I like Mondays. Mondays to me symbolize a chance to start again. To give my goals another shot. They truly are my favorite part of the week. Thus, I don’t mind Sundays. In fact, I spend part of my Sunday “working” by preparing the week ahead. By taking an hour or two, I can knock several tasks out of the way that would be causing me time and grief during the week otherwise.
There’s a distinct difference in my weeks depending on whether or not I did the legwork on Sunday to prep for success. While I try to keep my prep time brief so I can maximize family time, I also try to make my prep time meaningful and mindful. Here’s what I do to ensure a smooth-sailing successful week!
1. Write out a master to-do list.
I write out everything that needs to happen for the week under my “Weekly Goals” column in my planner (which you can see here). As a visual person, it helps me get a clearer idea as to how I want my week to go with work and personal life. It also works as a reminder for any events and deadlines I have coming up so they’re fresh in my mind.
I always keep my master to-do list in my planner and/or in my phone. The key to having a successful week is staying organized, which would be near impossible to do if you have a bunch of papers floating around. (Believe me, I’ve tried it that way. It never ends well.)
2. Meal prep.
How much of being successful during the week really relies on meal prep? A lot, actually. This isn’t just the latest obsession. It’s a fantastic tool for being sure that you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out what’s for dinner or if you have the right ingredients to make something really quick.
Typically, between Friday and Sunday is when I do my weekly grocery shopping. Before I head out the door, I take 5 minutes to draft out what I want to make for the week and exactly everything I’d need from the store to achieve that. This cuts my grocery shopping time and cooking time in half. It also ensures that no one gets hangry throughout the workday, which can put a damper on productivity.
3. Clean.
I cannot work in a cluttered space. Actually, most people can’t. I spend a day each week doing laundry, scrubbing countertops, and cleaning floors along with some standard decluttering. If I can’t find a home for a paper that makes sense, then I can’t justify its relevancy and it gets tossed. Anything in the fridge that’s past it’s due date also gets tossed during this round of cleaning. I also take about 10 minutes to straighten out our home: blankets back in the bin, flip the couch cushions, books back on the shelves, etc. You’d be surprised by how much doing these little things will make a big difference in your stress levels and productivity.
4. Plan out the week.
I have to admit, I’ve never been good with the planners that have the hour-by-hour break down. Usually, I wind up spending more time thinking about what to do during those specific hours than actually doing the thing.
Instead, I aim for creating a routine and I try to sketch out my ideal routine for the week on Sunday. That may seem counterintuitive as the entire purpose of a routine is to create a reliable timetable that doesn’t change. And, for the most part, my weekly routines look the same. However, I always take a look at the week ahead and make adjustments accordingly.
For example, if I know that I have a required posting time on Wednesday for a sponsored post, then I plan my daily routines around that specific deadline. There’s also a lot of variability in what my day-to-day looks like in my line of work. One of my photography days is going to look very different than one of my writing days or reading days or knitting days. All that needs to be planned ahead of time if I want to stay on track.
5. Determine my top 3 priorities.
Anything more than 3 will just welcome the sensation of being overwhelmed. I used to try “top 10” and then “top 5” before dropping it to my “top 3” because trying to juggle too many “top priorities” just turned into me over-saturating my time. This led to a huge decrease in what I accomplished over the week because when I felt like I had too many things pulling me in different directions, I did nothing at all.
If you feel like you really can’t narrow your priorities down to 3, try categorizing them. You can break them down into “work” vs “personal”, “events” vs “projects”, “errands” vs “appointments”, etc. until you have something clear and manageable. The goal at the end of the week is to feel like you’ve achieved what you needed to. That doesn’t require you to be superhuman, so avoid the “I need to do it all” mentality by truly sticking to your “top 3”.