Today I’m sharing five steps to plan your week in a more productive and efficient way! How you feel during the week has a direct correlation to how well you’ve planned your week.
Planning does not make things perfect, but it does give you a system to fall back on when time gets tough. Not planning your week is a guaranteed way to set yourself up for failure. Spend a few minutes planning out your week or you’ll spend the entire week feeling underprepared and unproductive!
We create systems that help you go from overwhelmed to organized. The Week on One Page planner is the foundation of those systems. It’s the glue that holds our weeks and our lives together!
I’ve talked before about how to plan your day, now let’s talk about how to plan your week! You’re going to need a paper planner, access to any digital or shared calendars you have, and any to-do lists you have floating around.
Step One: Utilize a Weekly Prep Day
Prep Day is ESSENTIAL for setting yourself up for success. I talk more about my prep day routine here – it’s the day to get organized and meal plan, the day to mentally and physically prepare for the week ahead! I use our Prep Day notepad to walk through a quick and easy checklist.
Step Two: Review your calendar for the week ahead.
Transfer information from your digital calendar to your paper planner. Make note of due dates, add to your to-do lists, break down projects into the next steps, and do anything you can to set yourself up for success for the week!
Step Three: Write it all down.
Have general to-dos for the week? Health goals for the week? Intentions you want to set for yourself? Get it out of your head and onto paper in your planner. Do not attempt to keep everything in your brain. Mental lists do not work! We think we’ll remember that one thing we need to do, or that little bit of important information someone told us. We will not remember! Plus, magical things happen when you write things down.
Step Four: Leave White Space in Your Calendar
Now that you’ve reviewed your schedule and transferred important appointments, meetings, and to-dos to your weekly planner let’s make sure you haven’t over-scheduled yourself. Is there white space in your planner for this week? Or is every single moment of your week accounted for? White space on your calendar means mental white space too. Those mental breaks allow you to rest and recharge, and are often when inspiration strikes!
Step Five: Give yourself grace when things go wrong!
I repeat planning does not make things perfect. If we’ve learned anything from 2020 it’s that A LOT can go wrong. When you put systems in place, like planning out your week, you have a structure to fall back on when times get tough. Use your mental energy for the important stuff during the week. Things will go wrong. Give yourself the grace to mess up, then move on!
With your entire week in one view and 98 pages for notes, our weekly planner is sure to be your favorite. It’s the perfect tool for planning out your week! Click here to learn more about the best weekly planner and the latest collection from the Whitney English team!
Since launching the Week on One Page planner format a year ago, we’ve made a few minor, but wonderful improvements. We took your feedback and made our weekly planner even better! We’ve added a full notes page for every single week and a beautiful new storage box in a larger size! The 2021 weekly planners are our best yet.
So what weekly planning tips work best for you? Share below, I’d love to hear!
