How to Intentionally Craft Your Week
Your Guide to Creating a Calm Week
I love planning. It's an obsession, truly. I love waking up on a Monday morning, knowing that 90% of my week is already mapped out. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I can confidently credit a significant 70% of my accomplishments in business and life to my unique strategy of planning and structuring my days. So, here's a glimpse into my planning method:
Why Fridays are the New Mondays
My ritual involves dedicating Friday mornings to craft the blueprint of the upcoming week. Why wait till Monday to start your planning when you can have it all laid out by Friday? Trust me, Mondays are far less daunting when you know what to expect. Another plus side? It means my weekends are genuinely for switching off, away from the onslaught of to-do lists and schedules. I sometimes review it on Sunday, but there's a unique joy in disconnecting entirely during the weekends.
Don't wait for Monday to come to start planning out your week. Have it ready on Friday, or during the weekend. Mondays are so much better when you already know what awaits.
Planning the week in such an intentional way and feeling into where and what I truly want to be doing and where i want to be going makes my weeks feel like a breeze.
Pre-step - Prepare Your Mind.
As we always suggest you can start with a meditation of your choice or a quick breathwork session. It will help rebalance and calm the nervous system, preparing you for deeper work. I like to take our Friday morning Sound Healing classes at Re:Mind right before I plan out my next week.
Journaling: Your First Step to A Calm Week
The initial and crucial step to a well-planned week is none other than journaling. This is the magic trick that allows us to dissect our thoughts, emotions, and experiences. It serves as the springboard for self-discovery and personal growth. Here is our step-by-step weekly journalling process and our favourite prompts that we use when planning out our calm weeks. Feel free to choose the prompts that resonate most with you each week.
Step 1: Deep Dive Brain Dump
Start your journaling session with a brain dump of all the responsibilities and thoughts that are occupying your mind. This initial step helps clear your thoughts and create mental clarity. Set aside 10-30 minutes (adjust the duration based on how cluttered your mind feels and the time available) and allow your thoughts to flow freely as you write down:
What's been on your mind?
What tasks or obligations do you have?
What have you been thinking about a lot?
Feel free to do this step before or after a meditation session.
Step 2: Reflect on the Past Week
Continue your journaling by reflecting on the previous week using more intentional questions. This reflection will provide valuable insights for personal growth.
How did last week go for you?
What were three weekly wins you experienced last week?
What are three things you're grateful for?
In what areas could you have done better (e.g., getting more rest, being more present, maintaining deeper focus)?
Step 3: Discover Where You Are Now
Now, let’s explore your current state and emotions.
What is currently giving you energy?
What do you need more of in your life?
What do you need less of?
Which habits or practices are working well for you?
What are you committed to?
What changes or improvements do you need to make?
Where do you need more consistency?
Where do you feel you need to create the most change?
Step 4: Feel into Next Week
Shift your focus to the upcoming week and set your intentions for it.
How can you treat yourself kindly this week?
What do you need more of in the coming days?
How would you like to feel next Sunday?
Where do you want to direct your time and energy?
How can you set yourself up for success in all areas of your life?
How do you want to feel throughout the week?
What do you need most during this week?
What lessons or experiences from the previous week can you apply to the upcoming one?
What activities can you engage in for self-care throughout the week?
Step 5: Set Your Emotional Goal, Intentions, and Define Your Objectives
Set Your Emotional Goal: how you would like to feel by the end of the week, specifically on Friday?
Set Your Intentions: Write out clear intentions for the week that came up for you during journalling. Ponder your core intentions and hopes for the week. By clearly defining these, you'll craft a blueprint for your week that aligns with your deepest values and desires. What are your overall intentions and hopes for the week?
Define Your Objectives: Articulate your top three objectives for the upcoming week. What are your top three goals or priorities for this week?
After I have a clearer mind following these journalling steps and I feel more connected to myself I will start looking prioritising and scheduling tasks and events.
Have a Weekly Planning Checklist
The magic ingredient for planning your week fast and efficient is having a checklist or default template that you go through every week. This checklist reflects the non-negotiables in your life. Make sure to have your top priorities on top of your checklist and then only add the rest.
My personal tip is to always prioritise your health and self care categories, but you can prioritise what is important for you. And then follow with the rest. You can also create other important for you categories such as admin, cleaning, being creative, focus on nature etc.
Choosing and prioritising the tasks and events:
Energy Management: Choosing Tasks and Activities Based on Your Energy Levels
Mindful energy management is a cornerstone of a calm, balanced week. It’s vital to remember that you can’t schedule hours of intensive work every day without risking burnout. Understanding your energy fluctuations and being realistic about what you can achieve daily is key to creating a sustainable and satisfying weekly plan.
