6 Strategies to Designing Your Dream Week—and Life
The alarm buzzes.
As you groggily climb out of dreamland, you realize it’s Monday morning.
How do you feel?
If you’re like most overworked 9-5ers, the first feeling is pure dread.
You know your calendar already has too many meetings to count.
You’ll have an overflowing inbox full of new requests.
And you have no idea how you’ll juggle multiple “urgent” projects all with the same deadline.
It’s going to be another week facing the giant list of to-dos you can never seem to check off.
You may be so deep in the pit of overwhelm, you don’t even believe there’s even another option. Not if you want to continue to climb the ladder, anyway…
But what if you’re wrong?
What if there was a different way?
You could start every Monday morning knowing exactly what you’d accomplish that week.
You could close your laptop at the end of the week with zero guilt, confident you’d gotten to the important stuff.
You could actually look forward to the week because you have full control over how you would spend your time.
This reality is closer than you think.
Design Your Dream Week…and Life
This 6-step framework will help you get your work done faster so you can free up precious time and stop missing out on your life.
#1 Your Master To-Do List
A Master To-Do List combines all the to-dos you have floating around into a single source of truth.
These to-dos will come from emails, IMs, sticky notes, or even just random thoughts that pop into your head.
Put them all in a single location. This becomes your brain’s external hard drive, freeing up the storage space you’ve been devoting to trying to remember it all. When all of those to-dos are documented in a single place, you don’t need to worry if you’re forgetting something. You’ll also be able to make better decisions on exactly what to work on because you can easily see all the options.
Keep your Master To-Do List up to date by setting up a regular cadence to move your to-dos from their various sources to your master list. This could look like a twice-per-day email check or once-per-hour IM shuffle. During this time, capture the important action items you want to make time to complete.
#2 Prioritize
In a world where everything feels urgent, it can be difficult to decide what you should prioritize.
Deciding on your priorities is all about deciding ahead of time what you WANT to work on vs. relying on your thoughts in the moment when you might not feel like it or when someone else is pushing their own agenda.
Think about the week ahead and decide which tasks from your Master To-Do List are worthy of your time. You can make these decisions based on deadlines as well as the projects and goals you care about the most. Don’t forget to include “me time” items. Priorities are not all about what seems “productive”. Priorities should include the things that make life fulfilling too.
When deciding on your priorities, this is your want list. When it comes time to create a schedule to work on these items, reality may change this initial list a bit. But this will be your first step in making deliberate decisions on your priorities.
Keep in mind, there is no “right” priority. There’s just the next action. Any action you take will build some momentum and give you some new information you can use the next time you priortize. Just pick what feels “right” to you.
#3 Break it Down
Now that you know all the things you want to get done, you need to break them down.
You may be staring at a list full of daunting projects that feel overwhelming. The goal is to break those down into bite-sized chunks of tasks that not only feel more doable, but also make it easier to guestimate how long they will take to accomplish.
Review your lists of priorities for the week. For anything you expect will take longer than one hour to complete, break it down.
This is your list of tasks to plan for.
#4 Plan a Full Week
It’s time to plan.
When making a plan for what you want to get done, look at the full week, not just a day at a time. Every day is unique. By planning a week at a time, you can incorporate the nuances. You can more easily identify when you’ll have time to work on a project and what deadlines will be realistic.
Planning for the following week on a Friday afternoon also helps you go into the weekend with little stress about the week ahead. You’ll be able to hit the ground running come Monday morning without wasting time staring at a pile of conflicting priorities with no clue where to start.
You’ll already have a plan!
#5 Use Your Calendar
Scheduling makes it real.
When you schedule time on your calendar for exactly when you’ll work on a task, you can easily see what’s realistic and what’s not. If you were stuck on what to prioritize before, scheduling your work time will force you to make these priority decisions. The calendar never lies. You can’t fit what you can’t fit.
Scheduling your time on your calendar also sets your brain at ease because you’re building the puzzle of “how” you’ll get everything done.
To make sure you’re scheduling a life you can look forward to, start with scheduling personal time first, then let everything else fall in around it. Schedule breaks throughout your day, time to take your dog on a walk, time to work out, time for some guilt-free Netflix binging…you get the idea. Don’t rely on leftover scraps of time to get to the good stuff.
When you’re intentionally scheduling your time, it’s not about increasing productivity and cramming in as much work as you can. It’s about creating a schedule that doesn’t jolt you awake on a Monday morning in a cold sweat.
#6 Allow for the Unknown
You can’t predict the future. But what you can predict… Something unexpected will come up.
Your perfectly planned week will never go exactly as you outlined. Guaranteed. Any pre-planned schedule must include flex time. A plan for the unexpected.
Flex time should be in the form of white space on your calendar. This open time will prevent you from derailing priorities when an unexpected project hits your desk or you hit a roadblock. The amount of flex time you put on your calendar will be dependent on your job needs. If you have a pretty consistent cadence of events from week to week, you may not need much. But ALWAYS include some sort of flex time for the day.
Flex time will be the key to stopping the constant overtime due to these unexpected items. You’ve already planned for them. So you’ll have plenty of time to fit in the unexpected.
So What?
Remember that dreaded Monday morning you’re living on repeat?
It’s because you don’t feel in control.
You don’t yet know how you’re going to get everything done.
It all feels overwhelming and like you just want to pull the covers back over your head.
This 6-step framework allows you to align with your priorities and feel confident in the “how” for getting it all done. You’ll feel more in control and less like you are at the whim of someone else’s wants and needs.
Scheduling your time also allows you to focus on just the task at hand instead of spinning in confusion worrying about all the other things you “should” be doing. This focus makes you more efficient instead of being pulled in a million different directions.
Embracing a system for planning and managing your time can be the secret to creating a life you’re excited about.
When you know exactly what you’re going to get done and how, you can escape the Sunday Scaries and stop carrying that constant weight of anxiety.
When your schedule includes time for the things that excite you and bring you joy…who wouldn’t want to wake up to that?!
If you’re ready to learn more on how this framework can help you take control of your busy schedule, eliminate your overwhelm, and finally start living the life you’ve been fantasizing about, check out Never Work Overtime Again. It’s my time management course that can help you work less, so you can live more.
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About Me
Hi, I’m Kara. I’m a former workaholic turned time-management expert. I help women stressed out in their 9-5 get more done, in less time, so they can get back in the driver’s seat and start living a life they love.
