Mastering Your Week: How Sunday Planning Transformed My Productivity

I have become a big fan of weekly planning. On Sunday, I take some time to map out my week and this has helped me so much in productivity. Not only that, but it has really helped me to take bigger goals and dreams and chunk them down to bite size pieces I can work on every week.

I used to have big lofty dreams that I kept in my head and away from reality. I dreamt of starting a blog or writing a book, but I romanticized these dreams, never thinking I could realistically accomplish them.

What I learned and realized over time is that those dreams and goals happen in the small steps we take from day to day. That reality might take some of the glamour out of our dreams, but it’s an important step to learn and know.

When it comes to accomplishing your goals, taking them one baby step at a time, day after day, is where and how things happen.

Dreams are not accomplished overnight, but through a long process of trial and error, small successes and lots of failing, learning and growing. So it is extremely important to take your goals and cut them down to daily and weekly manageable steps.

That’s where having a weekly plan helps you. Being intentional and learning good time management helps you have time to accomplish those baby steps, and over time those baby steps add up, little by little, to your bigger goals and dreams.

Choose one day/week to plan out your upcoming week. This shouldn’t take longer than an hour and once you get in the habit of it, it will most likely take 30 minutes.

Friday is a great day to do this as you wind down your week. Or maybe you can carve out a little extra time on Saturday or Sunday to do this. I personally prefer Sundays, as I am getting ready to think about the week ahead and want to start it off prepared and with an intentional plan.

Put Appointments in Your Calendar

The first step is to get a calendar or planner of some sorts to put all your appointments in. You could use a calendar on your phone/computer, a planner from the dollar tree or invest in a planner system like the sweet life planner by Laura at IHeartPlanners.com

In addition to your individual planner, it works great to have a family calendar so everyone can see what’s coming up. I love this cute farmhouse style one from hobby lobby.

Use your monthly planner page to write down all the doctor, dentist, medical appointments for yourself and your children. Also include birthdays, holidays, events and dates with your spouse, children and friends.

Don’t use your calendar as your to do list or time block. You will need another tool for that. Your calendar should not be cluttered, but should only have those appointment-like items.

The reason you don’t want to put your time block or to do list on your calendar is that it will get so cluttered, the actual appointments will be overlooked and can be missed or forgotten. You won’t be able to clearly see what commitments you have.

Next, you are going to plan ahead for those events, holidays, birthdays etc. This is a wonderful tip I learned from Busy Budgeter. Look at your planned events on your calendar, and then go two weeks prior to the event and input a second entry for that same event. This entry two weeks prior will have to do with planning for the event.

For example, if your child is going to a birthday party, put the birthday party in your planner or calendar on your phone, and then two weeks prior to the party, add an entry like “buy gift and plan for friend’s bday” or ” buy gift, wrapping paper and card for friend’s bday.” If there are other things you need to plan out add that too, like deciding who will take your child to the party, or if you need to ask the host if siblings are allowed, etc.

I just started doing this type of planning ahead this year and it has helped me so much! For example, I have always been last minute with planning for holidays and birthday parties. It never failed that I would look at the calendar and realize a holiday like Valentine’s Day was approaching next week! I would rush off to the dollar store, only to be left with the bare bones of chocolate boxes and the new arrival of spring merchandise.

Now, it is on my calendar to plan and buy gifts and candy for Valentine’s Day two weeks before. I am still a work in progress with this! This year I did great job buying gifts for a child’s birthday party two weeks before. I was so proud of myself, but then realized a day before the party I was out of wrapping paper and tape and had to hastily rush off to the store!

This is all about progress, not perfection! Now I know for next time to make sure I have the gift as well as gift wrap. Don’t give up, you will continue improving and learning as this becomes more and more of a habit. Give yourself plenty of grace.

I am also trying to plan ahead with unit studies for school. I love to use fun unit studies for holidays, but typically fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to planning for a unit study. My new goal is to incorporate this planning method by putting it in my calendar two weeks ahead of each holiday to do my research for free unit studies, printables, crafts, and food that goes along with the holiday we are studying.

Reflect on Your Week

Another crucial step to planning out your week, is to do some reflection. You may be tempted to skip this and save yourself time, but this is a critical step in helping you learn and grow, so don’t skip it!

To learn from our past, we need to look back on it first and see what successes and failures we had. Both are important to learn from and keep us growing and moving forward in our lives. So before you start planning your week ahead, ask yourself these two questions:

What Went Well Last Week?
Here you can write your successes from the past week. It might be a new habit you stuck to, or things you got done on your dump list. Or it could be something fun and enjoyable that you reflect on. Celebrate your successes and things you enjoyed from the past week.

