In my last post, I gave you a glimpse into how I plan my month. This week, I’m breaking it down further to show you how I turn my monthly plan into a weekly plan.
Why this planning system works
Before I get into the details about my weekly plans, I want to go a little deeper into my planning system as a whole.
As you may have noticed, my planning process has multiple stages. I start with a big-picture monthly plan, followed by a more specific weekly plan, and finally a granular daily plan. Why so many stages? It’s the most effective system to take me from dreaming big to concrete daily plans.
Using all three planning pages (monthly, weekly, daily) in combination gets my brain in the right mindset for planning at each different stage. Planning big goals for the month feels much different from planning granular daily tasks.
All three pages are important in making up an effective system. Using the monthly page on its own isn’t going to create the best results. It might seem obvious, but you can’t just write down your goals—you need to actually schedule them to ensure they get done. Likewise, only using the daily or weekly spreads isn’t as effective as the full system. You’ll be left only planning at the small scale and not dreaming up big, long-term goals.
The weekly page is an important transition between the monthly and daily pages. Going straight from the monthly page to the daily pages can make it hard to see how your full week is coming together. Instead, having your weekly schedule displayed at a glance makes it easier to plug in all your plans in a balanced, effective way. When you’re done, you’ll have a complete template for how your week looks. Plus, moving everything into your daily pages will be a breeze.
The weekly plan
To create my weekly plan, I start with the weekly breakdown on my monthly page. That shows me all the goals I’ve planned to tackle that week. I take each task I’ve designated for that week and distribute them across the weekly spread.
As I’m distributing the tasks, the weekly spread makes it easy to see if one day is looking over- or under-scheduled. I also use the color-coding system described in my last post to make sure I’ve got a decent balance of different types of activities each day.
The last step is making sure to add in any regular weekly habits that I’ve listed on my monthly page. Once that’s done, I have a complete plan for my week, all on one simple page.
Up next, I’ll show you how I turn this weekly plan into my daily plans.
Want the printables I mentioned in this post? You can shop them in my Etsy store!