How to Make Your Weekly Planning Easier
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What a Weekly Prep Meeting is and who it is for
⋒ How a Weekly Prep Meeting can help you hustle sanely
⋒ The 6 steps of a Weekly Prep Meeting so you can start implementing them in your life
One of my ride-or-die productivity tools is my Weekly Prep Meeting.
It’s one of the 8 Hustle Sanely Habits that I teach inside the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course to help you live a peacefully productive life.
The purpose of a Weekly Prep Meeting is for you to create an intentional action plan for the coming week so you know where to spend your time and energy and what your Top 3 tasks are for the week. This helps you go into the next week knowing what your top priorities are to keep you on track with your goals while still prioritizing your mental health and relationships.
Listen, to be honest, pre-Hustle Sanely Planning System days, I really used to dread sitting down to plan out my weeks because it just felt daunting…like it was a lot of mental energy and so I found myself putting it off until Sunday night and then stressing out about it when I was drudging through it.
So what did I do to make my Weekly Prep Meetings easier and something that I actually look forward to?
I created a weekly outline! Trust me, a weekly outline is going to make your Weekly Prep Meetings flow better and take way less time and energy!
Think about a weekly outline as the “bones" of your schedule - it shows you the flow of a week in your life.
A weekly outline is a bird’s eye view of a typical week in your life. Having one of these allows you to easily see how much margin you have and plan things strategically so that you don’t spread yourself too thin and feel burned out or overwhelmed.
Having your weekly outline makes your weekly prep meetings much easier because you’re not starting from scratch when you plan from week to week.
I recommend creating your weekly outline once and then auditing it every quarter to make sure it still supports your season.
And now if you’re thinking, “K I love the idea of this but I have different types of weeks in my life.” If you have different types of weeks, create multiple weekly outlines… so for example, if you work night shift some weeks and day shifts other weeks, make a weekly outline for each.
Now I’m not gonna leave you hanging – I’m going to give you 3 steps to follow to create your own weekly outline in this episode buuuut I’m gonna let you in on something – if you sign up for the free Chaos to Calm Workshop, there is a whole section dedicated to this – with visuals and workbook so you can take action and create your own weekly outline while looking at mine for guidance.
You can learn more about the Chaos to Calm Workshop here, but I want to give you the 3 steps to create a weekly outline:
Step 01: Plug in your scheduled responsibilities in a typical week.
Think about things like work hours, classes, church meetings, kids’ practices, etc.
Step 02: Plug in your non-negotiables and any supporting habits.
Think about your workouts, family walks, etc.
Step 03: Plug in any other typical weekly routines.
Think about morning routines, evening routines, Home Reset Routines, etc.
So I make my weekly outline in Canva and I personally like to have my weekly outline color-coded – each step gets its own color and like I said, I show it to you in the free Chaos to Calm Workshop!
Then once I have it all mapped out, I put it in my Google cal to live. So like in my Google cal, I have 3 categories: family, work, and weekly outline. This way I don’t have to type them in every week. I use Google Calendar as a placeholder for my scheduled events and I use my planner to help me plan out my daily habits and tasks.
Okay so now that I’ve let you in on what a weekly prep meeting is and how a weekly outline can make doing one easier, I want to walk you through my current Weekly Prep Meeting – a little BTS, concrete example action, ya know?
My Weekly Planning Meeting is one of my favorite routines of the week because it helps me show up as a version of myself that I’m proud of – it helps me give my best time and energy to what matters most.
So let’s walk through how I do my Weekly Prep Meetings in this season:
I used to do my Weekly Prep Meetings on Thursday afternoons as the last task of my work week but that started to feel stressful and like I was cramming it in/I felt mentally drained at the end of my work week so I recently switched my Weekly Prep Meetings to Saturdays and it’s been feeling really good!
Remember what I tell y’all – if you’re dreading a routine of yours, that’s a red flag that it’s time to adjust something because it’s probably no longer supporting you!
So on Saturday mornings after our family walk, I grab my laptop and my Peacefully Productive Planner and sit at the dining room table with an iced coffee and some lofi jazz playing on the TV.
On my laptop, I open up 2 things: our Google calendar, which is where we keep track of all time-bound events for the family (work hours, hair appointments, activities with friends, date nights, doctor’s appointments, etc.) and ClickUp, which is the task management tool I use to keep track of everything that needs to be done in my business.
I personally use my planner for more of a big vision tool so I can see everything – work and life – as a whole. I keep my tedious list of work tasks in ClickUp rather than having them live in my planner – that’s just what works best for me!
Anyways, here are the steps that I work through for my Weekly Prep Meetings:
Step 01: Work through reflection questions.
I teach these inside the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course but we’ll run through them really quickly here:
Reflection Questions:
I mentally go through these questions so I can get a sense of self-awareness for how the previous week went.
