How to Schedule your Week

This week I’m in France. There’s a big birthday in the family and lots of celebrations to be had!

While I’m here, I’ll still be working of course as will himself. But we also have lots of jobs to do around the house here so it’s going to be a busy week.

Since I arrived we’ve been talking about everything we need to get done this week. I kept thinking of one job after another plus all the more enjoyable things we wanted to do. So eventually last night I had to write things down!

I don’t know how some people live without making a list. Even if I don’t use it (which I do), I can’t stand having all the things I need to do running through my head.

With every to-do that you write down, ideally you should write down WHEN you are going to do it. I’ll admit I don’t do this all the time. Sometimes it’s not feasible and other times I feel I don’t need to.

However this week I absolutely had to. It’s Tuesday morning already and I’m leaving on Sunday. So we have five full days to get a variety of things done. I had to plan out what we had to do, what were the priorities and when we might get to them.

And this is how I did it.

You can see it a bit closer here: Weekly Schedule

It is a very simple word document with a three column table added into it. I assigned days along the top, and time down the side. And then I put some colour in it to make it pretty to look at! It takes five minutes! Now I fill it in.

I always start off with the to-do list. I wrote down everything we had been talking about. After that I assigned each task to a day which is split into morning & afternoon.

Obviously Wednesday – birthday day – will be a write off. We won’t get anything done other that party prep etc. So that meant everything else needed to be scheduled out over the other four days.

When you write down a To-Do be mindful that there aren’t other little jobs associated to getting this one task done.

For instance, I wrote down “organise for birthday party”. But the list won’t work for me if I leave it at that. You have to be specific. What does birthday prep mean? So I listed all the to-do’s associated with it from buying the decorations to ordering the birthday cake.

Also, look at “Go to IKEA” – beside that I started a mini shopping list. I did that because I didn’t want to forget what I need there. If there was more to go on the list, I probably would’ve done a separate shopping list. You don’t want to overfill the To-Do list. But in this instance, I just need to jog my memory, so I wrote down what I need beside the task.

You will also see that I have “IKEA” and “Carpet” assigned to both Thursday and Friday morning. I did this because:

1. We mightn’t get to these places on Thursday morning so I’ve added in a contingency plan so that we can get there on Friday instead.

2. Picking out carpet could be done in a morning, but knowing me, I’ll have to think about it or I’ll want to check out a few places, so I’ve given two mornings over to the job.

You have to be realistic with the job at hand, how much time it may take, and your own decision making abilities. If it’s not a big job or not terribly important, then it will get done quick. However, carpet for a room? – I want to take my time on that one.

I’m also not overfilling my mornings and afternoons. Tuesday (today) looks busy but that’s because I added in himself’s workload also. I sure ain’t laying concrete today! I’ll just watch!

Finally, I’ve printed it off so that everyone in the family knows what’s going on. Also, if we happen to think of something else, it will be easier to just write directly onto the list and assign a day to it. We have the template done, so manually writing things onto it at this stage will be more efficient than typing and reprinting.

And that’s it really. Now I know exactly what we have to do this week and an idea of when we will get to it. Hopefully by Sunday, we’ll have everything ticked off the list!

Happy Organising !

Sarah