Start Your Week at the Weekend
Plan the upcoming week on Sundays and get more out of your week. Prioritize your work and get more done.
Cal Newport plans his upcoming work week on Mondays.
He captures his plan in an email and sends it to himself so that he has access to it daily.
This planning can take a long time; almost always longer than an hour (for me it takes around 30-45 minutes).
But the return on investment is phenomenal.
To visualize your whole week at once allows you to spread out, batch, and prioritize work in a manner that significantly increases what you accomplish and goes a long way toward eliminating work pile-ups and late nights.
The style or format of your plan should match the challenges of the specific week ahead.
I do it on Sundays.
Here are the steps I follow:
I list all the important projects I am working on. I then look at my OKRs for the quarter and see how I am doing in each one
I list everything that I need to have achieved at the end of the week in each project
Finally, I start allocating work for each day of the week, following my priorities
Cal Newport says:
"The bigger message here, however, is that I always decide in advance what I am going to do with my week. These decisions look different at different times of the year, but what matters is that when it comes to my schedule, I’m in charge."
Start being in charge of your week as well.