Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I structure my days and plan out my work for the week. I’ve found that having a solid plan is the key to success, and helps me stay focused. This is especially true for those of us running multiple projects, keeping priorities across them can be tough if you’re not planning correctly.
In this article, I wanted to briefly go over the process I use for planning out my weeks and daily work. This might not work for you, but hopefully getting some insight into how I do can help you.
Tools I Use
This is a highly personal choice, but I’ll run through the tools I use real quick here for transparency. I want to encourage you to use what works for you, don’t let shiny new tools distract you if you’re making progress.
Google Docs: I keep various docs that list out my long term and short term goals. I keep these nicely organized, and use this to see my progress.
Jira: This is my main development backlog and task list. All work related to development goes here under the associated project.
Airtable: This is my primary location for content, SEO, and other marketing related tasks. I really like the ability to create multiple customized calendar views while still keeping everything in a project together.
Trello: I use this as my day to day work board. As I plan my day I create cards here for each task. This helps me organize my day and get a whole view of my work that is spread across a couple of tools. It also helps me capture one off tasks that might not fit anywhere else but still need to be done.
Toggl: I use this to track my time across various projects. This helps me see where I’m spending my time, and helps keep me from getting distracted. If I know I have a timer running I’m much less likely to waste time elsewhere.
As I noted above, these are just my personal tools. I know, for example, a lot of people like to write with pen and paper when planning and that’s perfectly fine. Do what works for you, and ignore the rest.
When I Plan
I generally work in a very standard software engineering flow of 2 week sprints. So, when I’m planning out my week I’m typically doing so for the next two weeks. I feel this is a nice compromise between too short and too long.
If I plan every week I tend to think that’s too much time away from working. On the other hand, if I plan for more at once then there’s a good chance priorities will change and I’ll need to scrap that work.
Two weeks to me is a nice middle ground between these two extremes. That said, I still do a quick evaluation at the one week halfway point just to make sure everything is going to plan. If I reference a week in this article, know that’s what I mean, but substitute for whatever time frame makes sense for you.
I generally do most of this work on Sunday evening. This lets me hit the ground running on Monday. I’m not wasting time in the morning figuring out what to do, I already have it on my list.
Start With Your Short Term Goals
The biggest thing that drives my weekly work is my short term goals. Each two week sprint cycle I pick a handful of high impact goals I’m looking to achieve. These line up with my long term goals, but give me something to focus on in the short term. Note, if you don’t have long term goals I highly suggest you put some down and create key milestones for achieving them. It helps so much in prioritizing work if you have a clear view of where you’re trying to get to.
This also makes it easy to pick out my tasks for the week. I have my goals for the week, so every task should move me closer to hitting that goal. If a task is unrelated to a goal then that’s a good sign to take a pause and consider if that’s really needed this week. I’ll often take on unrelated work, but usually lump those into a sort of “bonus” category which I get to if I have more time.
Setup The Tasks Needed To Hit Those Goals
Once I know the goals I’m looking to hit in the coming week’s work I can set up the individual tasks needed to achieve that. I keep a backlog of tasks that’s usually pretty good, but a few minutes of planning now can save headaches later.
My goal here is to capture all of the work needed to achieve each individual goal, and then evaluate the time commitment. It’s often the case that once I specify all my tasks I’m not sure if that’s doable in a week or two of work. That’s perfectly okay, and forces you to prioritize.
If I find this situation, I’ll take a look at the priorities of my goals and figure out which work needs to move. If there’s time I’ll come back and pick up the extra work, but I understand it might not happen.
At this point I have all the work I need to hit the ground running. One last note is that I always leave a little wiggle room for unexpected work or underestimate tasks. This way I have some breathing room if things come up or take longer than expected. If nothing does, I’ll start to pull in those “bonus” tasks as needed.
Planning My Days
Once I have my list of tasks for a sprint I take some time to roughly prioritize them and think a bit about how they will fit in each day. I’m not a “down to the minute planner”, so I don’t sit down and plan out each and every day at this point. I’m simply trying to make sure that this is a reasonable amount of work for the given timeframe.
I do however, plan out the next day of work during my week. Each night, before I shut down for the night I take a look at what I got done that day and what’s up next on my priorities list.
Then, I set up my work for the next day. I generally try to only pull in my must do tickets, and keep a separate place for extra work if I complete that early. This helps me focus on the important tasks, and not get bogged down in extras. It’s also really encouraging to see all of your high priority tasks done for the day and your todo list momentarily clean.
Evaluate
A big part of the whole process is getting a clear view of my work so I can evaluate as the week goes on. That way, I’m able to determine whether I’m on track or not to hit the goals I set for myself.
I think this is important, especially when you’re working for yourself. In a large company, you typically have some sort of accountability to your boss or manager. But, when you’re working on your own projects that accountability is often absent, and the repercussions for slacking off are usually minimal.
By having my work in front of me I’m able to keep myself accountable and see when work starts slacking. This helps me evaluate my own progress, and make decisions on what is causing my work to not match my goals.
Bullet List Of Steps
For those looking for TLDR version, here you go:
- Start with long term goals and milestones.
- Each week (or whatever time frame you pick) choose a handful of goals that get you closer to your longer term goals or milestones.
- Setup a list of need to do tasks in order to accomplish these shorter term goals.
- Evaluate the amount of work and determine if it’s doable. If not, it’s time to prioritize.
- Each night, plan out the following days and do tasks so you can get started right away.
- Evaluate each day to make sure you’re on track. If not, determine why and look to fix that next week.
It’s a pretty simple process, but it works for me. I encourage you to try it out, and see which parts of it work for you. You might be surprised just how much more productive you can be with a formal process, I know I was!