Pre-Planning Your Week For Efficiency
Here’s a quick encouragement to help you have a great week.
Spend the first 30 minutes of your workweek pre-planning for the week. Follow these steps:
Set goals for the week. – What do you need to and want to accomplish by the week’s end? Be realistic, but make sure you include some stretch goals.
List the major tasks required to accomplish your goals – Break down each objective into the activities you will need to do to complete them.
Allot time for each activity – Again, be realistic, but determine that you are going to work diligently to meet your goals.
Schedule your week – Calendar each of the activities throughout the week. Be sure and allow for downtime, reflection, prayer and devotion time. Those times keep you grounded and fresh. If your schedule fills up before you finish you are probably either planning to do too much or allotting too much time for each activity.
With this pre-planning period you will be better able to enjoy your week with less stress, more productivity, and a better attitude at the end of the week.
Let me know how this works for you.
3 responses to "Pre-Planning Your Week For Efficiency"
I make a rough list of what I want to accomplish in the week on Sunday night (if I worked outside the home it would be on Monday AM).
Then each morning I take about 5-10 minutes while sipping my hot tea to plan out what will actually happen that day. Doing it this way allows me the flexibility to flow with what happened earlier…or make room for unexpected opportunities.
Faye, it sounds like you need more of a life plan than help with a weekly schedule. I am totally talking from experience and to myself here as well, but being the multi-tasking woman working two careers person that you are, my guess is that like me you have too many tasks on your plate and so you feel not only tired, but also like you are spinning your wheels at time. You probably need to step back and get a bigger life picture, not just a weekly planning picture.
I have written some about that process here:
http://www.ronedmondson.com/2009/01/10-ways-to-create-time-margin.html
http://www.ronedmondson.com/2008/07/further-thoughts-on-having-a-life-plan.html
http://www.ronedmondson.com/2008/07/3-questions-to-help-formulate-a-life-plan.html
I would also recommend some of the work of Mike Hyatt:
http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/08/priority-management-and-life-balance.html
http://michaelhyatt.com/2008/06/creating-a-life-plan.html
http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/08/before-you-create-a-to-do-list.html
Praying for you to find that balance.
Ron
I can do all this planning and it looks SO good on paper or screen, then reality hits (along with the ADD) and it’s skewed before I get started!
What tools/thoughts do you have for an ADD multi-tasking woman working two careers and writing from her home each day — how to I stay on task, because I live really tired. I love them all, but I do need to figure out a balance.
.-= Faye´s last blog ..Heroes? =-.