What do you want to accomplish this week? What would you like to have completed by the end of this week?

Most people have no idea because they began the week with no idea. Monday was just the start of another average week with periods of stress followed by exhaustion and overwhelming crises. Getting to the end of the week without any significant issues would be a miracle.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. If you were to begin the week with a basic plan — a set of objectives with a clear idea of how you will meet those objectives — you would find yourself focused and energised, and issues and crises that consumed you before would wash off you like water off a duck’s back.

If you want to achieve results week after week, you need to know what results you want before the week starts. For example, if you are in sales and your target is $50,000 each week, what can you do each day this week to increase your chances of achieving those numbers? How many prospects do you need to talk to each day? How many appointments do you have to set up each day?

Planning the week is not an exhaustive process. You already know what you would like to accomplish. The challenge we face is if we externalise what we want or must accomplish, unexpected events will take over the week. Instead of making progress, we end up firefighting and discover we’ve not moved anything further forward.

All you need to do to plan the week is to allow yourself twenty minutes or so at the end of the week to look at what you have on your plate and what active projects you have and decide where you will apply your focus next week.

When you have a plan for the week written down somewhere, you can review it daily; you will become like a heat-seeking missile. You lock onto your target, and regardless of what happens, you stay focused on hitting your target.

Most people shy away from planning the week because they don’t want to think about work at the weekend, or they feel all plans are destroyed the moment the week starts. Yet, if you don’t know what needs your attention the following week, random thoughts about everything you should have done will crop up all weekend. It’s like you have these small panic attacks periodically through the weekend, and rather than being able to relax, there is this nagging worry at the back of your mind that you may have missed something important.

Planning for the following week gives you time to stop, look at what requires doing and create a plan to get it done. That act alone will calm your worried brain and let you enjoy the weekend, knowing you have everything covered.

If you want a focused, productive week, try this little experiment this weekend. Set aside thirty minutes first thing Saturday morning to review the upcoming week. Review your appointments for the week, and look at your task list. What are the most critical things you need to focus on next week?

Once you have done that, write those things down on paper, in a notes app or a task manager. You could also put these tasks as all-day tasks on your calendar, so they are at the top of the calendar where you can see them.

Don’t go beyond three to five things that must be done next week. What we are looking for are the big things. For example, you may have an important presentation on Friday, so your focus at the beginning of the week is to complete your presentation and have everything ready for Friday. It could be a project that has stalled and needs some action to get in moving again. Or there is an issue with one of your customers that you can resolve with a little effort. Commit to doing one thing that will get the task done.

The biggest problem you face today is you believe everything is essential. The trouble with that approach is if everything is important, then nothing’s important. You’ve got to focus on the big things and let the little things sort themselves out. However, if you have yet to identify what is important, you will be pulled towards the easy, low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move anything forward.

Digital task managers have encouraged us to throw everything into them, and now all the important things are drowned in an ocean of little unimportant things such as taking the rubbish out, feeding the dog (don’t worry, your dog will tell you when they need their dinner — mine does) or washing your car. Most of these little tasks have their triggers anyway. I know when the rubbish needs to go out because the rubbish bin is full. I know when the car requires washing because I can see it’s dirty, and I know I need to respond to an email because it’s in my email’s Action This Day folder. I don’t need a task in my task manager telling me to do something I already know I need to do.

There will inevitably be plenty of other tasks that will come up through the week, but at the time you sit down to do your planning, you won’t know what those are. The plan’s purpose is to ensure you have a set of objectives to accomplish by the end of the week. A plan that will keep you focused on the critical things so the unimportant urgencies of other people do not waylay you.

Try it this week and see how you go. You might surprise yourself.

If you would like to learn more about planning the week and day, I have a new mini-course that will take you through the planning process step by step, so you can finally get on top of your important work without worrying about the things you have no control over.

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