How to schedule your life Part 2 of 3: Planning Your Week in 9 Steps.
In the last blog, I taught you how to come up with a curated list of all the things you need to do in your week ahead.
Now that you’re prepared with your list, it’s time to plan your week by popping every item onto your schedule.
Planning your week is essential to make sure you take care of the things you decided to do.
As you’re getting used to your scheduling process, you’ll find that after scheduling your week, you still have items on your list that didn’t fit in.
This is the tough reality of scheduling. We only have so many hours each week.
On the top of my workflow calendar I have this in bold and highlighted text:
“There is plenty of time to do what matters most.”
Go into your scheduling time with this as your mantra.
Today, most people wear “busy” as a badge of honor. But let’s face it, “busy” is a choice.
You get to decide how busy you are.
You get to decide how to spend your time.
I’m going to walk you through deciding how to spend and schedule your time in 9 easy steps:
Choose your planner, a pencil and eraser (we’re going old school here folks!)
Block off time for scheduling
Pencil in appointments
Pencil in workouts
Pencil in personal time
Pencil in deep work time
Pencil in busy work and labor
Pencil in “buffer time”
Decide what to do with your “leftovers”
So let’s get started.
How to Plan Your Week Step1: Choose your planner
It’s easy to get hung up on trying to find the perfect planner.
Totally been there.
Here’s my absolute favorite: Passion Planner.
Not only are there slots for scheduling times from 6 am to 10 pm, they have a cool goal-setting process that I love following. They also offer prompts for monthly self check-ins to monitor how you’re doing.
The only con I see is that there’s not a lot of room for writing in your objectives for each time slot. And if you start your day earlier than 6 am, there’s no space for that. But over all it gets my 5 star review.
If you have something that works and allows enough space to write down multiple items per day with corresponding times, just use it.
I planned my weeks for about a year on a lined sheet of paper. I wrote down all the time blocks on the left and the tasks/objectives on the right.
Now all you need is a pencil and an eraser. Take care of yourself by making it easy to move things around and erase if necessary.
Even though we’re intentionally planning our weeks, life is still fluid. Things come up. Kids get sick. We need to take our dog to the vet at the last minute. Your best friend invites you on a super cool camping trip.
Our lives can be planned but flexible.
How to Plan Your Week Step 2: Block time for scheduling
In the last blog I wrote about making your weekly list I suggested that you block 2 hours for writing your list and planning your week in your paper planner. If you’ve done this, great!
This will be one of your weekly non-negotiable tasks that you will need to pencil in!
How to Plan Your Week Step 3: Pencil in all your appointments
I do this first, because usually these are on my phone and I can pop in there, grab the info I need and put them on my paper schedule.
These are personal appointments: doctor, therapy, dentist, kids appointments, dogs appointments, etc.
Now you can pencil in your work appointments and meetings.
How to Plan Your Week Step 4: Pencil in your fitness tasks or workouts
We all need fit and healthy bodies in order to perform at our best. This time is non negotiable.
Are you new to this? If so, I highly recommend listening to this podcast or video in its entirety to learn why this is so important, and how to make a simple fitness plan: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-andy-galpin-how-to-assess-improve-all-aspects-of-your-fitness
It’s a long one, so commit to chipping away at it day by day, week by week.
I listened to it twice (6 sessions, each session is about 2-3 hours long) during my 2023 garden/wedding season.
Be realistic and clear here about your fitness goals and tasks.
Make sure to account for drive times and changing times on either end of your workouts.
How to Plan Your Week: #5 Pencil in your personal time
What is personal time?
It’s really up to you.
I define it as down time where you are resting your mind and body for rejuvenation.
This could be a morning journaling or reading time.
It could be an evening meditation or hot bath.
It could be time with friends.
I loosely define it as a time not dedicated to work, business or producing anything.
Here’s what personal time is not:
Training for an event or race
Cleaning and organizing
Preparing meals unless you are purely doing this for fun and not as a commitment to your family
Actively working toward any goal
Scrolling on social media
Here’s why personal time is important: you cannot reach your goals and make your dreams real if you’re burnt out.
Your body and mind need time for rest, for daydreaming, for unstructured wandering, for boredom.
Not convinced on that last one? Read “Bored and Brilliant” By Manoush Zomorodi
It’ll change how you think about being bored.
How to Plan Your Week: #6 Pencil in “deep work” time
This is a time where you need blocks of time to focus and put in highly concentrated effort.
Everyone focuses best for a different sustained period of time. Get to know yourself.
I work really well for 2 hours and then I need a break. So my focus time is anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes depending on the task.
What is “deep work”? It’s work that takes focus and a high level of mental energy to complete.
Here are a few examples of “deep work” from my business:
Planning an event or pop up
Planning a new product
Writing a blog
Writing a marketing email
Writing any sort of content
Brainstorming
Any sort of business planning: financial, marketing, employee, etc
Bookkeeping and financial analysis/planning
Planning your week!
What “deep work” time is not for:
Checking and responding to emails
Social media
Physical labor
Meetings
Make sure you’re realistic with yourself about how much focus time you plan for one day. I’ll usually schedule only 1 to 2 focus blocks per day. Then I know I’m working my brain hard but giving it plenty of rest before next time.
How to Plan Your Week: #7 Pencil in labor or “busy” tasks
This includes all the busy, task switching labor, physical labor, social media, reading and responding to emails, ordering, paying bills, etc.
Work in this category doesn’t take a lot of focus and can even be a bit of a “brain break” from focus tasks.
How to Plan Your Week: #8 Pencil in Buffer Time
Buffer time is essential for taking care of yourself by allowing open time in your week for things to go wrong.
Have a sick kid? Need to take the dog to an emergency vet appointment? Your partner calls and needs you to pick them up across town?
Buffer time is how you schedule the unforeseen into your weekly schedule.
I like to plan at least 2 hours per week for this.
Some folks leave an entire day open for “buffer”. This is my goal and I’m working toward it.
How to Plan Your Week: #9 Decide what to do with your “leftovers”
After going through this process, you may have some leftovers on your weekly list that didn’t get planned. This is normal.
With practice you’ll get better at estimating how much you can get done in a week, and your leftover pile will get less.
Now is the time to decide what to do with this.
Here’s what I like to do with “leftover” tasks:
You can move them to the top of the list for next week.
You can remove them entirely - goodbye thing I thought I needed to do!
You can keep them as a list for buffer day. Because if (on the off hand) your week runs like clockwork, you can complete these items during buffer time.
You can pop them into a project planner.
You can delegate to someone in your household or an employee in your business.
Congratulations! You have finished planning your week. This is a huge success. Every week and every month this will get easier.
If you go through this process and are feeling challenged, discouraged or overwhelmed I’m here for you!