Start your week well with a Sunday planning session
Start your week well with a Sunday planning session. www.betterlifetemplates.com
I am not sure when I started the practice of a Sunday planning session, but I would be lost without it.
The benefits of having a Sunday planning session is that you can think about the week ahead. It is good to have a reminder of what appointments and plans you have in the coming week.
Look at your schedule for the week ahead
The first step is to look at your schedule for the week ahead. If you are using multiple schedules like an electronic system and paper, look across them all.
What days do you have appointments and when? Are there things that you must do this week? For example, I often write in my schedule things like when tax payments need to be made or subscriptions are updated.
Knowing what are the concrete things in your schedule helps plan for them such as leaving work early to go to the dentist.
Think about your main goals and projects
Unless we specifically things about our key projects, there is a risk we fill our week with the day to day to dos and don’t make progress on our key goals.
I’m not sure who coined this phrase but ‘ink it -to think it - to achieve it’ - but it helps us to write out what our key projects are. Are there things we can do to progress them?
Allocate tasks
I normally look across my week and have ‘weekly to dos’ that can be done at any time and to dos that need to be done on a specific day. For example, I might ring for any appointments during the week on a Monday. Other tasks such as return an online item may be best done when you are running errands - whichever day that is.
Some tasks are required to be done during business hours, such as phoning to query an item on a bill. It can be a good idea to schedule these into a particular day rather than put them on the weekly to do list.
Other things you might want to do in your Sunday planning time
Other things you might want to do in your Sunday planning time to think about the week ahead are:
top 3 things to achieve in the week
look at the weather forecast for the week. It helps me think about things like what days I might drive into work instead of using the train and my weekly exercise plan
what exercise you plan to do
clothing outfits for the week
for those doing hybrid work from home and in the office and have choice on what days to attend the office - when you plan to be in the office
batching errands into one or two sessions
meal planning
planning some social activities e.g. lunch with a friend
Start your week well with a Sunday planning session for the week ahead. What appointments and things must you do for the week. What are things that you might want to plan ahead such as meals, outfits, exercise.
Does it have to be Sunday?
Some people recommend doing their weekly planning sessions on a Friday because the working week has finished and it allows planning work tasks for the next week. Others do work and life planning separately and others together.
What I have found is that it takes a bit of experimenting the type of system that works for you and the best day for you. I choose Sunday because:
I feel refreshed after a weekend
I look across the working week and how it might interact with my life e.g. are there days when I might need to do a longer day
There is usually half an hour on a Sunday afternoon or evening to look at the week ahead.
Whatever day you choose, getting into a habit of weekly planning can help you think about the week ahead, what appointments and plans you have, and what you need to do.
My ETSY store has a couple of weekly planning resources that might be helpful for your weekly planning. They include a weekly planning template and a fold up weekly plan that you can tuck into a note book or your handbag that provides an overview of the week.
