It’s the end of the week and you’re exhausted. You’re about to say bye to the grind and hi to “me time,” but of course, there’s still so much to do.
Right now, though, you’re focused on sleeping and recovering. Oh, and your weekly planner? You kind of used it, but who knows if you’ll get to it next week.
Sound like you? Because it definitely sounded like me.
Luckily, I’ve figured out a weekly reset routine that helps me get organized and get rested. So, in this post, I’m going to walk you through how to fill out your weekly planner.
If you’re going to fill out your weekly planner, start on Friday
Let’s be real. This can’t all be done on Sunday night. For some reason, I used to try to cram all of my self-care in on Sundays. I’d try to do my hair, do groceries, cook, clean, and plan for the week all on this last day before work.
Needless to say, I was overwhelmed, and my weekly planner was the last thing I got to.
That’s code for: it just didn’t get filled.
But I really wanted to get organized over the weekends! So, I started planning a bit earlier, on Saturdays.
That meant my Saturdays got filled with a whole bunch of prepping, and I’d be so exhausted on Sundays that filling out my planner was the last thing I wanted to do.
Listen. You have to start on Friday, okay? If you actually want to fill out your weekly planner, break the process up into three small chunks, and start on Friday (or whenever your weekend starts).
Since you’re doing things bit by bit, you know you’ll have time to fill out your planner. And if you start on Friday, you’ll be on a roll and won’t want to break your productive streak.
Now, I know planning ahead might not sound like the coolest thing to do on a Friday night, but it doesn’t have to take up your whole evening.
Unless you’re an introvert, like me. In that case, spending Friday night reflecting sounds great.
So, here’s how you’ll make the time to organize your weekly planner
- On Fridays, declutter your mess
- Then Saturdays, declutter your mind, and
- On Sundays, declutter your calendar
This is my ideal weekly reset and on each of these days, I also do something for my physical self-care.
Keep in mind that, like you, I don’t always have full weekends off. There are going to be some times when I combine these steps. And other times, I’ll skip them altogether.
But let’s walk through the best possible scenario.
Weekly planner Fridays – declutter your mess
By the end of my week, things look a hot mess. I’ve got papers that need to be filed, books that need to be shelved, and more than a few things that are out of place. I use Fridays to declutter it all. That includes:
Physical spaces:
- Notes I’ve written
- My handbag and wallet
- Mail & receipts (update budget)
- The fridge (finalize grocery list)
- My weekly goals (list anything that still needs to get done today/tomorrow)
And digital spaces:
- Email inboxes
- Desktop and downloads folder
- Phone’s camera roll
- Forgotten DMs/text messages?
I take no more than an hour to run through these items, saving the digital spaces for last because who knows what’ll happen once I get on my phone?
I also like to take 5 minutes to reflect on my week using the productive work week checklist I send to my email community.
Usually, all of this takes 60 minutes. I set a timer on my phone, and when it goes off, I ditch the text messages and work out or do my hair.
Take some time on Friday nights to clear up your physical and digital spaces. Not only will this help you wake up to a clean slate on Saturday, but it’ll also give you some momentum so you can be productive all weekend long.
Weekly planner Saturdays – declutter your mind
When we flew to Paris, I told my mom we were going to land and “hit the ground running.”
There was so much to see and a natural hair conference to go to. So, I wanted us to arrive, settle in, and make it to the conference by mid-day. We couldn’t miss it.
“Okay, sis. You hit the ground running,” she told me, as we checked into our teeeeensy hotel room.
It was several hours later when I woke up and realized we’d missed half the workshops…
But y’all, we’d also just gotten off a plane. We needed the rest. And when we did make it to the hair show, there was still so much to see.
So, on weekly planner Saturdays, I try to wake up early and spend 45 minutes decluttering my mind. If I don’t “hit the ground running” first thing in the morning though, it’s fine.
I just make sure to do these things at some point during the day:
- Review my agenda/dreams
- Brain dump to-dos
- Organize them into a Covey matrix
- List only the important tasks in my planner
- Look for patterns in my journal entries from the previous week, and
- Use those patterns to set boundaries for next week
This time, when my timer goes off, I head to the grocery store.
And that is why I like to wake up as early as I can for part two of my weekly reset. I really dislike the grocery store, and that’s saying it nicely. So, the earlier I can go, the less busy it is, which means I can get in and get out.
Saturdays are all about deciding what you’d like to accomplish in the upcoming week. Basically, we’re making a concrete list of what actually matters. And, equally as important, we’re setting boundaries to protect your peace.
Make sure you get to this part because tomorrow is the real deal!
