As the old aphorism says, “If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail.” While I think that’s a bit of an overstatement, planning certainly has its benefits. In particular, planning out your workweek can help reduce stress, set expectations, and actually increase the amount you’re able to accomplish.
Friday afternoons are the perfect time to plan the coming workweek, and here’s why:
- Bring closure to the week. On Friday afternoon, it’s tempting to just hop up from the desk and hit the door like a school kid at the bell. However, that’s when everything from the week is still fresh on your mind. Taking some time to put it on paper saves you from struggling to remember where you left off. It also allows you to more confidently leave everything behind at the office when you do hit the door for the weekend.
- You can relax all the way through Sunday evening.There’ll be no guilt or fear in continuing your restful weekend until you drift off on Sunday night. You don’t have to remember the past week, you don’t have to prepare for the coming week. It’s all done. Just wake up and show up.
- Avoid getting behind on Monday.
If you decide to try and plan on Monday, you’ll be tempting yourself to skip planning altogether. There’s increased pressure to demonstrate tangible results at the beginning of the week, so instead of sitting and creating your plan for the week, you’ll probably wind up working on one of the first few entries to your list instead. Furthermore, Monday mornings are prime-time for meetings, so that time might not be your own anyway.
15 responses so far ↓
1 Naomi Dunford // Aug 20, 2007 at 11:24 am
One thing I could add… who isn’t completely useless on a Monday morning? Who hasn’t walked into work, looked at their desk, said “Aw, screw it,” and promptly gone to chat with a co-worker about lousy summer reruns? Having your shiny new to-do list waiting for you makes it so much easier to just focus instead of sitting there like a blob, nursing your hangover.
2 Liz // Aug 20, 2007 at 11:57 am
This is also a good thing to do with stuff to do while at home. Especially if you know that you have to do some sort of work over the weekend but you’re also having people over, and have to fix the lawn-mower. You can effectively “schedule in” your working time w/out getting stressed over it Monday morning when you think “Oh, s***, I forgot to do that and its due in 3o minutes”.
Another good thing I have found helpful, (especially for me), is to make a list of things you have already accomplished for the day/week/hour etc… It helps you to see the things that you have done and focus on the positive aspects of actually being able to get stuff done when sometimes you worry about not being able to complete everything on your “to-do list”.
Of course, if you know me, then you know that I make both a “to-do list” and a “have accomplished list”…
3 Chuck Westbrook // Aug 20, 2007 at 1:19 pm
@Naomi– Good point. I was looking at it from the point of view of someone who’s under external pressure to get stuff done.
If you have a flexible environment, Monday morning’s a dangerous time to do your list for that reason.
4 Chuck Westbrook // Aug 20, 2007 at 1:20 pm
@Liz– Thanks, good points. At the end of the week, it’s easier to look back and see what you’ve accomplished and feel like you’re getting somewhere.
5 Jonathon // Aug 20, 2007 at 6:30 pm
This is a fantastic idea. To go a step further, I’ve found it helpful for me to work out a rough plan for tomorrow at the end of each day. It helps me hit the ground running the next morning, and it allows me to relax at night so much more.
But at the very least, weekly planning should be a habit everyone picks up. It helps you see what you’ve accomplished, and it certainly makes that last 30 or 45 minutes on Friday afternoon go by faster, too.
6 Chuck Westbrook // Aug 21, 2007 at 9:34 am
@Jonathon– Glad you found it helpful. It can be hard to measure how much you should plan for, but it helps prevent you from overworking too.
7 Sonia Simone // Aug 23, 2007 at 8:55 am
I’m a GTD junkie and and have developed a cute NA list (to do list, if you aren’t a fellow junkie) that I update every day (in Word) at the end of the day & print a fresh version for the morning. I’m lousy at doing a “weekly review” in GTD jargon, maybe I should renew my efforts to do that on Fridays.
The nice thing about a complete list of next actions to take on every single project on your plate is that when you carry it around, people are impressed and intimidated by how damned busy you are. I’m a big believer in protective coloring at work.
8 Why You Should Plan Your Week This Friday - lifehack.org // Aug 30, 2007 at 11:38 am
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9 Rohit // Aug 30, 2007 at 12:18 pm
As part of the GTD crowd, I give 2 thumbs up to using Friday afternoon as a time for the weekly review.
It takes so much less time because work is still fresh in my mind, and this allows me to actually complete the part of GTD I’m most likely to fall behind on. Thanks for the post.
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