Weekly Planning
One of the keys to meeting deadlines and having time to focus on bigger projects is weekly planning. Without it, you’ll fill up big blocks of time dealing with smaller tasks and minutiae, leaving only 15 minutes here and there to focus on big picture issues.
I recommend using an hour or so once a week to do your planning for the upcoming week. I like to do this on Friday afternoons. Let’s face it, at the end of the day on Friday, our brains are not working at peak performance, and it’s hard to focus. Taking a break for the last hour of your day and giving your brain a very different task can not only keep you productive on a Friday but also make you more productive the following week.
You’ll need your calendar, your email, and all the documents that have come across your desk that week. I recommend having a box or basket where you put everything that comes across your desk.
These next steps I adapted from professional organizer Lisa Woodruff of Organize 365. (If you like this method, I recommend checking out her website at https://organize365.com/ for videos, podcasts, and more.) Start with the paper documents in your basket/inbox. Pick up each one and decide whether it:
needs action before next Friday afternoon
needs action after next Friday afternoon
doesn’t need action, and can be filed.
Once you’ve got three piles, start on the first one: items that need action in the next week. Maybe it’s a document that needs reviewed before an upcoming meeting. Maybe you need to respond to a customer. Whatever it is, look at your calendar and determine when you will do that. Pick a day and time next week. Here you have options:
Block out a specific time in your calendar. This is particularly helpful for people whose calendars get filled up, whether you are making the appointments yourself or your colleagues or boss make them for you. Or, you can...
Pick a day, but not a specific time. I recommend adding this to your task list for that day. Alternately, you can have five folders, labeled Monday, Tuesday, etc. and put the document in that folder. Next Tuesday morning, you’ll open the Tuesday folder and see your tasks for the day.
The second pile, items that don’t need action next week, is easy: just stick in back in the box. Seriously. You don’t even need to worry about the order or creating any sort of folders within the box, although you can if you want. You just need to be able to find it next Friday afternoon. For now, you don’t have to worry about it.
The third pile is for items that are completed and ready to be filed away. If you’ve already got a file for it, drop it in. If you need to make a file folder for it, use this time to create folders, make labels, and file them. During the week, anything that needs to be filed will go into your basket to be dealt with next Friday afternoon.
Now that you’ve been through all your paper, you need to do the same thing with your email inbox. Go through each item and decide: does this need to be dealt with before next Friday?
If yes, make sure that you’ve scheduled time on your calendar or added it to a daily to-do list. Treat it just like the paper items above.
If it can wait a week, you may want to create an email folder specifically called something like “Friday planning.” Even better, if you use Google Tasks or Microsoft ToDo feature in your email, you can just drag it to the Tasks. Add a due date and other information you might need. Whatever you do, move it out of your inbox. If you just leave it in your inbox, it’s going to be staring you in the face all week, distracting you from items you should be focusing on.
If it’s completed, drag and drop it into an email folder. Here again, use this time to create new email folders if needed.
When you’re finished, your desk should be cleared off and your email inbox should have fewer items in it. This helps me start Monday morning fresh. I like knowing that at least once a week I’ve straightened up and touched each item once, to make sure nothing is falling through the cracks.