How to Make a Plan to Win Your Week

In this post, I discuss three points on how to make a plan that will move you closer to your goals each week.

In my last blog post, I wrote about 5 things you need to plan each week. They’re 5 things that, when you make time for them each week, help you to have a more productive week and become more intentional with your days.

In today’s post, I want to dive a bit deeper into point number two of my previous post. And outline the three things to do when planning your week so you can know that you’re winning and moving towards your goals. And before we get started, I wanted to let you know that our stationery membership, Paper Me Pretty, has the most gorgeous stationery to help you plan your weeks, days AND months! You’ll definitely want to check it out here:

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So with that being said, let’s get started!

How to make a plan to win your week

1. Know your goals

The first thing we need to do is look at our goals. I couldn’t talk about how to make a plan to win your week if you don’t know what a win looks like. When you know what you’re aiming towards, then you’ll know if you’re winning.

So, first things first, know your goals. Have you got goals for this year? This quarter of the year? If so, are they easily accessible? Do they roll off your tongue when someone asks you what your goals are right now?

If there’s any hesitancy in stating your goals, I’d recommend putting them somewhere visual where you will see them every day. This will give you clarity and increase your motivation to take action.

If you don’t have any goals right now, or don’t know what you want to improve, grow or develop in your life, take some time to think about this. This is an important step. We can’t live an intentional or productive life if we don’t know what we want to be intentional about.

If you’d love to be reminded to think about your goals each month, as well as get beautiful stationery that will help you work towards your goals, be sure to join our monthly membership, Paper Me Pretty.

Paper Me Pretty is our monthly membership where members receive gorgeous digital stationery each month that helps them to be more mindful and focus on the things that matter.

2. Identify your big 3 for the week

Once you know you goals, it’s time to focus in. If you’re an ambitious person, you may have several goals on your list. Things you desperately want to accomplish before the year is through. But if you really want to make progress on your goals, you’ll have to decide where to put your focus right now.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may know that I don’t recommend having more than 3 goals to focus on in any one 3-month period. That’s because if you spread yourself too thin, you accomplish very little.

Having one to three goals in a quarter gives you space to go deep and take meaningful action. If you’ve got a really big goal with lots of moving parts, then you probably don’t need any other goals taking away the spotlight on your big goal.

In reality, though, I find that having two or three goals that I’m working on will definitely give me something I can do every single day to make progress. That’s often because one goal might only require me to take action once or twice a week. And if that’s the case, I have several other days in the week where I’m not moving a goal forward.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule. Ask yourself what your goals are likely to require of you on a weekly basis. If you can comfortably have two goals on your ‘front burners’ so to speak, then have two. If one is more than enough in your current season of life, then just work with one.

The main thing is that you have a goal that you can pull tasks from to slot into your week.

And to do that you need to ask yourself this question;

What’s the one thing I can do this week to move me closer to my goal?

Another great version of this question is;

What’s the next action I can take that will get me closer to my goal?

These questions help you to focus down to the small and manageable action steps you can take. They help you move away from the overwhelming big picture so you can see your mountain for what it is, a pile of relatively small stones.

The aim is to choose a small stone you can take action on in the next seven days.

When you’ve got your next action, ask yourself the questions again a couple more times until you can identify the top three actions you need to take to move you closer to your goals.

If you’re anything like me, you may end up with a list of more than three tasks. That’s fine! Just highlight your top 3 tasks. All the others will come in handy later.

3. Schedule your big 3

The final point in how to make a plan for your week is on scheduling. This is where the rubber meets the road and we take our desires and ideas and bring them into reality.

In my previous post on planning, I mentioned adding your goal actions to your week before it’s filled up with other people’s requests on your time. This is because if you don’t prioritise your goals, who will?

Look at your upcoming week and then consider the top 3 goal actions you’ve identified for the week ahead. How long will each task take? And when does it make sense for you to do them in the coming week?

When you’ve decided on the day and time you’ll carve out for each of your three goal actions, make sure you protect that time. Set an alarm in your calendar or ensure you will have some space to take action undistracted.

When your 3 main goal actions for the week are in your calendar, give yourself a high-5! So many people in the world are drifting through life, but not you, my friend. You’re being intentional and setting yourself up to win.

And what’s more, when you complete your big three for the week, you’ll gain so much more confidence in yourself as you’re making your goals a reality! GO YOU!!

Adding other items

When your top 3 goal actions are planned in your upcoming week, you can then put in other tasks, events and responsibilities. In my previous post I discussed what to plan next, but in summary, I recommend adding your other items in this order;

• maintenance (chores and actions you need to do to keep things running)
• connections (make time to connect with people who matter to you)
• rest and rejuvenation
• other people’s requests on your time

I can’t wait for you to have more wins in your week! You’ve totally got this!