Planning your week ahead of time is a little different if you’re an entrepreneur; there are meetings to schedule, calendars to update, and usually a whole lot less time in the week to achieve everything you need to. If you want to step up your weekly planning game, here are some simple tips:

Always write your to-do list the night before

Writing out your plans ahead of time is a great way to trick your brain into achieving more. If you’re planning out your week, a Sunday evening is the perfect time, as it lets you organise everything in a clear, level-headed way. The last thing you want is to be spending your Monday morning organising what’s to come, as by then everyone that you do business with is in full working mode while you’re just trying to catch up at the planning stage. Write daily to-do lists the night before so that you can hit the ground running the next day, and write your weekly plan on a Sunday so you’re ready to jump straight in come Monday morning.

Choose your best tools

Most entrepreneurs will use software, scheduling tools, or a paper organiser of some description to keep track of everything they need to do, and everyone they need to speak to in the week. No doubt by now you’ll have tried many pieces of software and stationery in search of the perfect method, so think about which programs or pages helped you to work most efficiently, and start implementing these straight away. There’s no point in struggling through with tools that you find difficult to use, distracting or counterproductive, so stick to what works best for you.

If you’re a fan of paper planners, check out our free Weekly Scheduler Printable here.

Review your weekly meetings

It’s always a good idea to spend some time double checking the meetings and calls you have scheduled. Have you double booked anything? Are they all realistic? Do you need to reschedule anything to allow for more time? Better to know now than find out last minute, so do a quick review to make sure that all of your meetings are in the weekly plan, and that you can still get enough work done around them.

Stay in touch

If you have others working for you, make sure you send out a quick email at the beginning of the week to let them know what you expect of them in the days ahead. This doesn’t need to be a negative email, just a friendly reminder to let them know what needs to be done and when you need it by. Organising other people in advance will help you to delegate more and keep on top of what needs to be achieved.

Manage your to-do list

You may have a daily to-do list on the go, but you may also benefit from a larger list of weekly to-dos that are arguably the most important things. Spread the crucial tasks out over the course of the week to allow sufficient time for each, and carry over anything that you haven’t done each day to another more appropriate time. You may also want to pick a time in the middle of the week where you review what is still important on the list. Often things can become irrelevant over time, but stay on your to-do list taunting you when they really needn’t be there anymore.

Remind yourself of the big goal

It can be easy to look at a large list of small tasks for the week and feel like it will be impossible to achieve everything. Once you have organised your week in detail, take a step back and look at the list with a clear sense of what your overall goal is. What do you need to achieve this week to keep your business on track and thriving? Sometimes the answer allows you to see where you can get rid of some smaller tasks in favour of spending more time on the things that matter most.

Photo by Jiří Wagner via Unsplash Jiří Wagner