From the very beginning of my career I tried to become as much organized as possible. And that’s why I have read a lots of books, articles and blogs related to personal productivity and efficiency. Based on all the learning I got from these books, articles and blogs, I have developed my own recipe to be more productive in the work. Yes, I also maintain a daily To-Do list and reflect in the end of the day and again focus on the preparing the To-Do list for next day but the most of my plan is depended on the plan I developed on Saturday night (Yes, in Bangladesh Saturday is the Sunday!).
The following steps I follow to make the Saturday Night, most productive night of the week –
- Usually around 9 or 9:30pm of Saturday night, I grab a cup of coffee and sit in my desk. Before that I make sure my desk is clean and tell my family members not to disturb me for next 30-40 minutes.
- Gather my notebook and open my calendar and Evernote. I am big fan of physical notebook but I also use Evernote for quick thoughts and notes.
- I write down the overall goal of the week. Make sure you also put not only your professional goals, but also your personal goals. If you done have any goals, no problem. You can focus on the projects you are planning to do in coming week.
- Fill in the specific tasks under each of the projects. Please note that there might be some projects which were carried forward from last week. Please also considered those projects and the unfinished tasks.
- After listing down all the tasks, decide which tasks need to be done on Monday, Tuesday etc. If possible, highlight the each day with different color highlighters.
- Then open my calendar and Microsoft To-Do app to list down all the tasks and reminders. I also send meeting requests which I need to do in the coming week.
- Then review the tasks and the goals and make sure those are aligned.
I hope my way of planning the week will help you all. Don’t forget to account your personal projects / tasks in this plan, else your overall plan might get hampered.
Please feel free to share your planning process too so that I can learn from you too.