Effortless Week Planning: Best Practices to Maximize Productivity

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Introduction

Weekly planning is one of those things that seems to make a lot of difference, but is actually easy to ignore. For example, we know we should plan our meals for the week. But, what’s stopping us from grabbing something quick from the fridge? Our work schedule is already full, so what’s the point of putting in time to plan? Weekly planning sounds obvious but it's something that is usually ignored and procrastinated.

On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of people who plan their weeks and accomplish a lot more than those who only wing it.

Weekly planning is a great way to get your work organized, and it can help you be more productive. Plus:

Planning your week will make you a more productive and effective person. If you want to live a high-performing working life, you have to be able to recognize your priorities and do everything that needs to be done – on time.

What is Weekly Planning

Weekly planning is simply organizing events and weekly tasks in your calendar ahead of time. It gives you an overview of the tasks at hand and provides you with control over it — and if your entire team is on board, visibility over everyone else's plans and expectations.

It lets you know your priorities and keeps you on track, so in a way, it’s the art of dividing your time wisely so you would be able to do everything you need to do.

‍Pros of Weekly Planning

Weekly planning is an incredible tool to increase productivity and avoid procrastination, and with proper time management comes a better work-life balance, less time wasted means less rushing for deadlines and less extra time doing unnecessary work.

Pros of Weekly Planning for managers

Encouraging your team members to start a weekly plan routine is probably one of the best things you can do as a manager, it is one of the most incredible project management tools.

By implementing weekly planning you are implementing task management, accountability and time tracking for each task. You can plan and prevent deadlines from being late, complete goals in time, and if things lag or get slow you can review what went wrong easily thanks to effective planning.

Integrating Weekly Plans into your schedule

Want to get used to weekly planning? You can set up time for a weekly planning session at the end of the previous week, or every Monday morning also works great!(you can do so very easily using DailyBot, more on that later.) This weekly planning session is where you're going to sit down and review your weekly tasks and goals for the upcoming week, ask yourself how much time they are going to take, and remember to leave some extra time in case a task takes more time than you initially thought.

Focus on goal setting, while weekly planning can be similar to to-do lists, they are more of a time management and productivity tool than anything else.

Best practices to get started

Here's a small list of best practices to get started with your weekly planning routine:

Have your questions ready! Write down and prepare questions you will repeat every week.
Schedule a time slot every week
When you finish your weekly planning schedule the next weekly plan.
List down and schedule time for your weekly tasks
Make sure to do some time blocking with your tasks in your calendar.