When crafting your schedule, it's an easy and good idea to take note or sort your tasks based on how they affect your energy levels. To help you, categorise tasks as Energy-draining (D), Neutral (N), or Energising (E).
Energy-Draining Tasks (D): These tasks require a significant amount of mental or physical energy. They often involve high-stakes decision-making, creative thinking, or intensive learning. These tasks are best performed during your peak energy times. Examples include brainstorming new ideas, making important decisions, strategic planning, presenting pitches, or engaging in complex problem-solving.
Neutral Tasks (N): Neutral tasks are those that need to be done but don't significantly drain or boost your energy. These tasks usually have clear goals and processes, making them ideal for periods when your energy is steady but not at its peak. Examples of neutral tasks are routine administrative work, answering emails, reviewing material, or processing invoices, however some of these activities you might actually find draining, the key is to listen to how you are feeling.
Energising Tasks (E): These tasks refuel your energy reserves. They may not be directly linked to your productivity, but they are essential for maintaining balance and preventing burnout. Energising tasks often align with your passions or offer a break from work-related stress. They should be scattered throughout your schedule to ensure you're taking care of your well-being. Energising tasks also include physical activities like sports, relaxation practices like meditation, hobbies, and social interactions.
As part of your weekly planning ritual every Friday, consider the following questions:
Is this task energy-draining (D)?
Is it neutral regarding your energy levels (N)?
Is it energising you (E)?
Remember, it's not about cramming as many tasks and events as possible into your schedule—it's about creating a balanced, sustainable rhythm that complements your energy levels.
Impact and Effort
You can also prioritise tasks and events based on their potential impact and the effort required to complete them. It provides a visual means to identify which tasks will give you the best use of your time and energy and what needs to be moved out of your lists and your head.
Below is a combination of the Eisenhower Matrix and the Covey Urgent vs Important Matrix. Tasks that require high energy would typically be in “Focus Work” due to high effort required and impact it creates.
80 - 20 rule
80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle states that 20% of your efforts can lead to 80% of the results. In the context of planning your week, this principle can be a powerful guide to prioritising tasks based on their impact and the effort they require.
The focus work and high energy work should take up no more than 20% of your time and energy.
The aim is to prioritise the high-impact tasks — the ones that require some effort but yield significant results. Then fill in the rest of your time with the easy wins tasks, and follow with filler tasks.
The Calendar: Your Personal Command Center
Calendar is our main productivity and scheduling tool, it is the only way to assess how much time everything actually takes. Endless to-do lists never get done, because there is no way to adequately assess and plan for all of the things we have to do and plan for in our modern lives.
As mentioned earlier start with your health and well-being first, things like workouts get priority before meetings and tasks do. And add it directly to your planner, Google Calendar or any other software that you use.
At Re:Mind also use Sunsama for our daily and weekly planning. You can use our link to get a 1-month free trial: https://try.sunsama.com/remind
What can wait?
The last step of the planning process is always - what can wait, and then it gets bumped to the next week or removed completely. You have to start saying no, as you will see how quickly the entire week fills out.
Unrealistic goals and plans are the downfall of most weekly plans. Setting unrealistic goals and expecting perfect performance with an overflowing schedule will only hinder your balance, killing the main essence of planning.
Leave Room for Unplanned Times / Stay Flexible
I'll confess, as much as I love planning, it can sometimes be a party-pooper for spontaneity. But I've learned to plan for unplanned times. Leaving Sundays plan-free or not over-planning weekend trips has been a game-changer.
Being rigid about your schedule can become counterproductive. Planning stuff is great, because it allows you to avoid the unpleasant uncertainty of not knowing what to do next. But being inflexible about moving today's tasks for tomorrow because something assigned for tomorrow needs to be done today, is just not how you should roll.
Flexibility is the root of our creativity, therefore it can be very good for improving our communication, problem-solving, and innovation skills!
Let us know below what other tools and tricks you found to bring more calm and balance into your life?
For next time:
Build Routines
Morning routine, evening routine, training routine, eating routine… sounds boring? Well, it shouldn't. Our brains love routines, and there's a whole bunch of reasons why they're good for us.
Focus on Achieving Your Daily And Weekly Targets, And Don't Stress About Your Bigger Goals
The best habits are those that you can keep; success is not completing one perfect round but coming back to the practice every week.
If you keep up with these small practices, you will focus less on worrying about your longer-term aspiration (which can trigger "paralysis" when tackling big goals) and more on getting your immediate tasks done. And by doing that, you can trust that your daily and weekly routines will take you to your goals over time.
Don't spend too much time thinking about the process. The fact is, we cannot be creative or productive when we regularly question ourselves and try to define the perfect workflow.