What Didn’t Go Well Last Week?
Here you can write the things that didn’t go so well. Maybe it was things you were not able to accomplish. Or maybe it was some hard situations you faced in a relationship. Whatever it was, just write down the things you struggled with or didn’t like in the past week.

Now that you have reflected on the past, you are more aware of things that worked for you and those that didn’t. This helps you have a much better chance of learning and growing and applying what you learned to your future week.

Write Your Habits and Goals

The next step in planning out your week is to write down your habits or goals for the week. When you are first starting out, this should not be a long list! In fact, I recommend no more than one or two habits or goals to start off with.

To get your brain thinking, write out a list of things you want to improve on. This can be an ongoing list that you keep stored somewhere and add to, as you think of things. Now, from that list, choose one thing that is most important for you to start now.

As I said earlier, I had a dream of writing a blog, but didn’t know how to make it a reality. In fact, I dreamed of starting a blog for more than two years! The thought of adding one more thing to my plate had me giving up before even trying. I threw up my hands up thinking, “I just can’t do it right now, I don’t have the time.”

Fast forward two years, and I still had the same excuses. I didn’t have time. Since blogging would be something new to me, I was scared and truly couldn’t figure out how to carve out the time for it. It felt like I needed a lot of time to get started because it was so new and required my focus and energy.

Once something becomes a habit, you don’t stress about it anymore. You hardly even think about it. It is just something you do with little thought and effort.

Think of brushing your teeth everyday. You are on autopilot and just do it. You don’t have to think about it, plan it out or stress about getting it done, because it is a habit and something you do every day.

You may have all these lofty goals and dreams you want to start, but pick only one. Two at the most. Figure out how much time you can realistically dedicate to it everyday and when you could do it during your day.

Even if you only have 15 minutes to dedicate to a new habit, start with that. Back to my blog example, I had heard to start writing 30 minutes/day when starting a blog. With that said, even 30 minutes stressed me out and overwhelmed me. Like I said, I felt like my time was maxed out in every way and that is one of the main reasons I put it off for so long.

So I told myself to just start with 15 minutes/day. That was something that felt doable. And that is just what I did. For three weeks, I worked on my blog for 15 minutes/day! That’s it!

The coolest thing started to happen. As I committed to 15 minutes/day for three weeks, it got easier for me to sit down and write. After the three weeks, I realized I could write for 30 minutes/day.

Slowly, I built up to 45 min, then an hour, and now I’m up to an hour and a half/day. I spread this time out in 30 minutes increments, blogging some in the morning and the rest in the evening.

So start with something you feel is doable. The key is to successfully accomplish the goal you set. Not to start off full blast and realize a couple of weeks in you can’t do it and quit.

We need small wins and successes. It motivates us to keep going and layer on additional steps as we go along.

Give yourself at least three weeks to work on one habit, and if you need longer, continue working on it for another three weeks. Continue this process until it feels natural and like you don’t have to think about it to get it done, it just happens because it’s habit.

Only then should you start a new goal or habit to work on.

All habits are not created equal, and some will take longer than others. In fact, I’ve heard it said that some can take as long as a year until they actually become a habit. Some of mine have come easily in three weeks, while I have others I’ve been working on for six months and it still takes work and energy to do them.

Brain Dump

Next it’s time to write out all those to do’s that are in your head and get them down on paper, (or computer or phone screen.) The point of a brain dump is to dump out everything in your head and give your brain precious space back. When all those swirling to do’s are on paper instead of in your head, you don’t have to think, stress or worry about it anymore.

What I love about a brain dump is I can see all those nagging to do’s in one easy list, and I get so much more done. Every week, I take a few brain dump items, put it in my time block plan for the week, and little by little watch that list go down.

Of course, there will always be something to do, and I continue adding to the list as well. But with it all written down, I don’t stress about forgetting or not getting things done.

At the end of my week, I review my brain dump list and prioritize which ones I need to or want to get done. I look at my week and see where I can plug a few of these items in and cross those suckers off my list! I’m such a planner, so this feels really good to me!

Time Block

A method called time blocking has helped me immensely. Time blocking takes a chunk of time and assigns something you plan to do during that time.

I used to make a to do list, but without really considering how long things would take me. Then I was left with a bunch of unfinished to do’s and felt overwhelmed.

Now with time blocking, I can realistically see what I can do each day. This helps me prioritize the most important things, and remove things that aren’t necessary or that I know I won’t have time to do.

