Weekly planning, for me, is 15 to 30 minutes on Thursday morning. I read the work calendar, the shared family calendar and my training plan for the next ten days or so, then write one page in my notebook for next Monday through Sunday, one day at a time. Only fixed things go on that page: events, training and deadlines. The actual tasks get decided each morning on my daily time blocking spread. I learned that rule the hard way, after I packed a week so full it fell apart by Tuesday.
Most weekly planning guides default to Sunday. I do mine on Thursday morning.
That sounds like a small difference. It isn’t. I’m a dad of three, I run marathons and lift, and I work from home as a software developer. A lot of my week belongs to other people’s schedules before I ever get a say in it. Planning on Thursday, and putting less on the page than you’d expect, is what finally made a weekly plan survive contact with an actual week.
Here’s the whole routine, the week that taught me what not to put on the page, and how it feeds the paper time blocking I do every morning.
What Weekly Planning Actually Is
Weekly planning is a short session where you look at the week ahead and decide, in advance, what each day is for: the fixed events, the workouts and the deadlines. It looks forward. A weekly review looks back at what got done. Daily planning then fills in the details each morning, once you know what the day really looks like.
Those three get blurred together constantly. David Allen’s GTD weekly review is mostly the backward look: clear your inboxes, get current on your lists, review your calendar. Cal Newport’s version is the forward look. He plans his work week on Monday mornings by “working backwards from your calendar to fill in the open time”. Mine is closer to Newport’s, just a lot shorter, and with a family calendar in the mix.
My Weekly Planning Routine, Step by Step
The whole thing runs on two tools: the shared calendars I already have, and the same notebook I use for daily time blocking. Here’s the order.
Thursday morning, 15 to 30 minutes
It’s short on purpose. Half the guides out there promise “30 minutes” like it’s a law of physics. Mine takes 15 to 30, and the reason it stays that short is the rule further down about what’s allowed on the page. If I’m still writing after half an hour, I’m planning tasks I have no business planning yet.
Step 1: Read the calendars for the next ten days
I start with the calendars, not with goals or a brain dump. The work calendar, the shared family calendar, and my training plan. I look at roughly the next ten days, so I can see the end of this week and all of next week together.
This step matters more for a parent than anyone gives it credit for. Practices, appointments, school stuff and my wife’s commitments are already on the shared calendar, and none of it cares what I had planned. The calendar is the real constraint. Everything else fits around it.
Step 2: Write one page for next Monday through Sunday
Then I open my Leuchtturm1917 A5 dotted notebook and write a single page for the coming week, Monday through Sunday, with a spot for each day. Not a two page spread. Not a fancy weekly layout. One page, day by day.
Each day’s spot holds the same few kinds of things:
- Fixed events from the work and family calendars
- The run or lift from my training plan, slotted around those events
- Anything with a hard deadline that day
That’s it. That’s the whole page.
Step 3: Only fixed things go on the page
This is the rule that makes the rest work, and I’ll explain where it came from in a second. If something has a set time, a set day, or a deadline, it goes on the weekly page. If it’s a task I could do any day, it doesn’t. Those live on the daily spread, where I decide them the morning of.
Step 4: Each morning, that day’s line becomes the daily spread
This is the part nobody else seems to show. Every morning I start a fresh two page spread for the day, todos on the left and an hour by hour log from 5am to 5pm on the right. I wrote up that whole setup in time blocking for busy dads.
The weekly page is where that daily spread starts. I copy the day’s items from the weekly page onto the left page first, then add the day’s tasks, highlight the three that matter most, and block the day around all of it. The weekly page decides what the day is for. The daily spread decides how I spend it.
Why I Plan My Week on Thursday Instead of Sunday
I didn’t land on Thursday from some productivity framework. It’s a stack of small reasons that all point the same direction.
I can see the weekend coming. On Thursday the weekend and the week after it are both in view. Nothing sneaks up on me Friday afternoon or Saturday morning because I already looked at it.
Sundays stay free. Weekends are family time. I don’t want Sunday evening to be an admin session at the kitchen table, and I don’t want the dread of planning hanging over the end of the weekend.
It fits my work week. Thursday morning is a natural point in my work week to look up and see what’s next.
And it stuck. I did it on a Thursday once, it worked, and I kept doing it. That’s honestly most of the reason.
