Tips and Tricks for Better Weekly Plans
One of my favorite Sunday activities — besides sleeping in and cuddling with my cats — is actually planning my week. Now, before you write me off as a total nerd, let me explain why.
You see, I’ve realized that spending an hour planning at the beginning of the week makes me so much less stressed over the course of the week. I get so much more done and I have way less anxiety.
So many of the entrepreneurs that I work with skip planning their weeks. They end up starting each week feeling behind right from the start — which means they spend the entire week running to catch up, and then end the week feeling like they haven’t done enough.
So at my upcoming webinar, which is called the Rinse n’ Repeat Formula to Planning Profitable & Fun Weeks, I’ll really be going into detail about how to plan your week. It’s coming up on October 13 and 19, and you can register for it at PlanningProfitableWeeks.com.
But until then, I want to start by giving you a few questions to think about as you’re planning out your next week.
So the first piece here is to look at your schedule for the week and confirm that everything makes sense logistically. This means making sure that there are no double bookings, double-checking phone numbers and/or Zoom links for meetings and interviews, and so on.
These things might seem minor on a Sunday or a Monday morning, but they’re so major when you have an interview in two minutes and you can’t find the Zoom link and now you’re going to be five minutes late. These are the little things that really reduce stress.
The second part is asking yourself — is there too much there? Sometimes when I look at my week, I’ll notice that I somehow ended up with six appointments back to back and realize that I’m going to be totally exhausted that day.
If you’re having this kind of realization early enough in the week, you might be able to reschedule some of the appointments to give yourself a half-hour break. In other words, planning ahead here can prevent needless exhaustion.
The third piece is planning out what you’re actually going to get done during your week. A lot of entrepreneurs set their expectations way too high here — and that’s because they’re not actually looking at their day-to-day schedules.
Maybe you have 12 things on your to-do list, and you know you want to get them all done by Friday — but do you know when they’re actually going to get done? This is why it’s so important to pause and think about what each day actually looks like.
So, for example, next Tuesday, I have appointments starting at 9 a.m. I have a lunch break at 12:30, and then my appointments go straight until 3 p.m. that day.
If I didn’t know myself, I might slot in two hours of work from 3 to 5 p.m. But looking at that schedule now, knowing that I’m working nonstop from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and then from 1 to 3 p.m. — that’s a full day.
Realistically, after all of that, I’m probably going to have about an hour left in me to answer emails, finish up anything urgent, and then call it a day. This means that on Tuesday, I probably won’t get extra work done.
That’s me being realistic with myself so that my expectations for myself and my productivity aren’t unattainable. When I plan my weeks, I look at the specific windows of time when I could feasibly get work done if I needed to get work done.
So this week, I want to invite you to do a weekly plan on Friday, Sunday, or Monday. Look at your schedule, double-check your logistics, make sure you’re not overbooked, and plan out when you’re going to get certain tasks done.
Try it this week and see how it makes you feel — and if you’re like most of my clients, you’ll probably get to a point where you won’t be able to get through your week without doing a weekly plan.
And remember — this is just a start! For the full weekly planning process, be sure to join us on October 13 or 19 to discover my Rinse n’ Repeat Formula to Planning Profitable & Fun Weeks. You can sign up for this masterclass at PlanningProfitableWeeks.com.
If you’re looking for the least stressful way to get through your week, let me show you all of the tools that I’ve discovered!
Here’s to Sundays, downtime, and not feeling disappointed at the end of the week!
