How I Plan My Week In Under 60 Minutes

Plan your next week in 3 steps

Every night before heading to sleep, I used to plan the next day out. On a piece of paper, I wrote down the tasks I had to do in the next 24 hours. But after some time, sitting down every single day for daily planning started to become difficult.

It was too overwhelming and took too much time to do every single day. There would be days when I forgot to plan the following day, and the whole day would be a mess.

So I decided to switch to weekly planning and it turned out to be easier and more effective. I was able to keep an overview of what was happening during the whole week. A week is just far enough into the future that I can predict, and at the same time, close enough to plan accurately.

Every Sunday, I plan out the next week. I don't need to worry about what I’m doing every day for the whole week. Before heading to sleep, I just look at my calendar for tomorrow and I can see what I need to do. It’s like having a personal assistant, for free.

In this email, I’ll show you how you can have your own personal assistant too. When you plan the week, you can rest assured you are exactly where you should be. No more anxiety. No more, I should be doing X instead.

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How I Plan My Week In Under 60 Minutes:

1. Decide a specific time and day

Before starting, decide when you want to dedicate 60 minutes to plan your week. Make a rule with yourself that you dedicate this hour to planning, no matter what.

I choose 9am on Sunday. No matter what happens, I make sure I sit down to plan my week. It’s a rule I made with myself and I hold on to it no matter what.

2. Fixed appointments

First schedule all the fixed appointments you have in the week. It is obviously different for every person. So decide for yourself which appointments are fixed and can’t be moved. They go in first since they can’t be moved around.

For example, it would be:

• Work (if you have a job)

• University lectures (if you’re a student)

• Sleeping and waking up

• Any other appointments or meetings that are fixed in time

The priorities I personally schedule first every week are my hospital placements, daily prayers, what time I go to sleep and wake up, and 1 hour every day for “me time”.

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3. Flexible priorities

Once the fixed appointments are scheduled, fill in the gaps with your flexible priorities. Add these according to how important they are to you and when you think is best to do those tasks.

For example:

• Exercising

• Cleaning/tidying up

• Studying

• Mini-tasks

• Eating/Cooking

I'm personally flexible with when I can exercise and when I can study. I keep my Sundays for cleaning my place and finishing the tasks I didn’t manage to do throughout the week.

I add in time for cooking and eating too. I specifically look for days when I'm going to have lots of free time, and that's when I cook. On days I don't have much free time, I make dinner the day before, eat leftovers or order food in emergencies. I very rarely eat out.

3. Add fun

After completing what is above, you should be left with some empty gaps in your schedule. The remaining time should be filled with things you like to do in your free time.

For example:

• Going outside for a walk

• Watching movies

• Family time (In person or on the phone)

• Socialising

• Hobbies/Interests/Reading/Instrument/Painting etc

Before you completely fill in your schedule, make sure to add buffer time. I like to leave at least 1 hour empty every day just in case things take longer than they should. I also ALWAYS overestimate how long something will take, just in case.

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Follow this routine every Sunday and live by the schedule throughout the week. It’s important to stay flexible because we can have days where we don't wake up on time or something unexpected happens. That can affect the whole schedule. So in case it happens, you must be able to reorganise your day.

If I wake up later than expected, I suck it up and sacrifice the less important parts of the day for more important things and pick up as normal tomorrow.

I hope this email was useful for you.

Make sure you start planning your week so you live a balanced student life.

P.S.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of study content you have?

In next Sunday’s newsletter, I’ll take you with me on how I maintained my studies over the past year and never failed an exam. So you never fall behind on university.

Stay tuned for that.