Summary:

My weekly planning is very simple. 

My todo lists are all in a master_todo_list 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 instead, but that app is not quite there, yet.  So all my tasks to-do are on a spreadsheet.

I never want to spend more than an hour planning my week.  So I follow a checklist, of sorts, when I plan.  The planning checklist goes:

1. CLEAN UP __
2. TODO LIST __
3. CALENDAR __

I limit each task on the checklist to 15 min - that means that don't DO my todo items when I'm planning.  I star emails that I need to respond to rather than respond to them - and I can only identify physical mail as important or unimportant - I can't work on it.  

To accommodate the short planning time, I make *heavy* use of gmail and google calendar - notifications and meta-data on those are something I *rely* on.  I use stars in google mail or forward email messages to a system that can track them.  My calendar has notifications turned on, and I want copious notification well ahead of each appointment.  I also incorporate commute and setup time into each appointment.  If I didn't know how to use gmail, google calendar, and google spreadsheets like a ninja, weekly planning would be much more time consuming.

To accommodate the whole weekly planning thing, I generally require a strong cup of coffee.

Anyway, 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 

This might include my desk, backpack, laptop, physical mail and gmail inbox.  - (limit 15 min)

2) Visit your master todo list.

Open the spreadsheet and do a brain dump of any new stuff you have, removing any old stuff that is no longer relevant.  Each tab is a logical grouping of tasks - a sublist.

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.

NOTE1: 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.)  

NOTE2: I mark as little as possible with a Due date - I don't want to force myself into a corner with a whole bunch of synchronous work.  Due Dates reduce flexibility.  If you think about it, most due dates are appointments to meet people for some reason  - either it's a progress-report-type-thing or it's a doctors-appt-type-thing.  Either way, you probably don't need to schedule the prep-work for that.  I trust that I am scheduling the most important stuff as far ahead of time as possible.

3) Calendar for the week.  

This is my approximate method of calendaring.  Some appointments will invariably already be on the calendar - that's fine.  

First, if applicable, I add the stuff that makes my life long and useful - lets call that the HEALTH category: exercise, training, reading, meditation, etc.  I know I'll do some of this in my free time, but I like to put some HEALTH time on my calendar - sometimes it works.

Second, I add Appointments to my calendar - these are tasks that are to be done with someone else involved, and are therefore marked "Due" on my spreadsheet.  

Third, I try to eliminate time-bound-non-appointments (these have a Due date but are not an appointment with someone).  I try blocking out a specific time to work on a specific task during the week.  That's an appointment with myself to do work ahead of a deadline.  These are not good.  I have to take those appointments-with-self very seriously, and make sure the work gets done is during a time when I can isolate myself somewhere and not be interrupted.  I add commute-time to and from those appointments, and setup time.  I sometimes turn off my cell phone and email/chat during those.   Avoid these - they are risky.

Fourth, I block time to do work (RFW - reserved for work).  Big-ass blocks of time marked "RFW at location" now show on my calendar.  

Fifth, I consider every time frame not marked (scheduled) on the calendar - every white space - to be time for me and my family and friends.  I try to keep as much of it open as possible.  If my calendar doesn't look open enough, then I messed up, and I need to change my week, or maybe even change my life.

My RFW pomodoro time is when pretty much all my work will be done.  I prefer to do that in the largest blocks I can get (2-8 hours is nice).  The breaks are built-in.  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.