The article argues that planning your week can boost both your productivity and mental well-being. We recommend getting a planner, either physical or digital, but research suggests that writing things down by hand helps you remember them better. Before planning your week, it’s good to have a rough idea of your bigger goals, monthly or yearly. This doesn’t need to be super detailed.
Whether you’re at work or at home, plans and jobs that seem insignificant at first can quickly stack up until you’re completely overwhelmed. The funny thing is, when you look at all these tasks written down they don’t seem all that scary, but if you let them just swirl around in your head, it won’t take long before some anxiety starts to build.
That’s why planning out your week isn’t just important for productivity, it can have a huge positive impact on your mental health too. Let’s take a look at some planning tips for your week so you can start to lead a more productive, low-stress life.
Get yourself a planner
You can’t make plans without a planner, so if you haven’t got one yet, this should be your first priority. Some people prefer digital, some people prefer physical, but if you ask us (and we might be a little biased!), writing your plans down physically is a surefire way to remember them more clearly.
There’s science to back this up too: a study by the Norwegian Center for Learning Environment and Behavioural Research in Education found that reading handwritten text activates more parts of the brain than reading typed text. This has to do with the way our memory of words that have been handwritten is inextricably tied up with the movements associated with actually writing them.
Look at your bigger plans first
Planning your week without having an overarching plan for your month or year can still leave you feeling a little rudderless, so we would recommend tackling this first. Don’t feel discouraged though, a yearly goal or plan doesn’t necessarily have to be more detailed than a weekly plan, it just means you have to zoom out a little when considering what you would like to achieve. It could be working towards a career goal or it could simply be a fitness goal, just pick what works for you.
Planning your week
OK, so it’s time to start planning your week. Here are the steps that you need to take to make sure everything lines up perfectly:
- Make a list: think of everything that you want to get done this week and write it all down. Whether you want to separate between work and non-work tasks is up to you. Now take a look at the list. Is it achievable? If it looks a little chunky, see if there’s anything that can be moved to next week.
- Sort your priorities: so you’ve got your list, now it’s time to prioritise. Work out what the most pressing items are on your list and highlight them. We’d recommend you keep your priorities somewhere between three and five items.
- Action steps: with your priorities marked out, it’s time to think of some action steps that will make it easier to achieve them. Are there any people you need to speak to? Any favours to call in? Think of the easiest and most efficient ways to complete these tasks and jot it down in this section.
- Make a schedule: you know what you need to do and in what order, now you just need to assign each task to a day. We’d recommend assigning each priority task its own individual day for maximum clarity, but if urgency makes this difficult then of course you can make exceptions. If some tasks are similar in type, try grouping them together. This will make it that bit easier for your brain to process it all.
Hopefully, these tips will help you start planning your week more efficiently!
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