learn to say NO to people, and you are able to make decisions about the importance of two overlapping events.

4. Have a Weekly Routine Planner Checklist

The “Chemical X” that would help you achieve a breakthrough with your weekly planning is having a checklist or template that you will go through every week.

Make sure that your top priorities rest on top of the checklist and less important ones follow through.

If you don’t happen to follow this practice to plan your week, it would take up to three hours or more when you start, and you might feel that it is not helping save time.

But, when you start to do it every week regularly, you will do it faster and will restrict it to somewhere between 30-60 mins depending on the level of detail your planning constitutes.

5. Plan Buffer Time

As said, that excess of everything is bad.

There is no doubt that planning for the future wipes away all the stress, as you are aware of what needs to be done and you have thought about everything beforehand.

Similarly, if you over-plan you will feel that every minute has an opposite effect and you are most likely to fall behind your schedule.

The best way to plan your week and avoid falling victim to this beginner planning trap is to always take into account the buffer times.

Here are some tips that you can make use of:

· For an event that lasts more than an hour and involves other people, always adds an extra 15 minutes

· Take into account time for daily activities – breakfast, shower, commute – as there is nothing worse than rushing in the mornings

· Always reserve time (at least an hour) to wrap up things

6. Account Unplanned Times

It is safe to say that there are some dark sides to planning.

Planning is the biggest enemy of improvisation and spontaneity.

At times, things would happen to you unexpectedly, and all you need to do is go with the flow.

But luckily, this is mostly true for your personal life rather than your professional life.

The point is, that you should be prepared for things that you haven’t even thought of, and instead of freaking out try planning for unplanned times.

The best you can do in such situations is improvise.

5 Steps to Plan Your Week the Right Way

The best way to plan your week is to draft an outline notifying you about what you will be doing during each day of the week.

This outline does not have to be very detailed, but it should be sufficient enough to help you prepare for the entire week ahead.

Tip: Before you start planning your week, make sure that you have all the right tools needed to assist you. For writing notes, you can use a blank notebook, Week Plan for setting deadlines, and a weekly calendar to keep a track of all the important tasks and appointments.

Here are five steps to help you plan your week in a more effective and productive way:

Step 1 – Review Your Bigger Plan

The first and foremost thing that you need to do is review the yearly goals that you have set for yourself. Then hop onto monthly priorities and plans, and make notes of any events or appointments that you need to plan around.

Step 2 – Making a Detailed List

In order to be productive, you should have a list of every little thing that you need and want to get done during the course of the week. This can incorporate tasks for bigger projects to grocery shopping. Once you are done making the list skim it through to ensure that you only have a list of tasks that are urgent. The ones that are not urgent can be scheduled for next week.

Step 3 – Setting Your Priorities Right

The weekly tasks on your priority list cannot be more than seven items. Highlight the tasks that you need to get done by this week in your weekly routine planner as weekly priorities.

Step 4 – Formulating Steps for Action

Start by creating a list of action steps for each priority on your to-do list. Think of the steps that can help you get started and complete the set of priorities.

Step 5 – Making Your Schedule

Figure out which tasks you are going to work on for each day of the week, and assign them with a particular day on your weekly task planner. If you find this practice useful, schedule group similar tasks together so that your brain doesn’t have to switch between different activities.

An ideal week planner such as a Week Plan can help you with minimum effort and time.

One other practice that you should adopt is to assign one big task for every day of the week that you must complete. In doing so, always start with the most important things first. This will help you in staying focused and develop a feeling of staying accomplished.

Conclusion

We are hoping that this post would have given you some ideas about how to go about doing your weekly planning so that you can plan for a super productive week.

If you have some tips that you think can add value feel free to comment below.

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