Create your own ideal week and take back your time so that you can start making progress on your goals and dreams. All in this simple step-by-step guide.
Anyone who’s had a newborn can relate to the blur that comes over any new parent; ‘I don’t know what I’m doing!’, ‘I don’t know what day it is!’ or ‘I don’t remember if I even brushed my teeth this morning!!’. ?
Yes, that’s life with a newborn. But this blur can happen at other times too. When you lose your job. Or when there’s a global pandemic causing the country to be in a complete lockdown. Sometimes, we can wake up and not know whether we’re on Thursday or Saturday. #lifeinlockdown
And this blur has a major negative effect on our productivity. Suddenly progress towards our goals and dreams can begin to slow down or completely halt. And we don’t know what we’re doing from one day to the next.
The truth is, you and I can’t afford to wait for life to go back to normal. Right now, right here, THIS is the new normal. And with that in mind, we need to ensure we’re still getting the most important things done each day and each week. This is why creating a schedule for your ideal week is crucial, especially now.
Setting up a rhythm for your daily life will help you to keep moving forward on your goals and most important tasks. So if your schedule has taken a hit recently, it’s time to review it and create one that works for your life RIGHT NOW.
1. Know where you need to be
The first step in creating your ideal week is knowing where you need to be during the week. Whether that’s somewhere out of your house, in your home office, schooling with the kids. Knowing where you are needed is crucial to begin to formulate a plan of what will happen when.
Make a list of the different roles you have (for work, school or in your home) and where you’ll need to be in each of those roles.
2. Know what you need to be doing in your ideal week
The next step in creating your ideal week is getting a clear picture of the tasks and activities you need to do. Note that this starts with things on a need to basis! Activities that move you closer to your goals and dreams are actions that you need to do. Also, your self-care and rejuvenation is a priority and comes under the need to category.
Conversely, tasks that other people put on your schedule that you don’t want to do, I don’t consider to be a need – no matter how much the other person does!
When it comes to other people’s desires on your time, ask yourself whether it fits in with your values, goals and own desires. For example, does it agree with your core values about yourself or your view of the world? Does it align with your goals or desires? And ask whether you can commit to it without detriment to your other roles and responsibilities.
Once you know the activities you need to do, you can think about what activities you want to do. Define the ‘wants’ however you like. These are essentially the non-essentials. The activities that would make a great addition to your ideal week, but that, if you couldn’t get to them on a given week, you would still have a good week.
3. Know how long your activities will take
When you’ve got your list of activities, next you’ll need to estimate how long these activities take. If this is fairly new to you, I’d recommend that you overestimate the amount of time things take (and especially if you have kids!).
These estimations are just that – pure guesses. Chances are you won’t be spot on with everything and you’ll need to refine your timings as you begin going through the week.
But once you have rough timings for everything, you’ll be in a better position to know how much time you have in the day for everything.
Putting it together
Download my free printable to help you draw up your own ideal week!
You can also put a draft ideal week together in a digital calendar like Google calendar or iCal as you can set up a separate calendar just for your ideal week.
I highly suggest that you schedule some buffer time into your ideal week every day. This is because life happens. Having some buffer space each day to take some of the blow from the unexpected will give you some breathing room to know that when unforeseen things happen, all is not lost.
Here’s a snapshot of one of my ideal weeks. I’ve changed it since, but it’ll give you a good idea of what one could look like:
You can see that I’ve made sure there’s quite a lot of blank space in every day. You’ll be glad of that blank space when you start going through your own ideal week! ?
So, are you ready to start creating an ideal week that works for your life right now? What was your biggest takeaway from this post? Are you currently scheduling time to get your goals and most important work done? Let me know in the comments!
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