Win the Week and Make Your Days More Productive

If you're concerned with having productive days, consider planning your week ahead of time. In this post, I share my weekly planning process.

Want to watch the video instead of reading? Click here.

Whether we are working on a big project or building a business, it is common to fall into the trap of thinking that working more hours will bring us success. Much research has proven this theory wrong including this Stanford study which said that productivity sharply declines after 50 working hours per week, and people who worked 70 hours were just as productive as those who worked 55 hours per week.

Now I don't know about you, but I really don't want to work 50 hours per week. I became an entrepreneur knowing that I would have to put in the hard work but my ultimate goal is to streamline and work less than when I was a corporate executive.

This means I need to work smarter, not harder, during the time I have available each week. In fact, I recently wrote about the importance of knowing when to stop working (work recovery) to keep you at your best when it comes to productivity and creativity.

The Importance of Weekly Planning

If I am honest, I wasn't always a "plan the week" girl. I used to have a daily to-do list and a master list of all the things I needed to do and some that I hoped to get to someday. I would start each day with a vague idea of what I needed to do and would craft my daily schedule from there.

When I started to plan my weeks, though, something switched inside of me. I became more intentional about my workdays and what I planned to do each day. I knew not to waste a big chunk of planning or writing time in a given day because it would be the ONLY time that week that I would be given that opportunity. I also learned to prioritize work that was important to me by giving it a special block of time in my calendar.

As an entrepreneur, I honestly don't know how we can operate without planning the week. There are even more to-do's and more "have-to-do's" on my list than ever. And with a fair amount of unstructured time on my calendar, my days are mine to waste or to make productive! If I plan my week well, I can fit the "have-to-do's" in and be able to leave my desk at a time that allows me to prioritize my family time and my self-care.

How I Plan My Week

If you want to watch me plan my week using the "Win the Week! Planner," check out this video. Here are the steps that I follow:

Reflect on the Prior Week: I use the Full Focus Planner so this process is built into the planner. I included an abbreviated version in the Win the Week! Planner. In this step, you celebrate your wins and reflect the % of completion on your Big 3 tasks from the prior week. You also note what habits or trends you want to start, stop and continue from the prior week. For example, perhaps I had a productive week because I was focused on deadlines, but my nutrition was horrible and I didn't prioritize my self-care routines. I would note what I want to improve for the coming week.
Brain Dump My To-Do's: Next, I do a brain dump of all of my to-do items, personal and professional. I look back at the prior week and take any tasks that weren't accomplished and then add a whole new slew of tasks for the coming week. I also review my quarterly goals and determine which strategic tasks (usually business-building tasks) are due in the coming week.
Prioritize Big 3 Tasks for the Week: From the to-do list I created in the last step, I select the three (3) highest priorities for the week. My highest priorities almost always come directly from my quarterly goals so I usually prioritize strategic work over operational work. This is a biggie if you are building your business!
Add Self-Care and Appointments on Weekly Calendar First: During this step, I am looking at a page that lists the upcoming seven days vertically down the page. (Our free Win the Week! Planner has this already formatted in a fillable PDF format for you). At this stage, I plug in the family commitments, self-care commitments, meetings and appointments first. This step in the process illuminates where I have available work time for my strategic work and my other to-do's for Step 5.
Time Block and Schedule: In this step, I plug my to-do list items into the calendar, starting with the Big 3 priorities for the week. I try to time-block projects or tasks that need focused work time, using blocks that are between 60-120 minutes. I can also take smaller tasks and fit them into smaller blocks of available time, or lump them into a 60-120 minute block of administrative time.
Reflect and Adjust: After this process, I take a moment to reflect on the entire week. Do I have too much planned on one particular day? Do I have some buffer time planned each day in case things don't go as planned? Do any tasks need to wait until the following week?

This entire process takes me about 15 minutes but is a really important part of my business. I can't imagine starting a week without having my weekly plan in place. My weekly plan has been instrumental in ensuring that I prioritize my Big 3 each week and that I have business-building time built into the week.

I hope that this post inspires you to test a weekly planning process for yourself. Grab our free Win the Week! download -- you can download a version on your computer, fill it out and save it each week, which makes updating your to-do list easy peasy! Enjoy!

Categories: : Focus, Goals, Habits, Productivity