5 Days to Schedule Every Month to Be Peacefully Productive

Productivity

Aug 6

Written By Jessica Massey

Keep reading this post to learn:

⋒ What the 5 days are that I schedule every month for peacefully productivity

⋒ Why having these specific days are so important

⋒ What those days specifically look like in my life, and examples of what they could look like in yours

I made a post on Instagram a few weeks ago – maybe a few months ago at this point – sharing 5 days that I schedule into my months and I asked y’all if you wanted a whole blog post and podcast episode dedicated to me explaining how I do this and what these days look like and quite a few yesses were thrown out there so here we are!

First things first – say it with me: our schedules and routines are tools, not chains. Aka these routines are not the end all be all, set in stone how I share them, meant to stress you out – these routines are tools… something meant to make your life feel intentional and less stressful.

Take all of these ideas and filter them through your own life – your vision and your priorities. Don’t feel pressured to implement them all right away or to implement them exactly the way I do.

Now that we’re all on the same page with that, here are 5 days that I schedule into my months that help me be peacefully productive:

5 Days to Schedule Each Month

🗓️ MONTHLY MEETING
Check in with your mental health/goals; set your intentions and plan the following month

If you've been around for a while, you’re probably familiar with me talking about my monthly check-in meeting… it’s part of The Hustle Sanely Planning System. The purpose of a monthly check-in meeting is to set you up to go into the month knowing where to spend your time and energy to make progress on your goals while prioritizing your mental health and relationships.

My Peacefully Productive Planner and Peacefully Productive Journal guide my Monthly Check-In Meetings.

I personally do mine in 2 parts – the first part I do with the Hustle Sanely BFFs on the 4th Thursday of the month… that’s when we do our monthly plan together on Zoom! I get my planner set up for the following month – I make note of important dates coming up for the month, write my anchor affirmation, and nail down my monthly Focus Goals.

The second part I do either the day before the first day of the month or the first day of the month and this is where I do the monthly check-in and monthly prep spreads in my Peacefully Productive Journal to help me see where I’m at with my focus goals from last month, how my mental health is doing, and what my intentions are for the coming month.

Having a scheduled monthly meeting helps me steward my time and energy well and show up for my life in a way that I’m proud of.

✅ LIFE ADMIN DAY
Close open loops from your to-do list

Y’all – open loops are the bane of my existence, lol. They stress me out and make my type-A brain want to explode. But the reality of life is that open loops exist. Let me back up for a second to make sure you’re following – an open loop is a task that has either been put on your to-do list to collect cobwebs (aka you haven’t started it or done it at all) OR a task that’s on your to-do list that has been partially done but can’t be checked off as complete yet.

Open loops are not the same as ongoing projects or goals that you’re not actively pursuing, just to clarify.

Sometimes, we have open loops because we’re procrastinating. Sometimes we have open loops because we’re in a full season of life. And sometimes we have open loops because we’re *patiently* waiting on other people.

Truly, my anxiety goes through the roof when my list of open loops starts racking up. So to make myself feel better and to help keep my anxiety at bay, I schedule at least 1 day a month to focus on closing open loops from my catch-all task list.

On this day, I usually dedicate 1-3 hours to closing open loops. I pull out my catch-all task list (which I teach about in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course) and check in with what’s on there. I go down the list and see what I can do and/or what I can check in on.

Now, like I just said, not all of our open loops are always in our control. For example, one of my current open loops, when I’m writing this blog post, is getting a poster hung up in my office… I really hope that by the time this blog post is live, it’s a closed loop, lol. But anyway, I ordered the poster and the frame and the frame got here like a week before the poster so I couldn’t hang the frame because I was waiting on the poster to arrive. Once the poster arrives, I can frame it, hang the frame, and close the loop.

Another example of waiting on someone in order to close a loop – maybe you needed to reschedule a dentist appointment and they said they would call you back to reschedule when you called to move your appointment. During my open loop day, I might call the dentist's office to follow up if it’s been a while since I’d heard back.

And then an example of an open loop that is in our control might be decluttering a closet. Maybe it’s been on your to-do list for 2 weeks and you keep putting it off for whatever reason. Or maybe you’ve decluttered the closet but the donation bag is still sitting on your bedroom floor waiting to be dropped off so the task isn’t fully complete. During my open loop day, I’d take that bag to a donation drop-off.

Open loops are pesky little things that subconsciously take up our precious mental space so I highly recommend scheduling at least one day a month to touch base with your open loops and check a few off your catch-all task list so that it doesn’t get overwhelmingly long.

