Sunday Checklist: How to Start Your Week Set Up For Success
Scene: Avni is on the living room couch watching tv
She’s enjoying the entertaining show with a glass of wine, feeling so relaxed and at ease. She glances at the clock and notices it’s almost 6:00pm. All of a sudden her heart sinks as she fully embraces the weight of the realization. It’s SUNDAY. The week begins tomorrow. The time for rest has ended. The to do list of things she needs to complete starts forming in her mind.
The Sunday Scaries.
Every week I was behind, constantly trying to catch up. Whether it was items on my to do list or making progress in my goals. I felt like I was in a stalemate of my own life.
Taking a few hours to “Sunday” allowed me to start the week off prepared, organized, and even excited. Mondays turned into one of my favorite days of the week and all it took was preparing. I understand how difficult in can be to carve out time when schedules and plans change constantly but I try to make it a point to spend a few hours planning my week ahead. If I have weekend plans, then it can be done Friday night.
1. Work Week
The schedule of a work calendar makes this task the easiest. I copy down major deadlines, important reminders, and meetings from my Outlook. Since there usually isn’t much thinking or planning required for this part, the writing down into my planner allows me to get in the “planning” mode.
What I Use: Erin Condren LifePlanner (ECLP). My #1 possession. I’ve used this planner for the past 6 years and have no intention of stopping. I’ll save my Planner Organization system for another post but this is a must. And yes, I understand that technology may save time but I truly believe the therapeutic feeling of writing/crossing off items isn’t comparable to the time saved by digital planners.
2. Meal Plan
December 2019, I purchased the Run Fast Eat Slow Meal Planner which revolutionized my cooking, meal planning, and healthy eating. I live by this cookbook series for it’s delicious meals and strong support towards not following diets or restricting oneself. The meal planner allowed me to not only plan out meals for the week and create a cooking game plan for Sundays when I used to go into the office but now I use it to plan out my workout schedules and journal my fitness progress.
What I Use: Run Fast. Eat Slow. Meal Planner
3. Schedule Workouts
Once the workouts are planned out for the week, I go into my ECLP and schedule them into my days. Then I add them to my work calendar. I treat workouts like meetings, blocking off time and avoiding skipping at all costs. Usually most people (myself included) struggle with the “starting a workout” and this helps you treat it as a non-negotiable event.
What I Use: Outlook Calendar
(Note the picture is Apple Calendars due to work privacy restrictions)
4. Weekly Goals
I still have some procrastination tendencies in me. It’s something about needing a deadline to produce quality work…but I recognize that this is achievable for some of my goals: training for a marathon, studying for a standardized exam, etc. In order to allocate the appropriate amount of time necessary, I try to break up my monthly goals into smaller achievable weekly action items.
What I Use: ECLP
5. Carry Over Previous Week’s Incomplete Items
I keep a running To Do list of items that tend to not be prioritized in comparison to other things. Some weeks I’m able to stay on top of completing the Misc. items during free time but other weeks there tend to be items that remain which I carry over.
What I Use: self created “list” paper, cut from a Notebook that I attach to my ECLP
6. Plan Out Week
Lastly, I plan out social events, days to work on my weekly goals and rest/disconnect days. Again, this is for the procrastinator in me to not put off things for the weekend or end of the week.
What I Use: ECLP
Save the graphic above to start implementing these practices to plan and start your week set up for success!
