Getting Strategic with Weekly Planning
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Planning your week strategically is key to moving forward in your goals. In this post, I’m sharing my favorite ways to get organized and strategic with weekly planning.
Weekly workload planning if done in an organized manner is essential to moving closer to your business goals.
Create a weekly planning time
Each week during my CEO date time, I plan out my weekly goals and priorities. And then, I get majorly strategic with my weekly planning.
Getting strategic with planning is essential to running your entire work week smoothly. This will help us to be more productive and proactive instead of reacting to non essential tasks each day.
Having a good structure in how you operate the day to day, weekly, and monthly tasks is important to achieving growth in your creative or blogging business.
I like to spend about an hour or so in planning mode as part of my weekly CEO date. This can be done at the end of the week as you plan out your next week before you close down for the weekend. Or at the beginning of the work week.
Sometimes I like to head to a coffee shop on a weekend for my CEO date. and this is where I like to get massively strategic with my weekly planning.
How I like to plan each week
The very first step when planning out my next week goals and schedule, is to begin with a brain dump. And just like it sounds, I get it all out of my brain. This includes both personal and business tasks that I want to accomplish.
I use an ordinary notebook like this and my favorite pen and just start writing it all on paper. This is effective because once you get these to-do’s out of your head, your brain feels more relaxed.
There’s actually scientific studies done on the effects of the brain when writing on paper vs using electronics.
After I’ve spent some time writing all of these ideas out, I begin selecting the top priorities for the week. I choose 3-5 top tasks / important things that must happen this week.
These goals are non-negotiable. They absolutely need to get done this week and are aids towards moving you closer to your main monthly and quarterly goals.
From here, I make sure that I schedule in self care. For me, if I don’t actually schedule this in first before the other tasks, it will get pushed back. And often it’ll get neglected.
So, I’ve learned to add this in first.
If we don’t take the necessary care for our health and well-being, we will get burned out.
As I begin my weekly planning, I add in projects and tasks inside of my bullet journal planner. Use your favorite planning system – here are a few favorite planners for bloggers that I’ve used in the past.
Delegating tasks
From your brain dump list, you can also make note of tasks that can be delegated or pushed back to a future date.
If you’re still running your business solo and don’t yet have a team or VA to delegate to, think of ways you can outsource non business related tasks.
For example, do you have a spouse or children that can help with housework or running errands?
Also, it is important to not over schedule your tasks. Allowing for buffer or margin time at the end of each day / at the end of the week is helpful for any unplanned/unexpected things that pop up. Because life happens, and they definitely will.
Batch work & time blocking
When scheduling out the tasks for the each day, I like to work in time blocks. I also really like to batch specific tasks together inside of these time blocks.
So for example, for me I have pretty unconventional work hours. I’ve been a work at home mom for many years. But I also homeschool my children.
I know many people were thrust into this situation during the 2020 year. But, I’ve been doing it intentionally. So, my time blocks are with these priorities scheduled first.
For my work hours, I have a couple of big blocks of work time in the early morning and evening hours. This works for me and my family dynamic. You’ll have to decide what the best way to plan your work hours and then you can plan out your time blocks.
From here, work on like items together. So, for example, for my food blog, I will batch work on recipe development in one block of time. Then in another, I will batch work photo editing. And in another, I will batch work drafting and editing posts and so on.
Other examples of tasks to batch:
- drafting email newsletters for the week or month
- scheduling social media posts
- shooting and editing photos / videos
- replying to emails and comments
- admin work
- pitching brands
- product creation
- work on blog content strategy
- managing financials
- checking metrics
And so on.
🖤 Favorite Products
Favorite products as mentioned in this post:
With these strategies in place, you’ll find the weekly workflow so much smoother.
There will be less stress and you’ll be able to focus on the things that truly matter. Like providing value for your target audience or potential customers.
You’ll also find that you’ll reach your goals quicker because you are making time for priorities that lead you towards reaching your big goals.
And you’ll feel super productive rather than scattered and unfocused. As the CEO of your business, it is essential that you’re making the time for strategic weekly planning.