✨ MAINTENANCE DAY
A day for appointments (hair, nails, dentist, lashes, oil change, whatever)

I have quite a few regular, recurring appointments in my life – I get my hair done every 6 weeks, my nails done every 4 weeks, and my lashes done every 3 weeks… I sound very high maintenance but it’s okay, lol.

I’m a big fan of batching my appointments… I choose 2 Fridays a month (instead of just 1) and do my very best to schedule all of my appointments on these days.

And then when I have 1 off appointments, like a dentist appointment or a doctor’s appointment, I’ll try to schedule those on one of my 2 “maintenance day” Fridays. Idk this just really works for me because I don’t like having appointments scattered all over the month. I’d rather have 2 super-packed appointment days and get everything over with together!

☁️ REFRESH DAY
A day with 0 plans so you can rest/decompress/practice self-care however you want

Oooo my introverted homebody self absolutely loves my monthly refresh day! This is another one where I schedule at least one a month but it usually ends up being 2-3 a month because that’s just what I need as an introverted homebody.

But what I do is block off certain days in my calendar to keep plan-free. And let me just say…you’re gonna have to protect this plan-free day. It’s going to be tempting to say yes to something or someone because you see “free” space on your calendar. That’s why I add “Refresh Day” to my Google calendar as an event – so that I treat it like one!

On my refresh days, I still, of course, have my day-to-day responsibilities… I mean I am a mom and business owner BUT I don’t make any plans with anyone outside of my normal daily routine things so that I can focus on doing whatever I want/need to help me feel refreshed.

If I schedule a refresh day on a work day, I do my normal daily routine up until Everly’s bedtime. Then once she goes to bed at 7, I am in introvert refresh mode until I go to bed around 10. I tell Adam ahead of time that I need a “me night” so he can either make plans to go do something or so that he’s aware that I’ll be doing my own thing that night if we’re both at home. I’ll spend the 3ish hours doing whatever I want to rest/decompress. It’s usually reading, watching a show, scrolling on Pinterest… whatever I’m in the mood for!

If I schedule a refresh day on a day off, I do my normal life things – like HS5, making sure Evvy is fed and has activities to do but in the margins of my day, I focus on doing whatever I want to feel like I’m taking care of myself. Like editing a YouTube video for my book channel, reading in the sunshine, and organizing parts of our home (this feels like self-care to me, not work, lol).

Usually, I try to schedule my pre-planned refresh day on a Friday because Friday is Adam’s day to spend quality time with Evvy while I do my own thing (and then we swap on Saturdays) and then I can really lean into going with the flow all day and doing whatever I need to do to feel refreshed. This is why I like to schedule all of my maintenance appointments on 2 Fridays a month – so I can have the other 2 Fridays as refresh days! TBH, I usually end up making plans with a friend one of those 2 “free” Fridays so I only have 1 guaranteed refresh Friday a month if that makes sense.

I plan one refresh day ahead of time – so like during my monthly check-in meeting, I’ll decide what day I’m protecting as plan-free – and then if I find myself needing another one I’ll plan it during my Weekly Prep Meeting.

All of these meetings I refer to are part of The Hustle Sanely Planning System which I teach in depth in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course, by the way!

🫶🏼 FRIENDS/FAM DAY
Do something meaningful with your loved ones

Part of Hustling Sanely and living a peacefully productive life is prioritizing the important relationships in your life – and I’ll be the first one to tell you this is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to be super intentional when it comes to being present in my relationships. I have to create routines and put reminders in my calendar – and I used to feel bad about that but I’ve learned that I’d rather do that and actually show up for people than try to do things from memory and end up dropping the ball.

So that being said, I have one standing friends day planned and one family day planned every month.

I’ve talked about my friend groups’ standing girls’ night – every 4th Thursday of the month, we all get together in the evening to have a meal together and catch up. We take turns hosting and it’s something that we can all count on to know that even if we don’t see each other at all the rest of the month, we’ll get some face time that Thursday.

And then my grandparents live 40ish minutes away and they don’t like driving that far so I make it a priority to schedule one visit a month with them where I load Everly up after her nap to go visit them for a few hours. I plan the day that I’m going to do this every month during my Monthly Check-In Meeting.

We call Mondays in our house “Family Day” so I don’t plan an intentional me, Adam, and Everly event each month because we make sure to do something intentionally fun together every Monday, which I’m so grateful for!

I’ve been scheduling these 5 days into my month for a while now and I 10/10 recommend!!!

I love a focus/theme (they just work well with my brain) so naming the days has just made me even more excited to schedule them!

And the cool thing is – you’re the boss of your schedule so you get to decide how you want to implement these into your life so that they work for you and support the season that you’re in!

READY TO START CREATING YOUR OWN ROUTINES?