| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

weekly plans

This version was saved 8 years, 8 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by rsb
on July 23, 2015 at 11:28:40 pm
 


Summary:

 

My weekly planning is very simple.  I follow a checklist that draws from a lot of other planning techniques.  I dump my lists into a spreadsheet with about 12 tabs on it.  The tabs are all categories of stuff I do, plus one summary tab.  I'm considering using trello, but that app is not quite there, yet.  

 

I limit each task on the checklist to 15 min (absolute max) - that means that I can't give more than a one-sentence answer to emails - if that - and I can only identify physical mail as important or unimportant - I can't work on it.  To accommodate this, I use stars in google mail or forward email messages to a system that can track them.  To accomodate the whole thing, I require a strong cup of coffee.

 

The whole thing takes less than one hour per week on Sunday.  Even if I skip it for a few days, I stop what I'm doing as soon as I realize how dumb that is, and do it, even if it's the middle of the week.

 

After I do my weekly planning, I only have to do a tiny bit of daily planning to grab items off my master task list.  It's all pomodoro technique from there on out.

 

Weekly Planning Checklist:

 

1) Clean up physical space - desk, backpack, laptop, physical mail - (limit 15 min)

 

2) Clean up digital space - desktop, inbox(es) - (limit 15 min)

 

3) Visit each tab (sub-list) on my master todo list, and brain dump any new stuff I have, removing any old stuff that is no longer relevant.  I can add or rename tabs, but realistically it stays at about 12.

 

Note: In case it wasn't clear, sub-lists are tabs labeled by category (home_repair, consulting_for_x, writing, family, budget_paperwork, buy, sell, business_x, infrastructure, retraining, etc.)  

 

As I visit each sublist, I mark three tasks on each list as special tasks: Most Important, Most Want To Do, and Most Resistant.  I also mark any task that is due by a certain date (doesn't matter what the date is) as Due.  

 

All the tasks I mark show up automatically on a tab called Summary_Tasks. (limit 15 min)

 

4) Calendar for the week.  Some appointments will invariably already be on the calendar.  I add personal stuff first (exercise, training, reading, meditation, etc.), followed by selected tasks that are marked Due, because they have to be done by a certain time.  I don't calendar any other specific tasks, but I block time to do work.  Big-ass blocks of time marked "pomodoro at location" will be on my calendar.  I consider everything not marked to be reserved for relaxation, time with family, etc. and I try to keep as much of it open as possible.

 

My pomodoro time is when pretty much all my work will be done.  I prefer to do that in the largest blocks I can get (4-8 hours is nice).  If I can get 40 hours of that in per week, after commute time, that's ideal (and a little miraculous).

 

Hints and Recommendations:

 

Dealing with cruft:

 

Your master task list can get crufty, full of old tasks that are not wholly relevant and suck your time each week looking at them.  That's not good.  You need to do something about it.

 

For me, I start anew once in a while.  I make a copy of the master task list (it's a google spreadsheet called Master_Task_List), and rename the old task list ARCHIVE_Weekly_Master_Date, where Date is the date it was archived.  Then I ruthlessly cut tasks and projects out, blowing away at least half of the stuff on there - only focusing on the stuff that needs to be accomplished in the next 30 days.

 

It's not perfect, but it works.  It IS possible to go back into the archives and look for stuff.

 

Links:

 

Brett McKay from the art of manliness on weekly planning. - Great summary of his method, obviously drawing on a lot of other peoples writing and his own experience.

 

Matt Vance's wiki has a summary of David Allens Getting Things Done  - The key components of weekly planning are all there.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.