Weekly planner Sundays – declutter your calendar
This is the most important set of steps because now, you can actually fill out your weekly planner. Do you see why I split this process up into three parts? It was so silly of me to try to do this all on Sunday evenings! Sheesh!
So now that you’ve cleared your space and reaffirmed your goals and boundaries, you can transfer your to-do’s into your calendar so that they’ll actually get done.
On Sundays, I:
- Set the mood for my planning session so that I’m looking forward to planning
- Decide on my mood for the week (an intention, mantra or vibe)
- Pick my 1-3 must-do tasks for the week (if I only did these things, it’d be a productive week for me), and
- Review important dates (Bills? Birthdays? Appointments? Submission deadlines? Presentations?)
Then I block off the actual dates and times on my calendar for:
- Work
- Sleep
- AM and PM routines (Read: How to Create a Simple Morning Routine)
- Writing/ other passions
- Learning
- Workouts (Read: How to Get in Your Best Shape Ever… for Free!)
- Meals (and what they’ll be)
- Time to do the important tasks in my Covey matrix
Some of these things, like work and sleep, are pretty fixed, so they’re running appointments on my calendar. The rest of the things (like my goals for the week) have to fit around them.
Calendar blocking like this helps me to be realistic. Basically, it transforms the items on yesterday’s to-do list into an actionable plan. And it’s a visual check. If I have a mile-long list of things to do and not enough pockets of time during the week, I have to rethink things.
If it’s close to the end of the month, I’ll also look at the next month’s calendar. And lastly, I remind myself of the boundaries I set yesterday.
I give myself an hour for all of this. Once that’s done, I make some meals and pat myself on the back because I’ve just filled out my weekly planner!
Don’t forget to declutter
This is the key part of weekly planner Sundays: declutter your calendar.
I try to create as much white space as possible so that I have room for when life happens. If I think it’ll take me an hour to write a chapter, I schedule two. If my commute takes me half an hour, I’ll schedule an hour. And if I have too many back-to-back blocks, I cut ’em.
Basically, it’s really important to remember to schedule some calm. Whenever possible, add some white space because you can’t maintain productivity without maintaining self-care. You’ll thank yourself later.
So what kind of weekly planner is right for you?
In med school, I met the most organized person I know. She would always come to class with her notes prepped, and she’d always listen in complete calm, even with the most complex lectures.
This woman knew what was going to be discussed and had a plan to organize that info later. She won awards, published a paper, planned her wedding, cooked, baked and walked her puppy.
And she always used her weekly planner. It was a sleek, black book, and it was as stylish as she was.
So in med school – no surprise – I also got a sleek, black planner.
But there are loads of other options. Some popular weekly planner formats include:
- Digital planners – for flexibility and reminders on-the-go
- Paper planners – for tactile, device-free reminders (and so you can actually cross something off your list. Because that’s just the best feeling, right?)
- Whiteboard planners – great for visual reminders and for sharing your schedule with family/roommates
Nowadays, I use both a physical and a digital planner.
I use Google calendar to calendar block my time because it syncs to my phone, and it’s easy to move appointments around when things change. On top of that, I schedule each of my passions in a different colour. This way, I have a visual week-at-a-glance, and I can tell if I’m spending too much time on one thing versus the other.
On the flip side, I use my physical planner to write down notes, thoughts, and map out my goals.
Try whatever planner method sounds good to you. You can always switch it up after you see what works best; you don’t have to do what my med school friend or I did.
***
Alright y’all. There you have it: the complete reset routine that helps me fill out my weekly planner. When you’ve got a hundred million things that matter to you, your time is so valuable. It’s helpful to have an idea of where you’re spending it before you launch head first into your busy week. In this post, I gave you my 3-part weekly reset with the specific things I check off my list each day.
I put it all together in a weekly planner checklist, which you can download for free. It’s a complete workbook with all the steps we discussed, space for a brain dump, and a Covey matrix. This is your chance to get organized for the week! Because, if you don’t have a system to reset, you won’t have time for what really matters.
Summary
So, quick review: each week I find time to fill out my weekly planner by doing certain tasks each day. On:
- Fridays, I declutter my mess
- Saturdays, I declutter my mind
- Sundays, I declutter my calendar
This way, I can spend just a bit of time planning each day, and the rest of my weekend enjoying my time off. And of course, I also make space for my physical self-care.
I hope you found the breakdown of these steps helpful. Don’t forget I’ve listed all the details for you in the checklist.
And in our next post we’ll talk about a relaxing Monday morning routine – because at this point, you’ve earned it!
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