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Step 4 - Plan Your Week In this podcast episode and blog post, I’m so excited to share with you my free weekly planning printables. Head to the homepage and you’ll see that when you sign up for my newsletter, you get a copy of my planning printables, too. The planning printables are something that I created years ago. I’ve realized that, although I’ve moved to a Google Calendar as my planner for the day-to-day, sometimes I just need paper, too! On a Sunday night, when I’m doing my Sunday Basket®, I flesh out a plan for my week ahead (using my planning printables). I love writing my plan out. I find that physically writing something down on a piece of paper creates a different connection within your brain in relation to that task, as opposed to making a digital record. I recognize that planning your week ahead is an extra task on a Sunday for you to complete, but I promise that in doing so, you’ll see that your week flows so much easier and in a far more organized way. You’ll also be able to add new and exciting things into your week that you previously didn’t have time to do before! If you’ve been following along with the previous podcast episodes, then you should currently have an empty Sunday Basket®. Let’s recap! You’ve shredded and recycled paper that you don’t need. You’ve placed your actionable items into three piles – money and mail, computer and calendar, and errands and tasks outside of the house. You worked through the money and mail pile, and the computer and calendar pile, and you took action with every item in there – apart from those that can wait until next week (the focus of my next podcast episode)! This week, I’m looking at the errands and things to do outside of the house pile. You can’t complete these on a Sunday (most likely), but what you can do is plan out your week so that they do get completed. To help you do this, go ahead and download my planning printables. How to use the printables There are two printable PDF documents. The first printable has three columns. Things to do every week – turn phone off and on again, fully charge electronic items, etc. Home to-do list – your to-do list related to your household and family. Work to-do list – work is whatever you spend the majority of your time doing. Work is not necessarily paid; it could be volunteering or home schooling. The second printable is used to plan your week ahead. You add the top 3 things that you are going to complete each day. The top of the planner says ‘Top 3 Work’ and ‘Top 3 Home’ – but to be clear, you don’t set three of each, just three tasks overall. Why set three things to complete every day? I truly believe that setting 3 tasks to complete every day is the key to having a really productive day and week. We all naturally try and do too much. You most likely think "three things, I have twenty things to do every day!" – but that is the problem. We try to do too much and it all becomes disorganized and often overwhelming. The key thing is to batch together your work and the tasks that you need to do. If you batch together work, you save on all of the transition time. For example, one of my three tasks today is recording my podcast episodes. I’m recording 11 podcasts today! I consider this one task because the task is to go to my office and record the podcasts – but in reality, you could call it 11 tasks because it’s 11 podcast episodes. But, it’s so much easier and far more productive for me to set all of my podcasting equipment up today to record a batch of episodes than it is to record all 11 podcast episodes over the course of the next 11 days recording 1 per day. It would take time every day to set everything up, put equipment away, etc. Pick a day for your errands I really recommend selecting a day of the week to complete the majority of your errands. Pick the day of the week that typically goes awry. For me, that’s Tuesday or Wednesday. I LOVE Monday, I get so much done on a Monday. Thursday is an excellent day as well. I get lots of content created on a Thursday. Friday is the day where I finish early as I’m pooped! Tuesday and Wednesday are the days when I meet my team, I do guest interviews on other podcasts, and they are also the days that I tend to schedule doctor’s appointments, school appointments, hair appointments – naturally, they became my errand days. Can you think of a day or days that you tend to do this? If you work full-time, perhaps this is Saturday? Most of us have a day that errands are more easily completed. My action for you is to pick a day that is going to be your errand day. Make a to-do list. Pick your top 3 things to complete for each day. Try to get all of your errands completed on that day. Don’t forget to download my free planning printables to help you. Happy Planning! Get your Complete Sunday Basket with On Demand Workshop here!