Some things to remember when time blocking:

• Give yourself extra time for each thing. If you read your Bible for 15 minutes, add a time block of 30 minutes. Take into consideration your children, interruptions and how long it realistically takes you.
• Don’t multi-task your time blocks. I am guilty of this one and need to work on it. For example, don’t time block cleaning kitchen and making lunch at the same time. In reality, you probably are multi tasking some of these things, but if you try to squeeze in too many things, you end up feeling stressed and behind. Schedule a separate time for cleaning and a separate time for making lunch.
• Be realistic about what you can accomplish. You only have 24 hours in a day and can only get so much done in a day. Being realistic helps you prioritize the most important things. You can put everything else into a dump list and plan those out accordingly.

Time blocking helps me accomplish my dreams and set goals because I always get more done and stay more focused when I time block.

I time block my whole week on Sunday. Then each day, I refer to my time block schedule on my phone, and it helps me stay on track.

When I get to a point in the day, where I lose focus or feel overwhelmed, I simply check my time block schedule to see what’s next and it helps me to get back on track.

Here is an example of a time block day for me. Keep in mind, this is just what works for me and my family during this season of our lives. Our children are a bit older and are able to help out at home a lot.

Monday
6-6:30 wake up, get dressed for workout
6:30-7 walk, pray
7-7:30 workout at home
7:30-8 breakfast
8-9 morning devotional – family Bible, memory verse, pray, worship song, geography
9-9:30 kids do chores, help with little ones
9:30-10 kids tv time, work on blog
10-12 kids school core subjects – math, english, penmanship, spelling
10-11 help kids with school, take turns
11-12 dishes, laundry in – Rachel’s turn, make bed
12-1 lunch, read aloud
1-2 David nap, clean up
2-2:30 nap, kids tv time
2:30-3 budget, 15 min declutter
3 – 4 play with kids, take turns, start dinner
4-5 cook dinner – sausage, potato and veggie soup
5-6 eat dinner, Bible reading
6-7 kids put laundry away, clean up kitchen
7-8 kids snack, potty, pjs, brush teeth
8-9 bedtime for all kids
9-10:30 relax time

Menu Planning

After you plan out your time block, plan out your meals for the week. This will save you time and money! Look at food you already have in the fridge, pantry and freezer and build your meals around them.

If you need to plan a trip to the store, then plan that out to get your staples and the items you will need for your planned meals and snacks.

If you are new to meal planning, try to make breakfast and lunch simple by creating a few options for everyone to have every day. For breakfast we choose between oatmeal, cereal, toast, bagels and eggs. We venture out more on the weekends and have pancakes, waffles or french toast.

Same goes for lunch. Give a couple of options to make it easy on yourself. We rotate between salads, sandwiches and occasionally leftovers.

So for us, dinner is where I need to do more meal planning. Even then, you could rotate themse to make it easier. Examples are Mondays – pasta night, Tuesday – taco night, etc.

I tend to plan out three meals and three nights we have the leftovers. I try to rotate between different types of meals like pasta, mexican, american and chinese.

I first put menu on my phone, and then add it to our big family calendar so kids and husband can see what we are eating this week and don’t have to individually ask me every day (with 5 kids, its a lot of asking!)

Recharge Electronics

After all your planning for the week, physically shut down your computer, phones etc and charge them. This helps you get ready for week, with functioning electronics and not having to scramble around looking for a charger in the middle of a meeting. Electronics just seem to work better when they are restarted and charged once/week.

Do Something Fun

Lastly, in all your planning, reward yourself with some time to do something fun either for yourself or with your family.

Even 15 minutes of self care goes a long way. Here are some to try:

• Read a book or magazine just for the fun of it
• Write in a journal
• Take a salt bath
• Give yourself a manicure/pedicure
• Take a nap
• Sing Hymns and worship music
• Sit in silence, practice deep breathing and meditate on God’s Word
• Pray and reflect, allow yourself to process your emotions

You could also spend quality time as a family. Go outside and go for a walk, ride scooters, ride bikes. These are all great, relaxing ways to spend fun, quality time together.

Try out fun traditions like a game night or movie night together. We tend to have a game night and play board games and Wii together on Sundays. Our children look forward to it every week and my 4 -year old boy is constantly asking me when Sunday is because he can’t wait for family game night.

Application

Take some time once/week to plan out your week. Put your appointments in your calendar, write out goals and habits and prioritize them. Then plan out your week with a brain dump and time block.

In addition, menu planning, recharging your electronics, and just having some fun are all practical ways to be more productive and plan for the week ahead.

How do you currently plan for your week ahead?

What is one step you can take this week to help increase your productivity and get you that much closer to your dream?

Comment below and let me know!