This is a guest post by my friend, Beth Dargis. Please show her some love in the comments :)
Tomorrow I'll be talking about plastic envelopes, another of my favourite organising tools.
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I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to spend 30 minutes every day planning my day. So, I like to plan a week at a time. Weekly planning also allows for better balance in the week.
I usually do my weekly planning on Sunday afternoons. Friday afternoon and Monday mornings are good times as well.
Here is my step by step weekly plan:
- Look over emails and see what still needs to be actioned and write it down in a notebook.
- Gather any papers from around the house/office and put into your inbox. Go through your inbox and process the papers. Any actions go into the notebook.
- Listen to any voicemails and put actions with phone numbers into notebook.
- Empty head of any other insights, actions and ideas and put into the notebook.
- Put any actions from the notebook into iScrybe.com or use whatever task system you prefer. Computer or paper. It’s helpful to keep your tasks in categories like home, office, errands, personal, family, etc.
- Decide which projects or goals to concentrate on for the week. Keep it simple. Don’t have too many projects and goals at once.
- Open up calendar – paper or computer. I use Google Calendar : http://www.google.com/calendar/
- Check last week’s calendar and see if anything needs to be put onto this week’s calendar. Add any appointments for the week.
- Now add in time for your projects and goals on the calendar.
- Next add your physical exercise time and at least 15 min of relaxation time a day. Make self-care a priority.
- Put in a date with a significant other or yourself.
- Add one on one time with your kids or friends.
Now daily planning is a snap. Check your calendar to see the outline of your day. I like to get appointment reminders sent to my email. Then pick out the 3 most important tasks from your action lists. When those tasks are done, you can pick 1-3 more depending on time.
Enjoy your week and doing your highest priorities.
Beth Dargis helps overwhelmed women create saner, simpler lives. Pick up a free Declutter Calendar at: http://www.encouragingcoach.com/
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3 comments:
Thanks for the great tips, Beth :) I use a paper calendar as our family calendar and a paper diary that I carry with me all the time. Sunday nights are my time to organise the week. I add appts and important dates to both the calendar and diary. The babes know that if they have something coming up, that they are to write the info on the family calendar (well, the older ones know, anyway, I'm still working on DD11 and DD7)
I remember seeing some US sitcom where the family had a HUGE whiteboard in their kitchen with the families' schedules on it...I would LOVE that!
Hi Tina
Thanks for sharing your ideas!
Beth, I also do my weekly planning on Sunday nights (of course, you know that my business planning happens on Friday nights :) )
Even though I double up with paper and computer for appointments (because I don't ever want to miss anything), I'm a paper gal and I go nowhere without my paper planner!
I have an alarm set in my PDA that goes off at 7pm on Sunday evenings. It reminds me to spend some time planning. I love the checklist of things to go over. I am mostly a paper person too, but I just found a neat calendar site that is free. It's called 30 boxes and is found at 30boxes.com. It links to Google calendar and others. Also to MySpace and Flikr.
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