The day matters less than people think. Newport plans on Monday and says it takes him “almost always longer than an hour.” Allen says “any time, any frequency, is better than not at all.” Pick the day you’ll actually show up for. For me that’s Thursday.
The Week I Overplanned (and the Rule It Gave Me)
I once treated the weekly page like a full todo list with dates on it. I packed it with everything I wanted to get done and assigned it all to days. The page looked great on Thursday. By Tuesday the week had blown up, and the page was a list of things I’d already failed to do.
Here’s why that happens. A task assigned to Wednesday on the previous Thursday is a guess. It’s a guess about your energy, your meetings, whether a kid gets sick, whether a long run leaves you useless. Fixed events don’t need guessing. A practice is at a set time whether you’re ready or not. A task is the opposite: it’s flexible right up until you lock it to a day you couldn’t see yet.
So now only fixed stuff goes on the weekly page. Events, training, deadlines. Tasks get decided each morning, when I can actually see the day.
The page still does its job with less on it. Research by Masicampo and Baumeister found that committing to a specific plan frees up mental resources that an unfinished goal would otherwise keep eating. You don’t need every task scheduled. You need the week’s commitments out of your head and onto paper. And for the things that do go on the page, like a run at a set time, writing down when and where makes follow through more likely. Prompting people to make that kind of specific plan improved follow through on tasks from flu shots to voting.
When the Week Changes After Thursday
It always changes. A practice moves. A meeting lands on top of a run. Something gets cancelled.
When that happens, I update the shared calendar first, then fix the weekly page to match. The order matters. The shared calendar is what the rest of the family sees, so it’s the source of truth. The notebook page is mine. If I fixed the page and forgot the calendar, I’d have a correct plan that nobody else knows about.
Then the daily spread handles the rest. If a block falls apart during the day, I erase it with a FriXion erasable pen and write down what actually happened, same as always.
Fitting Training Into a Weekly Plan
Training is the one category of “thing I want to do” that does go on the weekly page, because it behaves like a fixed event. My runs and lifts come from my training plan, and Thursday is when I slot them around everything already on the calendars. A long run has to go where the family schedule leaves room for it, not where a generic plan says Saturday.
That’s the same problem I wrote about in training for a marathon with three kids: the plan has to fit the week, not the other way around. Seeing the whole week on one page is how I do that without renegotiating every single morning.
Where This Weekly Planning Routine Falls Short
This isn’t for everyone. Here’s what it doesn’t do well.
- Two places to keep in sync. The shared calendar and the notebook page can drift apart. Calendar first, then page, is my fix, but it’s still two updates instead of one.
- No alerts. Paper won’t remind you of anything. Anything with a hard start time still needs a calendar notification.
- It doesn’t set goals. The weekly page is about this week’s commitments, not where the year is going. I handle that in a monthly goal review and keep the big list short with five goals a year.
- It assumes a lot of your day is yours. If your week is wall to wall meetings someone else schedules, a calendar alone might be all the weekly planning you need.
How to Start Weekly Planning This Week
You don’t need my notebook, my day or my pens. You need one page and your calendars. Here’s the stripped down version.
- Pick a day and a time you’ll actually protect. It doesn’t have to be Sunday.
- Open every calendar that controls your week: work, family, and any training plan.
- Write one page for the coming week with a spot for each day.
- Put only fixed things on it: events, workouts and deadlines.
- Each morning, copy that day’s items to wherever you plan your day, then decide the tasks.
- When something changes, fix the shared calendar first, then the page.
Weekly Planning Questions
How long should weekly planning take?
Mine takes 15 to 30 minutes. If it’s taking much longer, you’re probably scheduling tasks that should be decided on the day. Newport’s sessions run over an hour, but he’s planning his whole work week in detail. A short session with only fixed things on it is easier to keep doing every week.
What is the best day to plan your week?
The one you’ll stick to. Sunday is the default, Friday is popular for closing out work, and Newport uses Monday. I use Thursday so the weekend stays free and nothing about the next week surprises me.
What’s the difference between weekly planning and a weekly review?
Weekly planning looks forward and decides what each day is for. A weekly review looks back at what you got done and cleans up your lists. You can do both in one sitting, but they answer different questions.
Try This First
This Thursday, before you open email, look at every calendar that runs your week and write one page for next Monday through Sunday. Fixed things only. No tasks. Then see how many of those days actually go the way the page says.
I’ll bet more of them do than when you planned everything. Take what’s useful. Leave the rest.
