The Weekly Planning Session
Do you ever feel like the week gets away from you? Maybe you feel blindsided by things that you should’ve seen coming?
What if you had a better handle on your day or week?
What if you established some common-ground with the family and communicated your priorities before you even wake up on Monday?
I’m a big advocate of the Weekly Planning Session. Since I started working from home and having a much less “set” schedule, plus my husband who also has a varying work schedule, plus parenting and all that jazz… we realized that we can structure ourselves for success on Sundays by busting out the calendars and going over our week. We may also use this time to meal-plan and put in an online grocery order. Taking this time on Sunday cuts down on time, stress and energy during the week and helps us feel more prepared, aligned, and ready to handle the inevitable curveballs.
The Weekly Planning Session
It’s not an exact science, but we have a shared paper calendar in the kitchen that we can both add events and reminders to, and we both agree to input important events there so we can both see them.
We will take ten minutes on Sunday to sit down and talk through the week…
work schedules in addition to evening meetings or calls
dinners out with friends
kids’ birthday parties or family gatherings
appointments, repairs
pick-up and drop-off for the kids and any significant schedule changes
This is my chance to make sure my family is up to speed on any events or special things I have going on… and which helps me and helps them!
It makes the week run much more smoothly.
This could easily be done on a digital calendar too… but the distraction of the phone can get me off-task easily, so I like working with the paper calendar and having the visual throughout the week.
Shared Lists
The other thing we use to help us stay organized are shared lists. We used to have a specific note-sharing app but we’ve simplified just to the Shared notes on our iPhones. I love that they sync to my laptop if needed and we manage things like
packing lists for trips
gift lists for the holidays or birthdays
grocery lists
We have a list for the weekly shop/grocery list... plus a separate one for Costco. That way, just in case one of us ends up there, we have a current list of what we need and whenever we think of it, we can add things to the grocery lists from anywhere.
To Recap
The benefits of the planning session are: feeling more organized, orienting yourself to the family schedule, setting a “plan” for the week, having the opportunity to talk through anything you need help with, minimizing unpleasant surprises or missing appointments, finding ways to be more efficient with your work time and enjoy your family time. If that is worth a few minutes of your week, try it out!
A few final tips…
If your family isn’t buying into it, just start for yourself. If it makes YOU feel better for the week, do it! It might just catch on. As with anything, changes take time.
Change up the timing or methods that you’re using if they aren’t working. Schedule this time into your week if needed.
Even a conversation helps! If you don’t go the full formal calendar route, just open up a convo with your family (or yourself) about your week can help you feel more prepared.