I often talk about how planning ahead is important for me and its how I manage to stay productive. In this post I'm going to share with you how I plan out my week to get the most productivity I can.
Sunday evening is usually when I will sit down to plan my week ahead. This includes writing out what I'm up to in the coming week, budgeting my money, and also writing up a meal plan.
I'll gather up everything I use to plan with and sit at the kitchen table at around 7:30pm. This is around the time that I've done everything I've needed to do, such as making dinner, washed the dishes, given Jodie a bath and put her to bed. I consider myself very lucky that once she's in bed, she'll stay in bed and be asleep within half an hour (#blessed)! So this gives me time to plan everything out with time to spare to either watch TV or have a nice soak in the bath!
My Bullet Journal
I start off with my bullet journal. If I haven't done so already, I'll set up my weekly spread. I've used the same spread for the past 2 months and it's been working great for me so I don't see myself changing it for a while. For me it's a clean and minimal spread so everything is easy to jot down and read. I've even included a Notes section to jot down quick reminders or why a specific task wasn't done.
Once this is done, it's just a matter of filling in the days. 5/7 days I'm working so I then know how much I can do in the other 2 days and the evenings. Most of my personal errands and the food shop get done on Tuesdays, as it's the only day off I have during the week. Also Jodie is in school so I can have a few hours of alone time undisturbed, usually in a form of a nap!
Everything else such as creating content for my blog/ Instagram/ Facebook, I'll schedule for the evening after work, once Jodie is in bed. This way my week is structured and I know what I need to do to keep my productivity up.
I take this time to see if there are any upcoming events or birthdays by flipping back to my Future Log and looking at the month in hand to see if there's anything important that I might be missing.
Meal planning
Once I've filled in my week in my bullet journal, I'll then get my weekly planner and start writing out what we will be having for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfast and lunch are pretty much the same all through the week so it's the evening dinner meal I focus on. I'll usually ask Jodie for her input on what meals she'd like in the week, that way I have a higher success rate of her actually eating her food!
From the meal planner I can then write out my shopping list ready for Tuesday. I'll look at what ingredients are needed in each meal and then see if I already have them or not. This way I'm only buying what I need and keeping the cost down too!
I love this meal planner as the sections are big enough to write everything down and to even spilt between Jodie and myself if we want different meals. There's also a section in the bottom to write a shopping list and it detaches easily so you can take it with you!
Budgeting
This then takes me to budgeting my money for the week! Once I write out my shopping list, I get a good idea of how much I'll be spending on food and set myself a target budget. I take this figure and then add the weeks bills onto it. That way I can have a rough idea how much I'm spending that week and how much I can put into savings. It's always a bonus if I manage to spend less in the food shop than the initial budget!
I take this time to go back on my Bill Tracker page in my bullet journal to double check if I have any of the monthly bills go out.
There is nothing worse than forgetting about a bill, checking your bank balance and it be way lower than you expected. You get ready to phone up the bank and demand an explanation but when you're looking at the statement, there's that one bill staring at you in the face that you didn't account for and you're now skinter than skint despite your best efforts. I've been there, many a time. It ain't nice!
So that is basically it on how I plan! I spend the evening getting everything sorted ready for the coming week, so all I have to do everyday is look in my planner and get on with what's needed to be done that day! That hour I spend frees up time in the week to get everything done with some time to spare!
I hope this was helpful in anyway to you and I would love to know how you plan and what methods you use!