How to plan your weekly schedule in 5 easy steps

Is procrastination something you struggle with because you don’t know how to organize your time and/or your priorities? If you want to get more things done that will take you closer to your goals, this post is perfect for you. Keep reading to find an easy 5-steps guide to learn how to plan your weekly schedule and achieve more things every week.

At the end of this post, download a free customizable weekly planning checklist to keep you at par with your schedule.

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The Importance of Planning Your Week For Success

Hi girls, how are you today?

Ever had difficulty planning for the week ahead?

Not knowing what to focus on and which tasks are more important to prioritize?

The solution to your stress and overwhelm could be to plan your week with an organized schedule.

In this blog, we are big fans of the Pareto Principle of working smarter, not harder.

I used to be the type of blogger who would work hours on end, including weekends, yet I was getting small outcomes. This resulted in me having constant burnouts and self-doubt days wondering if I was really cut out for this, regardless of my seemingly endless passion trying to make this work.

After reading Joy at Work, by Marie Kondo, I started understanding more about weekly planning ideas and how planning the week ahead could have great benefits to my productivity (and overall well-being).

Having a weekly schedule is a great way to organize your calendar in a way that makes your workweek manageable.

Planning your week is not only helpful for your professional life and work goals, but it also allows you to make time for personal affairs and self-care practices, which as super important to maintain a healthy mind, body, and soul.

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Quick Tips for Planning Your Week’s Agenda

Let’s go over a few proven strategies on how to plan your weekly schedule. 

Tip 1) Take a day to plan your week

Pick a day that works for you to review your goals and even your monthly plans. Understand how to differentiate important tasks from urgent ones.

Sundays usually are a great way to plan ahead and this further ensures you start the week on the right tone. By knowing how your week will look like by the time you start working on Monday, not only you guarantee being more focused but this also eliminates the feeling of overwhelm, right at the start of your week.

RELATED: A perfect self-care Sunday routine to get ready for the week ahead

Tip 2) Be compassionate with yourself

Keep in mind that plans often change and if you find yourself falling behind your monthly goals, have self-compassion and forgive yourself for falling behind. However, equally important is to assess why is it that you’re not on track with your goals.

Could this be because you’re waking up later, or that you are procrastinating to get things started? Have you been more distracted with social media during work hours, or is it simply because you miscalculated the time needed to accomplish a certain task?

 Whatever your reasons are, rather than punishing yourself from falling behind, try to learn from what happened and work on improving this the following week.

Tip 3) Have a weekly planning checklist

A good weekly checklist should include blocks for projects, self-care practices, workouts, date nights, relaxation times, and house chores.

PS. I added ‘date nights’ because it is important we save time for our partners too. Often times we can get so consumed with life that we overlook the necessity of giving our partners the quality attention they deserve. 

DOWNLOAD A FREE WEEKLY PLANNING CHECKLIST

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How to Plan Your Weekly Schedule in 5 Steps

When you plan your week, you should aim to create weekly goals and daily goals

Your weekly schedule should provide a bird’s-eye view of your week, while your daily objectives create an outline of what you’re going to do each day

(this plan doesn’t have to be super detailed, since that would be better for a daily schedule. However, it should help you feel organized for the upcoming week).

For example, executive coach Rafael Sarandeses recommends setting five weekly goals and three daily goals to accomplish throughout the week. This is a great way to help guide your focus.

Let’s get right into it.

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Step 1) Review your big plans

As we said, plans and goals change as we progress with our projects. That is why it is always important o review your yearly goals so that you can reassess your monthly priorities.

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Step 2 ) Make a specific list of goals for the upcoming week

Write down all the things you wish to accomplish that week.

This could be as small as going out to buy more fruits to bigger projects such as hiring someone to help you with something you’re struggling with.

Daily tasks may be tasks that don’t necessarily take that much energy or time to complete, but that have a tangible impact on your progress

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Step 3) Set Priorities for the week ahead

Going back to the lessons of Joy at Work, learn to differentiate important tasks from urgent ones.

A tip to keep you accountable is to color code these tasks (label or highlight these tasks) and aim to keep your week priorities list to around 3-7 items (it is crucial to be realistic or else you might easily fall behind and feel overwhelmed).

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Step 4) Create Actionable Steps to Accomplish Your Priorities 

A great tip on how to plan your weekly schedule is to create bulleted action steps for each of your to-do list tasks.

Take time to reflect on what are the steps needed to reach your week’s priorities and cross them out as you go.

I like giving myself a little star and write ‘’good job!’’ whenever I manage to cross out all my items. It is so satisfying!

A GOLDEN TIPS is to try to predict how much time each task will take. This will help you understand realistic goals and as well keep you accountable during the days that you work on them. If you believe a certain task will take you 1h to be done, but it takes you 2 hours instead, try and understand what happened and see if you can improve on it the following week.

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Step 5) Organize Your Schedule

Assign priority tasks to work on for each day of the week.

A tip is to group similar tasks together so that your brain remains focused, as opposed to switching back and forth from completely unrelated activities.

Lastly, for each day of the week, choose one ‘star task’. This means one big thing that must be done.

This is a great way to keep you focused and completed important things daily.

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The best tools to help plan your weekly schedule

It really depends on your preferences. A simple notebook and a pen can do you wonders. Other people like using simple tools such as excel.

A great and free software for planning your deadlines and keeping track of appointments is Asana.

Download a free weekly planning checklist below as well and start getting more organized today!

Books Mentioned in this post

What does your weekly planning process looking like?

Do you have any other tips on how to plan your weekly schedule that I forgot to mention?

Share any weekly planning tips you recommend in a comment below!

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