For years, I believed the best way to prepare for tomorrow was by planning it either the night before or first thing in the morning. I soon realized there were several reasons why I needed a more expansive approach to planning my days effectively. Eventually, I decided to switch to weekly planning, and I haven’t looked back since.
1Gives Me a Clear Overview of the Week
Weekly planning gives me a clear overview of my tasks and deadlines, helping me prioritize effectively and make the most of my time. Daily planning worked fine when I had only one aspect of my life to manage—high school.
Back then, my tasks were simple and limited in number: attend classes, do assignments, study for exams, and repeat. With just high school to focus on, I could schedule tasks whenever I wanted. However, once I added work on top of my studies, the amount of time I had available, compared to the number of tasks I needed to complete before deadlines, multiplied.
Typically, by Sunday, I know the deadlines I’ll be facing in the coming week. When I planned daily, I often ended up doing whatever felt right on days when there wasn’t an immediate deadline, even if it wasn’t the most urgent task. This happened because I wouldn’t be looking at the bigger picture. With weekly planning, I have all five days laid out in front of me, and a list of all the tasks I need to complete by the end of the week.
Since I know when tasks are due and when I have free time, I can schedule the important tasks first, and then fit in others around them. This gives me a clear overview of the week and lets me plan each day accordingly, while daily planning only shows one size of the puzzle.
2Reduces Decision Fatigue
As I mentioned above, when you plan daily, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. You end up choosing tasks based on what feels right at the moment, often taking the path of least resistance and focusing on tasks that seem easier rather than the ones that matter most. This typically happens when you’re making constant, day-by-day choices about what to work on.
By mapping out my entire week in advance, I can allocate time to tasks based on their priority, eliminating the need to make those decisions repeatedly throughout the week. This way, instead of constantly wondering what task to tackle next, I just follow the plan I set at the start of the week.
3Allows me to Take on New Tasks Based on My Availability
As someone who’s always struggled to say no when asked to do something, I’ve developed a bad habit of taking on more than I can handle. Combined with my desire to complete every task perfectly, I’m usually left with no option but to resort to all-nighters and chug unhealthy amounts of coffee.
With weekly planning, I essentiallytime block every hour of each day—down to when I’ll wake up, commute to and from college, attend classes, work, spend time with my family, study, etc. So now, when I’m asked to take on a task, all I need to do is glance at my calendar, and see if I have any free slots available. I’ve been using Reclaim, anAI-assisted scheduling toolthat automatically schedules tasks based on my availability.
On the other hand, daily planning never gave me this level of clarity. Without a clear overview of my week, I’d often underestimate the amount of tasks I needed to do, and would agree to things without realizing how packed my schedule already was.
4Gives Me the Flexibility to Adapt
Like I’ve mentioned above, my approach to weekly planning includes outlining what I’ll be doing every hour of the day. While I schedule fixed repetitive tasks at their designated time, I also leave certain slots in the day, what I call buffer time, empty for breaks or unexpected tasks that may come up as the week passes.
With weekly planning, I have the flexibility to allocate time to tasks in a more realistic manner, and adjust the time as needed. If a last-minute task comes up, and I have a free slot available, I have the flexibility to schedule the last-minute task into the free slot. In cases where I don’t have a free slot, I often glance at the urgency of my current tasks and if there’s space to move any of them around. If so, I have the flexibility to adjust tasks based on urgency.
For instance, if I have a sudden quiz scheduled, and I need to allocate more time to studying than I had anticipated at the start of the week, I can shuffle tasks within the week, without the stress of squeezing everything into a single day and missing all my upcoming deadlines due to one unanticipated task. Like I mentioned above, Reclaim handles this for me most of the time, and schedules the most urgent tasks first, and then schedules lower-priority ones.
5Prevents Over-Scheduling
This closely ties to both the points above. While I’ve developed a bad habit of overworking myself over the past few years, time has shown me that it only leads to burnout. So, I’ve been actively working towards finding a balance that allows me to be productive without sacrificing my physical and mental well-being.
When I’m planning for the entire week, I get the perfect opportunity to determine how much I can realistically take on. With each day planned out, I can immediately see if I’m stacking too many tasks on a particular day. If that is the case, I can easily spot gaps in my schedule, spread out my tasks accordingly and ensure no day gets too packed.
6Helps Me Stay Consistent
One of the biggest advantages of weekly planning is that it helps me break down tasks into smaller, manageable parts and spread them out over multiple days. This makes it much easier to stay consistent.
Let’s say I have an assignment that’ll take me about 8 hours to complete, due at the end of the week. One option is to procrastinate most of the week and then start it on the due date, giving it my full, undivided attention for the 8 hours I estimated. While I might get it done, there’s a high chance it’ll take longer than I planned. In that case, I’d have no choice but to submit an incomplete assignment or request an extension.
Using the same example, with weekly planning, I’d divide the 8 hours into 2-hour blocks over 4 days instead.
This way, I’d not only give the assignment the full 8 hours I planned without cramming, but I’d also have the flexibility of a couple of extra days, depending on its deadline, if I needed more time to wrap it up.
While the choice between daily and weekly planning ultimately comes down to personal preference, I’d recommend experimenting with both to see which one works best for you. If you’re not sure how to get started with weekly planning, you can evenuse ChatGPT to help map out your week!