Overall, how do I feel?
Did I make rest a priority this week?
Did I complete my Top 3 tasks from last week?
Did I show up for my non-negotiables and habits?
Then I open my planner and do the following:
Step 02: Plug in my scheduled responsibilities that are specific to the week I’m prepping for.
So in our family-shared Google cal, I have a calendar called “Weekly Outline” that has all of our typical weekly stuff in there so we don’t have to re-type it every week and so we don’t double book by accident. So like I have my workouts in there, my morning routine, Everly’s bedtime routine, my weekly prep meeting, our family walks, etc.
But in my planner each week, I like to write things in that are time-bound just for that specific week so I can look at my weekly planner page and easily see what is not flexible (so like meetings, appointments, etc.). I grab these out of Google cal and I color code the scheduled events in my planner based on whether they’re personal or professional.
So I keep my weekly outline in Google cal (because honestly, it’s like second nature to me at this point and I don’t have to think about when I’m doing my regular routines) and events that are specific to the week I’m planning for in my planner so I can see what isn’t flexible in one place. This also helps me to see which days have more margin and which days are more full so I can schedule and plan rest accordingly.
Step 03. Plug in your non-negotiable priorities and any supporting habits that are specific to the week you’re prepping for.
So I told you that I like to be able to look in my planner and see events that are specific to that week written out – same goes for my habits – I like to be able to open my planner for the week and quickly see which habits I’m focusing on that week.
I personally choose new habits every month based on my monthly reflection and I like to track them every week. Some of the habits that I’m tracking this month are:
~ Daily grounding and sunshine
~ Core work
~ Save days
~ Following phone hours
Step 04. Determine and schedule your Top 3 Tasks for the week.
I get these 3 tasks by looking at my Focus Goals for the month – I typically have one personal focus goal and one professional focus goal per month. My Top 3 tasks each week, are broad action steps to make my Focus Goals happen and then my daily Focus 3 are specific action steps to make my weekly Top 3 happen. I teach how The Hustle Sanely System™ works in detail in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course!
So once I have my Top 3 Tasks for the week nailed down, I write them down in the “Top 3 Tasks This Week” section in my planner and then break each one down into smaller steps if I need to in order to complete them. I write the smaller, more specific action steps in as my Focus 3 for days throughout the week I’m planning for.
Step 05. Plan your weekly rest.
I hope you know by now that part of hustling Sanely is knowing that we don’t earn our rest but instead, we operate from a place of rest. That means being proactive and scheduling in some intentional rest every week!
Rest is whatever makes you feel refreshed! It doesn’t have to be sitting on the couch or taking a nap (but it totally can be).
My scheduled rest usually happens on Fridays – I’ve shared this here before – Fridays are my self-care day. I get the afternoon to do whatever I want and Adam hangs out with Evvy and Saturdays with flip – Adam gets to go do whatever he wants and I get quality time with Evvy.
When I’m planning out my week, I like to decide what I want to do during that self-care time so that I’m intentional with it.
Step 06. Determine and schedule other tasks that need to be done, carving out space for margin and transition.
This one is pretty self-explanatory – I fill in other tasks that need to be done that week but I make sure not to spread myself too thin by keeping margin in my schedule. Remember last week we talked about margin – think about margin as blank space. Margin is breathing room. It's your schedule’s emergency fund for when your bestie calls and needs a listening ear or somebody throws up or you just need to take a breather for a minute. Margin is unscheduled time that you can use however you want – maybe that’s by doing some self-care, spending time with your family, or doing tasks that got pushed to the back of the priority list when you were sick.
A great example of how margin helps – a few weeks ago, my father-in-law stopped in unannounced for like 20 minutes to see Everly. If I had my schedule packed to the brim, every minute planned, this would have thrown me off. But because I leave some wiggle room in my days and weeks, I’m able to navigate these situations smoothly without feeling like a wrench has been thrown in my day.
Now obviously I’m a bit biased, but I loooove my weekly Peacefully Productive Planner® because all of these steps are basically built right into it – I just sit down with it open and fill it out and these steps are followed without me even having to think about it.
It’s glorious and it’s how I make progress on my goals without feeling like I’m spreading myself too thin.
Alright y’all that is what I’ve got for you this week – how creating a weekly outline can make your weekly planning easier.
Don’t forget to go watch the free chaos to calm workshop if you want to see my weekly outline and get a workbook to help you with creating your own!
INTRODUCING THE FREE
Chaos to Calm Workshop
Learn 5 routines that will make your life less stressful and how to create a weekly schedule with them so you can get stuff done
while prioritizing your mental health and relationships ✨
Loved this blog post? Tune into the full podcast episode below!
