How I Do Weekly Planning
I do three different types of planning in order to keep myself on track and productive: daily, weekly and long-term. This month we will be looking at all three. We'll start with what I consider the most important for my productivity: the weekly plan.
When I first purchased my first planner, I didn't know anything about planning. And the system didn't educate me either. I had a 2 page per day Daytimer, and the instructions were just about how to plan a day. I was in college at the time, and I could never figure out how I always had so much left to do at the end of each day!
The problem for me, as most people I have talked to, is that the schedule is not constant. Some days are busier than others. And yet we never step back and take that into account.
Getting Things Done introduced me to a weekly plan - called the weekly review - and it was all about getting yourself reset. Get your in-boxes empty, empty your head, and process the paper. Then you review the lists - all of them - and bring them up to date to be worked on.
Even when I followed these instructions, I still didn't have a handle on my week. I still had too many days where I was busy and couldn't get things done, and too many Fridays where my task list was still alarmingly long.
And so I developed my weekly planning routine.
When I first purchased my first planner, I didn't know anything about planning. And the system didn't educate me either. I had a 2 page per day Daytimer, and the instructions were just about how to plan a day. I was in college at the time, and I could never figure out how I always had so much left to do at the end of each day!
The problem for me, as most people I have talked to, is that the schedule is not constant. Some days are busier than others. And yet we never step back and take that into account.
Getting Things Done introduced me to a weekly plan - called the weekly review - and it was all about getting yourself reset. Get your in-boxes empty, empty your head, and process the paper. Then you review the lists - all of them - and bring them up to date to be worked on.
Even when I followed these instructions, I still didn't have a handle on my week. I still had too many days where I was busy and couldn't get things done, and too many Fridays where my task list was still alarmingly long.
And so I developed my weekly planning routine.
